Anri’s Kindergarten Festival and her Piano Recital

It was a very busy day for all of us today!  Every year, on November 3rd, Anri’s kindergarten holds their annual Kindergarten Festival (or yo-chi-en-sai, in Japanese) and after that, this afternoon Anri went to the local concert hall to do a piano recital.

Anri carrying the omikoshi during her kindergarten's festival.

Tomomi volunteered me to do parking lot duty, so, we all had to get to the Kindergarten early.  Once the long parade of minivans arrived and the parking lot was filled up, I was able to go and see the festivities taking place at Anri’s kindergarten.  It all starts with the omikoshi, which is a kind of miniature Shinto shrine that people carry around.  At the kindergarten, they made their own shrines based on their own themes and carried them around the block, shouting “Wasshoi!  Wasshoi!“  (I’ve been in Japan 11 years and I still don’t know what that word means!)

Once back at the kindergarten, all the concession stands opened up and both kids and parents began selling ceramics, food, clothing and other stuff collected for this one day over the last month or so.  Where else can you buy five pieces of kids’ clothes for only 10 yen? 

Anri’s job today was to sell leeks and flowers.  She took her place, wearing a blue happi and a hachimaki around her head and shouted “Would you like some leeks and flowers!!!???”  I, of course, did my duty and bought stuff from pretty much every kids selling something.

There was also a cheerleading show that Anri and Sara both loved watching.  And there was a lot of food to be eaten.  Everything wrapped up just after noon and we headed off to Chikuma City’s Anzu Hall for Anri’s piano recital.

She played one song today — The Mickey Mouse March.  Anri went out on stage in her new dress, did a proper bow, sat down and played it very nicely.  She only goofed up once, but quickly recovered, finished up, bowed again and ran off stage right.  It was a nice performance.

And when that was all done, we headed home for some pumpkin pie.

Video is coming soon!