Trip to Japan

Mana & I were fortunate to go on a trip to Japan this past August. We were invited to dance exhibition with Maeva Goo's group in the Tahiti Heiva in Japan. It was our first time to Japan and our first time to a Heiva in Japan (for those of you who don't know, a Heiva is a Tahitian Dance competition and culture celebration. We were not there for competition, but to make a show and teach dance and music workshops.) We were amazed at how many Japanese women belong to a Tahitian Dance group and also at how many Tahitian Dance groups there were! They danced with energy, enthusiasm, and seemed to enjoy themselves. One group had the most amount of people on stage at one time, we had ever seen. We could not believe our eyes, it must have been really hot for the dancers in the middle because eventhough the stage was big, they had to be really close together to fit on there.

The Tahiti Heiva in Japan also had a Miss Heiva competition. The winner was, Natasha, a beautiful Japanese girl and really good dancer. I ran into her at a party in Hawaii and was happy to see she was wearing Purotu earrings.

One of the highlights of the trip was not only to be able to meet and hang out with two of my favorite musicians, Tapuarii, and Sabrina; but we also got to enjoy our own personal live concert on the rehersals night.

Tapuarii and Sabrina are so amazing to hear live, they sing with joy and passion. They also brought with them from Tahiti, a guitarist named Manaiva, and Sabrina's husband Karl on the accoustics. They were all really nice and fun people. We are hoping to bring them out to Oahu for a concert one of these days... Send me an email if you would be interested in coming to their concert, and when we figure it out, I will send an email with all the infos.

The organizers of the Tahiti Heiva in Japan are Ken (far right) and Tomomi (far left). They do an excellent job of organizing the whole event, which is a BIG task. We were really impressed with the organization and they took really good care of us. They even had staff for all the booths, this one in the picture below to the right of me bought 2 pairs of earrings, she's wearing the very popular Purotu "Tahitian Pearl Dangles." She was so nice.

We also ran into our friend Tomoko (middle) with her sister and mom. She danced with our group Ia Ora O Tahiti Nui for the Heiva I Honolulu last March, and she recently went back home to Japan.

Besides rehersing for the show, teaching workshops, performing two nights, and some of us judging the competitions; we were able to see some of Japan as well. We went bowling, shopped at Haryjuko, which is a city that has a big street with a lot of shops and people dress up in very unique styles. Some are dressed like dolls, and some are kind of scary looking. While we were there, it started pouring rain and not the warm kind of rain we are used to in Hawaii. It went from being warm, to pouring huge drops of freezing cold rain. Everyone had to hide out in the shop doorways. Our musicians happened to be near a hat shop when it started raining and I guess they were bored waiting for the rain to stop and when we found them, they all had bought hats.

We also went to Shibuya, it is very crowded there and there are huge t.v. screens in the streets. On the day before our last day, we did some site seeing in Kamakura and spent the day at the beach.

Everyone was really cool and we were happy to go on this trip and experience Japan with such a great group of people.