• YOSAKOI-SORAN Festival combines Yosakoi-Festival in Kochi prefecture of Shikoku Island and Soran Music of Hokkaido Island . Yosakoi is dynamic dancing and Soran song is rhythmical. When a student saw Yosakoi Festival in August, 1991. he was moved and thought he wish this kind of dancing were here in Hokkaido. More than 1,000 students were there to realize the student's dream in June, 1992 and the first YOSAKOI SORAN Festival was constructed 10 teams of 1,000 participants and 200,000 audience. It has been growing every time and in 2002, eleventh Festival of the following photos there were 344 teams of 44,000 participants and 1.51 million audience. One of the audience was I.

• There were more than 30 event places and main four places were in Sapporo of Hokkaido Island. This time's photos were taken in one of the four places, the first street event place. Other than Sapporo, there were many places all over the Hokkaido. Unfortunately, it was rain in the 2002 Festival. I was sitting on road and looking at it around one hour and felt cold because water came into the seat.

• Usually one team is constructed 40 - 150 people. Performance time is four minutes thirty seconds. It includes everything such as introduction of the team, music and performance. Basic rules are "it should include SORAN music","clapper"and "100 meter advance dancing for the parade."

• Management is done by exclusive staff 10, students 120, citizen volunteers 4,000, guard persons 1,500 and police persons 1,500, all together 7,000 persons. Moderates of the Festival were from Sappro TV announcers. Participant fee for one team is 150,000 Yen or 1,250 dollar and company team became 250,000 Yen or 2,100 dollar.

• Organizer of the Festival is targeting at the Carnival of Rio of the World wide basis and I would like to assist them.

The announcers of this Festival said "this is the first time for women to show their flesh body."
This team came from Saitama Prefecture in which we live and I felt closely with this team.
Flag of the team	Most teams wear colorful costume like this team.
But this teams was plain color.		Children of 3 to 4 years were in this team.
Throw away clothes	Look at the finish.	Rowing boat sytle?	Oh! Karate style?

2003/06/01