Monday, December 7, 2009

Educational festival

The purpose of this event is making students interested in jobs.

She is making "Yuuki" pongee fabrics. Yuuki is one of the cities in my prefecture.

This is the Niou gate of a temple. Any Niou gate has a pair of statues called Niou on both sides of the entrance.

A traditional house that has a thatched roof. This kind of houses are seen in Ishioka city in my prefecture.

The head of a lion called "Shishi". People put on a mask that looks like this at the festival in Ishioka city.


There is a very big hall called Capio in my city and it holds numerous events throughout a year. It holds some indoor sports events as well as cultural ones that often have to do with schools' education programs. And when I was going to pass by the hall it was holding an event that had something to do with "producing" things related to my prefecture.

The southern part of my prefecture is a bit populated but if we go north for hours I can reach areas where there are not so many houses or buildings. And the northern part has traditional sides, and a city called Ishioka holds a very traditional festival in September. And I think it is one of the places in my prefecture where there are many people who cherish the traditional sides of Japan.

This event was aimed at nurturing young people to let them get a creative job in the future. You can call making a video game creative, but this event seemed to put emphasis on protecting jobs that have been handed down from generation to generation for centuries.
As seen in other countries, the number of people who want to be engaged in traditional craft is decreasing and my country is not an exception. As I said before I want many foreign people to come to Japan, and in such a case these traditional art works shown in the pictures above would also appeal to them.