A Flair for the Dramatic

Earlier in February, at the Museum of Kyoto, there was a special event held by the Kyoto Guide Club - a club designed to take foreign residents on fun outings to see unique attractions that wouldn't be in a guide book.


This time, the outing included viewing a special exhibit (The Works and Correspondence of Yasunari Kawabata & Kaii Higashiyama), enjoying street performers and learning how to make mochi-tsuki (a slightly sweet and sticky rice cake). I will post later about the mochi-tsuki. (We've been so busy lately, that I have a back-log of fun adventures that I hope to cover soon.)

The street performers were very entertaining even though we did not fully understand their shtick. They danced, told (what I think were) jokes and did some samurai stage fighting. But, the best part was when they recruited Chris from the audience to help them with the grand finale. He had to sit perfectly still holding a daikon radish over his head. Then, two of the performers sliced the radish into pieces with their swords.

Here is a quick clip of Chris's action scene:


As an omiyage or souvenir, Chris was given the Daikon pieces to take home. Using the daikon pieces, we made a delicious and very easy soup! Japanese radishes are far superior to the dinky red radishes that we have in the United States.