Paddy's Day in Tokyo
As I'm sure I've told most of you before, there is an annual
St. Patrick's Day parade here in Tokyo. They do a fair job
with it was well. The trendiest street in the city gets closed down,
and green rules the day. It really is an amazing parade. A
good 70% of the participants are Japanese, and a lot of those have
never even been to Ireland. You've got Japanese lads with tattoos and
green mohawks playing the war pipes, young Japanese girls in
full
gear dancing reels, old Japanese men walking their wolf hounds
and Japanese grannys in green kimono. Most of the decent
independent pubs unravel their banners and put together a few musicians
to march through the streets, college cheerleaders throw each other in
the air and everyone gets along under the shade ofgiant
Guinness
balloons. Tokyo's football club ( Verdy
FC) plays in green jerseys so they always come out for the
parade, and they are joined by other athletic clubs including the Japan
GAA
(you think I'm joking, but I'm not... click the link). And of course,
we've always got a few dignitaries in from Ireland to march up at the
front.
Tokyo Tower
In order to commemorate the 50th anniversary of official Irish/Japanese relations, the city even lit up Tokyo Tower so that it would be green for the night. The folks from the Irish embassy seemed to think that this was an amazing coup... but this was actually the second time that I've seen the green giant hovering over Tokyo's skyline. The first time was when Matrix Reloaded was being released. It must cost a lot to buy all of those green bulbs, so they must have jumped at the chance to use them again. Either way, it must have taken a lot of screwing and unscrewing of light bulbs just to make us happy for a night... so it was terribly decent of them.
The Bishop Himself
Once again, I found myself in the fortunate position of wearing the bishop's robes for the parade. Of course, it doesn't really take much doing... I just have to bless a few of the people whom are watching from the pavements, smack the lads who call me "Gandolf," and make sure I don't lose my hat or beard to the wind.
Music Festival
This was the first year that we've had a music festival to coincide with the festivities. It was put together by a few expats that have formed a company to manage/promote session musicians and dancers around Japan.
It
was fun, but materialized on a far smaller scale than the original
plan. Half a year back when I first met with the main organizer, I sat
wide-eyed as he spoke of three days of (culturally justifiable)
debauchery set to the music of Irish trad band Teada, pop band
Snow Patrol, folkie Declan O'Rourke and dancers from all over the
world. Unfortunately, sponsorship didn't explode as he had hoped, so
the venue, time frame and breadth of performances had to be scaled
back. Most of the acts were local expats who were joined by a
trad-fusion band from California. It worked out well enough -
the
Guinness flowed, the bands rocked and everyone left smiling. I
certainly wouldn't have been disappointed had I not received the
hyperbolic build-up beforehand. Still, the parade started out pretty
small as well. Sixteen years later, there are thousands attending the
Tokyo event and satellite parades in six other Japanese cites. If the
organizers of the music festival keep it up, perhaps we'll get that
that three-day binge of song and dance within the decade