Odori - The Dance.

After seeing every part of the parade, me and Helen hurriedly rushed to the International Lounge, a building where the PII students were supposed to gather for the Odori part of the festival.

Odori in Japanese means literally “dance”, so you can guess what we were to do. The Odori takes place every year, after the parade, at night in Kanazawa’s designated downtown, and the PII students have participated in it also on a yearly basis. We learned the dance the day before and on the day of the dance we received the happi coat to dress in.
“Happi coats originated as Japanese over coats traditionally worn by shop keepers. The family crest, shop name or emblem was printed on the back of the coat. Today, happi coats are still used by some shop keepers, however happi coats are widely used for Japanese festivals, parties and sushi restaurants.”

There were in total 3 dances, all of them very simple, and we danced each on Kanazawa’s street for 20-30 minutes straight. At first we, the American students, were all freaked out as we only practiced the dances for 50 minutes total the day before, which means by the next evening, we forgot everything. As it soon turned out, the worry was unnecessary – these movements were repeated so often during the odori, that we memorized them in no time. And they were so simple, it was the group effect of people moving in unison that really mattered.


The odori was a long long line of many people each dressed in the yukata/kimono of their own group. All the dance group were representatives of either private companies sponsoring the matsuri, or some other groups such as Kanazawa University etc. Each had their own very pretty costumes and we all danced around the Korinbo area, which is like a downtown. We danced for total of 3 hours (!) and had a great, unforgettable time. Of course with PII students being in the number of 45 we could barely compare to the 100-people groups of the companies, so we did not win the best-dancing-group prize. It’s ok, we got to drink some delicious tea and eat some delicious donuts as a reward for dancing.