Namaste India Festival

I hope you had a great autumn break.Thank you for posting an interesting message about Indian festival. My students might ask some further questions later.

This Sunday, we had an Indian festival near our hometown, so I went there with some of my seminar students. We had tasty Indian lunch ( Curry, samosa and fried vegetables) first. Then female students tried Mehandi. We also watched both Japanese and Indian dance performance and took a lot of pictures. The pictures above show Indian dance performance, Japanese dance performance and my seminar students (Junya, Shino, Miho and Natsuko).

This is our very first time to watch Indian dance, and I found it different from Japanese dance. I was impressed with Indian dancer's facial expressions. The movements of eyes, in particular, seem to send a lot of messages. On the contrary, Japanese dancer's looked pretty serious all thorough the performances. Another difference I found was stories behind it. Indian dances seem to drive from Hindu myth, but Japanese dances describe ordinary people like Maiko or working girls.

We also had a chance to talk with an Indian family from New Delhi. The mother explained a lot about Indian culture. We are surprised that there are so many festivals which are related to a family tie. I didn't know a wife would fast for the long-life of her husband. A day for brother and sister to come home sounds interesting too.

We don't have many festivals in Japan. We have a summer and autumn festival at the nearest shrine, but the date is different depending on the shrine. We have some booths on the ground of shrine and children would be blessed by the servants of God. I used to enjoy going to these local festivals bringing small amount money to buy a cotton candy and other small toys in my childhood.

My students will post some questions about Indian culture very soon. If you have any questions about Japan, please let me know.