Weekend part 2: Japanese culture

(This is continued from the last post.) After the Friday birthday party and the Saturday breakfast Marisa and I were exhausted, so we had lunch and then took a long nap. Later in the afternoon we took a bus downtown to see a Japanese culture show at Plaza Montenegro. This year is the centennial of the first immigration to Argentina from Okinawa (Okinawa Prefecture is where most Argentine-Japanese came from). I knew that the Japanese Association's taiko group (Ryūshin Rosario Taiko) was going to perform; I know many of the guys there and taiko's always nice to watch and listen to, plus I hoped Marisa would appreciate it as well. As it turned out, they were terrific, and they were joined by another group, Medetaiko, from Buenos Aires. [PS: Marisa just posted a short video: Medetaiko en la plaza.]

Marisa liked taiko — she described it as energetic. She observed that percussion groups like Choque Urbano (or Stomp or Mayumana) must have taken much of their inspiration from them. Medetaiko, especially, focused on multiple percussion registers and patterns, while our own Ryūshin Rosario Taiko is more oriented towards choreography. There was a karate exhibition, and for the finale both taiko gropus performed together. The people who had gathered there, and stayed in spite of the creeping cold, applauded enthusiastically.

The celebrations continued the next day at the Japanese Association. They had what they call a "bazaar", with typical foods, people selling vaguely "Eastern" stuff, and brochures for those interested in Japanese culture, with a background of dance and music on stage. I said hi to a lot of people I knew, introduced Marisa to a few of them, and we watched some taiko and kimono-clad ladies dancing with fans, while having yakisoba and yakitori (washed down with sake). Marisa said she wanted to steal the yakitori sauce, and noted that she would've preferred the sake to be served cold, which is utter heresy.

We left and I waited for her bus to come before I went on to wait for mine. Both took quite a long time to come, which was terrible because we're experience a winter-like cold wave... And that was our weekend for you.

Thursday night out

The Provincial Symphonic Orchestra of Rosario gave its (apparently traditional) end of year concert at the Flag Memorial. I've probably said this a million times already, but Rosario is always full of opportunities to experience art and culture for free, and the late spring and summer season are in particular are even better because there are so many things to do outdoors. In this case, on the stairs before the tower of the Monumento a la Bandera.

Now backtracking a little... It turns out I've been dating a certain lady from my photographers' group. We've only gone out a few times but I feel it's going quite fine. She posted the announcement of this concert on the group's discussion page and we agreed we'd go together (instead of me going to another event I'd spotted on the municipality's cultural schedule). I insisted that we keep silent about our thing until we had the chance to tell the group's guys and girls face to face. I'd say there was some astonishment and plenty of cheerfulness.

So, we went and met the rest of the people and sat on the stairs. The Symphonic rehearsed for a while, then started with tango music — wonderful pieces, two by the revolutionary composer Ástor Piazzolla and one by the bandoneón master Rodolfo "Cholo" Montironi. My lady plays the bandoneón herself and she's a tango über-fan, so she was delighted. I know next to nothing about tango, but listening to a full ensemble playing it live and with passion just has to make you appreciate it, if you've got blood in your veins.

A children's choir was called in then, and the orchestra started playing a selection of Bizet's opera Carmen, which you must surely know even if you don't like or listen to opera or classical music at all, because parts of the tune are so popular. Carmen is a French opera about a gypsy woman (and a few other gypsies as well), a soldier whose life she ruins, and a womanizer toréador (a torero, we'd say, i.e. a bullfighter), what we'd call a classic love triangle with a sordid environment and a tragic ending these days, although back when it was composed it was just considered dirty.

At about half the performance (in the middle of the Toréador, in fact), wind started to blow and some light rain began to fall. Within a couple of minutes, both the attendants and the orchestra decided it was time to run for cover before a full-fledged rainstorm unleashed itself. That didn't happen. The rain lasted a short time, but it was enough to ruin the last part of the event. The crowd poured down the exits and only stopped briefly for a final applause.

We were ravenously hungry, so we walked up Córdoba St. to find a place to eat, and found one that sold very respectable, gigantic hot sandwiches with fries, for a very good price. Now being surrounded by photographers, whose ilk I know too well, I knew they'd try to snap a picture of the newly-assembled couple doing the cute things couples do in public and post it on Flickr for everyone to see, thus ruining my theatrical idea of keeping it secret for those who weren't there until we could surprise them. So I stuck my hand out blocking the camera's view at the first attempt, and all seemed to be OK. Then came the inevitable group photo. Being such a fool, I casually composed myself in a less-than-innocent pose, and sure enough, the picture was posted and only then (this morning) I realized I'd blown my cover. Ah well.

So that's it. I confess I'm more than a little nervous about this new (and as yet unlabeled) relationship, having been unattached for quite a while, and on top of it she reads this blog, so she'll be reading this and who knows what she'll think of my enthusiasm. Can't be so bad, though — I have much worse defects to worry about.

Culture and fun weekend

It's a good thing that you can have a culture weekend any time here in Rosario. On Friday I was alerted of an exhibition of photos by Joaquín Chiavazza, a photojournalist of the old La Tribuna newspaper: stunningly well-done black and white pictures from the late 1950s and early 1960s. There were people all dressed up at the then-popular horse track, with horses racing past the camera; images of car and bicycle races, no longer held in the city; picturesque traffic accidents, milkmen and their horse-pulled carts, women in a queue outside a school, waiting to vote for the first time...

This was at the Bernardino Rivadavia by Plaza Montenegro, and I'm told the rest of the photos (many more) are on display at the Museo de la Ciudad, which is not so conveniently placed, but I have a month to check them out (some samples online).

Then on Saturday I went again to the Museo Estévez. I think I didn't explain this before, so just in case, I'm doing a photo workshop there. The people of the museum are trying to expand their activities, and this includes extending their guided tour from the inside of the museum to the surroundings. The Estévez building is possibly the oldest house in Rosario that remains in more-or-less its original condition, and it's located in front of Plaza 25 de Mayo, the main town square of old, so just by walking around you're treading on the very historical core of Rosario. The Estévez decided to join this activity with a photo workshop with a downtown area theme. They'll collect pictures and do an exhibition of a selected group in April 2008.

So we walked a few blocks and learned a few bits of history and took some pictures. I had this nasty problem with my camera's memory card again, which seems to be unfortunately common, judging from the hundreds of complaints I've read about in web forums. Sony must have the worst quality control system in the world. So I took out the card and used the camera's internal memory. It's very weird, this thing when you can't capture any really good image even if you walk around shooting without concern for the space left in your card, and then when you have room for only a dozen shots, you get a few very satisfying pictures.

Cyclists near the stairs leading to the Flag Memorial

On Saturday evening there was a free show by El Choque Urbano at the Flag Memorial. El Choque Urbano are a group of guys who make percussion music using industrial objects, à la Stomp or Mayumana. Their budget's limited compared to Stomp, but they make up for it with very good acting. The show began at sunset before a crowded Flag Memorial courtyard, and lasted about two hours. I sat there with some of the Rosarigasinos and a few thousands of other people and enjoyed it very much.

I need to tell you that I'm madly in love with the Sony H7's hyperzoom. I was like 100 meters away from the stage and I could see El Choque's guys quite clearly. I took a lot more video but I was fearing the battery would die at any moment, and then at home couldn't be bothered to wait for it to upload on my faltering DSL connection.

We had a late dinner after the concert, and there was much rejoicing and dark beer and coffee and then some more coffee. I staggered back to the bus stop and got home at about 4 AM, where I promptly collapsed, only to wake up six hours later to prep an asado for a couple of friends. This kind of full-day fun marathon used to be easy for me to endure. I'm getting so old...

Culture weekend

I always more-or-less supposed there were tons of culture-related events and culture thingies to do in Rosario at any given time, but then the propaganda machine of the Municipal Culture Secretariat is well-oiled and sometimes they do blow things out of proportion. However, this is not the case right now.

You'll remember the vernissage I attended last Tuesday — well, that exhibition was held in the very lobby of the seat of the Culture Secretariat, in Rosario Norte Station. (On a side note, I asked my artist friend how she'd managed to get that space. She said she had no idea; it was a deal with her university. And I was already fantasizing about a photo exhibition there...)

Then last Friday I went to see this display of old and new photos, drawings and blueprints of buildings by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. I had no idea who he was, but then I read that he was a pioneer of Catalan Art Nouveau (a.k.a. Modernisme) on par with Antoni Gaudí, so I went to the Parque España to check out the exhibition. Domènech designed buildings mostly in Barcelona, but I knew the style because other Catalan architects worked here in Argentina and particularly in Rosario (see my post with the picture of the Palacio Cabanellas).

Very impressive, enough for 45 minutes of admiration, and it only cost me one peso. I took as many pictures as I could, mostly not very good (pictures of pictures, under museum-type lighting, come out usually rather bad), but enough to document it. I don't know if it was allowed to take them, but nobody protested.

Then on Saturday I was scanning the cultural schedule again, and I found a Japan-themed event at the Museo Estévez, including a display of Japanese art pieces and ornaments, a short lecture on Japan's history, and kamishibai (paper theatre). I decided to check it out as well, but I made the mistake of taking a detour to enjoy the sunny view along the river (camera in hand, of course). It turned out that the view was extremely rewarding and I arrived at the museum when the lecture had already started, and after all the tickets for the kamishibai were reserved. It was all free of charge, but the space was limited, so I was told to come back for another show later. I couldn't do that, but I'm going to try it tonight if I can.

The lecture was fine enough — a brief surview of the relations between Japan and the West, showing how the myth of an enclosed, self-sufficient, almost xenophobic "millenary" culture is just a myth, as many of the things we associate distinctly with Japan were imported or adapted from the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch, the British or the Americans. The lecturer wandered into another kind of myth herself a couple of times, unnecessarily, for example speaking of the "unconfirmed" etymology of arigato from Portuguese obrigado, which has long been known to be absolutely bogus, and also relating a supposed graphical similarity between the Japanese kanji for "snow" and "blood" and samurai's concepts of purity and death. Maybe she meant "white" and "blood", which have somewhat similar characters, but then why not "white" and "red"?

Walking to and from the museum, I also noticed a lot of tourists. And I mean a lot. The riverside parks and the Flag Memorial were packed, and adding to the usual locals with mate and thermos and kids and dogs you couldn't stop noticing a large number of people with curious looks, camera in hand, taking pictures of themselves in front of absolutely unremarkable spots, or map in hand wandering the streets.

I found a young couple from some place in Greater Buenos Aires who actually asked me, not how they could get to a certain place, but where they could go, because they were not sure which direction to take. The girl seemed not to know that Rosario had a river, or that it was a large city, and somehow they'd both been able to walk down Córdoba St. without asking for (or finding by themselves) the 70-meter-tall Flag Memorial at the end of it. I also found a couple from Bánfield (Buenos Aires) who asked me to take a picture of them, and commented that Rosario's very nice but has almost no touristic infrastructure. I took another picture of a middle-aged couple from Córdoba. And on my way back I had to explain to two elderly ladies (one of them with a city map she was holding upside down) how to get back to the Bus Terminal.

The weekend is just half over, so there's still much to do...