Pat's Blog

Walking around with my eyes open can be a change. These last few weekends, I’ve noticed stalls in the Takamatsu Sunport area selling a wide variety of locally grown foods and promoted by the local government.




The famers’ life can be a difficult one as the seasons fluctuate between good and bad everywhere including Kagawa with its historical problems with water. What is interesting to see is the level of government support agricultural societies here have to package, distribute and sell to we consumers.





Eggplant, soybeans, every kind of condiment and lots of samples! I love samples, so made short-work of the free food handouts. The deep fried potato croquettes didn’t stand a chance.





To see a good working cooperation between local government, agriculturalists and marketers bodes well for the prefecture generally we think. Synergy is something the Japanese have always had a natural ability for. And with a recent initiative to change the name of Kagawa Prefecture to Udon Prefecture (I’m being perfectly serious, there is talk of this) I wonder how it will be? Thinking of Kagawa as Udon?





I’m not really sure that’s a good idea although there’s been one name change already, from ‘Sanuki ‘to Kagawa. Welcome to Udon just doesn’t have any ring to it I think? I graduated from Udon University doesn’t sound quite right …

Anyway, when in Udon …. I mean Kagawa, please take time on a Saturday to look at the local foods market in this area. Contact the Tourist Information Bureau for details.

http://www.takamatsu.or.jp/eng/tourist/index.html





I’ll be back soon with more on our great city of Takamatsu (unless there’s been a name change?) so see you soon!

  

For the second October in two years, Art Setouchi helped bring seven very exciting street performers to Takamatsu in what we hope will be an annual event named ‘Takamatsu Dai Do Gei Festival’. Last year they did their stuff in the streets of Takamatsu. Pantomime, acrobatics, music, juggling and painting performances in the Dome area downtown but this year they divided the programs between Sunport, near the station and the shopping arcade Dome area.






This is all very exciting. Just the thing to chase away the blues and cheer us all up. It certainly did for me …
Hibi Chazz-K started the ball rolling belting out some great music. These kids are very talented and can do it all; jazz, pop, hip-hop, rock. The lot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTROoGqIfOM&feature=related

http://chazz-sax.com/e/





Dark Krakou a French street performer came back this year, too. Dark Krakou is quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Menacing, gigantic, just plain frightening and the kids loved it. This performer is very agile on stilts and it was pretty amazing to see how fast he could run around with a throng of kids yelling and screaming running behind in tow. Every once in a while he’d stop, whip off some unsuspecting person’s hat and place it on a tree out of reach. Pretty funny … and I hope they got back. Maybe they didn’t?







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yBIz-r9aMo

My guess and yes, that’s not good enough so I’ll follow up, is that they’ll be back again next October. I will check that and report back before the event, so if you’re in Takamatsu please do check these out through the Takamatsu Tourist Information Center near the Takamatsu JR Station.

http://www.takamatsu.or.jp/eng/



Keep all those cards n’ letters coming in and leave a comment if you wish. Suggestions for the blog are always welcome so until next week.