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Summer Time! Obon season!
Some of you know I'm Buddhist. In the summer, many of the Buddhist chuches/temples celebrate Obon (oh-BONE). On most weekends
from late June thru mid-August, one or more sites will have their Obon carnival/festival. I've been going to these celebrations every year
for all my life, since my parents joined the Gardena Buddhist Church congregation. At the festivals, there is a tradition of folk dancing (odori),
remembering our ancestors. As I understand it, the tradition here in America is not Japanese, but Japanese-American. Although, the particulars are
Japanese based, the whole tradition of the dance and carnival is mainly done in Buddhist churches in America. There are Obon celebrations
in Japan, but usually community based, not religious. I started dancing in the 'odori' in my senior year of high school. At that time, it was only
girls, women, and older men (usually there to keep the circle clean and to run the audio equipment). One would never see young men dancing.
A couple of friends and I started as an excuse to meet girls! Hey, we were the only young guys dancing, and we thought there's no competition!
Well, it turned out I met my wife Phyllis at Obon. We gathered some other guys and girls who were interested in dancing, and started to improvise
some dance moves to make it interesting to us and if it looked funny and amused the spectators, great! I like to think we were the ones that started
getting more guys dancing, and now (30+ years later) we just fade into the crowd. I still dance every summer, at as many of the festivals as I can go.
Hope you can come out too! There's usually pretty good Japanese-style food, a little pricey, but it's a fund raiser! I love seeing familiar
faces in the crowd, join in the dancing! Doesn't matter if you don't know the moves, sometimes I don't know them!
Please click on the links to see the schedule and locations.
Obon Schedule 2011
Obon Locations 2011
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