San Francisco: Cherry Blossom Festival blooms & booms

The Cherry Blossom Festival of Southern California has come and gone (if you attended, write a review), but our friends up north have yet to celebrate the well-loved blooms. The Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival, in San Francisco, takes place April 12-13 and 19-20, 2008, and it’ll be well worth the trip if you can make it up there.

San Franciscans know how to put on a great fest and this one, which draws thousands every year, is no exception.

For both weekends, Japantown will be abuzz with demonstrations on everything from tea ceremonies to cloth-dyeing; music from traditional song and dance to karaoke; arts and crafts and kids’ activities; lots of food, including rolls, noodles and perhaps the unexpected; and even a Japanese anime fashion show.

See the schedules, which seem to be divided into tame arts-and-crafty-type events and rollicking music, performance and live arts events.

Most of the festival happenings are free, but one of the fee-based events is particularly worth splashing out for, in my opinion: On Saturday, April 19, 2008, the Japanese Singing & Dancing Festival begins at 1 p.m. with a variety of traditional performances; it’s a long day, then shifts into taiko festivities from 7:30 p.m.-10 p.m., hosted by the San Francisco Taiko Dojo. I’ve seen this group several times, and they pound out one incredibly energetic show.

Tickets are $30 (including tax) and are available by cash or check through the dojo’s showroom in Japantown. If you can’t make it there, you can reserve seats by calling or e-mailing the dojo. If the show isn’t sold out, you can buy tickets (again, no credit cards) at the door.

Contact: Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival
San Francisco Taiko Dojo, (415) 928-2456
— Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times

[Photo: San Francisco Taiko Dojo, SFTaiko.com]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 3:15 pm by Susan Derby and is filed under Festival, Northern California. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.