Making sand castles in Kagoshima

IN CONTRAST TO yesterday’s post about how contrived events can sometimes spoil the fun (see the post below), here’s a festival whose narrow focus seems to enhance the fun, and whose dedication to the handmade just might trump any contrived aspects.

That event is the Sand Festival, which started on Tuesday down south in Fukiage, Kagoshima Prefecture, and will run for a total of five days. The Sapporo Snow Festival held every winter up north has been going strong for close to 60 years, and is now well known abroad for its elaborate snow and ice sculptures. The Sand Festival is a similar but smaller event–the difference is that the sculptures, though just as transitory, are made of sand, as befits Kagoshima’s semitropical climate. Also, they’re making no special effort to attract foreign tourists.

This year’s festival is the 20th, and the theme for the sand sculptures is explorers and the eras they created. More than 1,000 people from both Japan and overseas, including a handful of invited artists, have used 2,000 cubic meters of sand to create 80 sculptures over the past 10 days, with subjects ranging from Christopher Columbus to Francis Xavier. The sculpture shown here, created by a group of local artisans from Minamisatsuma, is an 8-meter-high replica of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet.

Naturally, they are illuminated at night, and subsidiary attractions will include a fireworks show. The organizers expect about 200,000 visitors (it was timed for Japan’s Golden Week holidays). And, if you find too much sand in your shoes, the organizers have devised other ways for you to spend your time.

One of these is the Yosakoi Hanya Festival, in which folks create and perform their own dance routines to a local traditional melody (second photo). In fact, many of these secondary events have a strong local flavor: a taiko performance, a karate demonstration, a taishogoto concert, hula dancing, harmonicas, shamisens, unicycles, jazz dancing, and the Sakurajima Blues Band!

To be sure, the festival has some elements I’d probably avoid. They also have what they call an “image song”, which will be performed by Noriyuki Miyai. A professional singer (whom I’ve never heard of) with a full-length CD and mini-album, Miyai held a concert last night on the festival’s first night. There’s going to be a musical too.

The saving grace for this event is the downhome flavor. It’s a local production with no pretensions of creating an international extravaganza. The “image song” was presented live at a concert hosted by a local radio DJ. And the stage presentation is being billed as a “citizens’ musical”, which means that what the performers lack in polish, they make up for with enthusiasm.

Best of all, they’re charging only 700 yen for adults at the door! Here’s the website, but it’s not in English. And don’t pass up these excellent photos of sand sculptures in past years.

And wouldn’t you know it? There’s a World Sand Sculpting Academy. Of course they have a website!

In a few more years, after the Kyushu Shinkansen is finished and before all the sand in my hourglass runs to the bottom, I might hop down to Fukiage and take it in myself!