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Today, lisagems and I went to the Ginza Japanese Cultural Festival at the Midwest Buddhist Temple in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood. The festival is a fundraiser for the temple's yearly operations and features great food and a good number of staged demonstrations. I photographed Judo, Aikido, Kendo, and two sets of Taiko drummers.

I was going to edit Taiko pictures first, but since it's a mutual Facebook friend who's into martial arts' birthday , here are some of my favorite Judo pictures! There are more in this set; 19 in total just of the judo practitioners.



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On an unrelated note, here's today's pic-of-the-day. It's taken outside a bricked up window on the back wall of Lisa Hunter's apartment. I'm fascinated by these architectural palimpsests; buildings on which elements of the past are written like a scraped away and replaced text.



Copyright Stormdog 2013

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The first group on stage at the Ginza Festival today was the Ho Etsu Taiko Group.

Taiko drumming makes for a very picturesque performance. I had a hard time cutting my photos down to the 18 I posted on Flickr.





( More behind the cut. All pictures Copyright Stormdog 2013. )