Chinese New Year Festival - 01/26/2013

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was at the Japanese New year celebration, today I was in Chinatown and checked out the Pre-Chinese New Year Festivities at the Chinese Cultural Plaza. There were booths selling new year good luck trinkets and food as well as lion dance performance.

Almost everything in this booth is red and gold color.  

This booth had Jung (mochi rice wrapped in bamboo leaves) and I have no idea what is in the other pot.

They also had jin dui and other dim sum and desserts..

They set up the firecrackers before the lion dance.

There were two troops so there was twice as many drums and cymbols and it was very noisy.  When I went to lunch, my ears were still ringing for the first 10mins of sitting down.

There was a booth selling these cherry blossom which were pretty pricey, but people buy them to display in their homes for good luck.  The real Chinese New Year festivities will be next weekend on Feb. 1 and 2 when there will be a parade w/ many lion dances and street festival on Maunakea Street. 

New Year Ohana Festival - 01/13/2013

Somehow, I managed to miss this event every year but I finally got a chance to check out the Ohana Festival this year at the Japanese Cultural Center. I was worried it would rain, so I didn't bring my 50D but it turned out to be a great but super hot day.  The Lumix is great for sunny outdoor shots, but too slow for action  shots so I  didn't get any good performance shots. Still i managed to click at the right time to get some good mochi pounding pics and the long zoom helped get great closeups.

When I arrived, they were doing the Mochi Pounding or "mochi-tsuki" demonstration. It was really cool how they managed to pound the grains of mochi rice into a sticky dough.

I wanted to get pics of the entire process so I came back later to get better shots of the mochi-tsuki process.

At the cultural center, they had calligraphy writing make-it take-its.

 I watched a dance performance by these girls in brightly colored kimonos.

And of course the Taiko performers.  I recognized them from the Okinawan Festival.

I wasn't a fan of Kikaida when I was little because of the language barrier, but saw that the actor was going to appear so I fought the crowd to try get some pics..  I think he is Kikaida..

And here's the actor Ban Daisuke who came all the way from Japan.

There were also appearance of Kikaida's Friend, who I have no idea what his name is.. but I know he is a 'good guy'.  It was great fun and the kids young and old loved it.