Hokkaido Hair Design Competition

A few weeks ago I was asked to be the photographer for my hair dresser, Rie, as she was entering the Hokkaido Hair Design Competition here in Sapporo. Her model was my Aussie friend, Samantha, who got a gorgeous head of vibrant red hair for the occasion!

We took over Earth Hair Salon in downtown Sapporo, transforming it into our own studio! The shoot lasted 6 hours (until 4:00 in the morning), but we got some fabulous shots! A few examples:

To kick off the competition, there was a fabulous lounge party held at the Cross Hotel here in town, complete with food, drinks, music, entertainment, a make-up martini bar, and Hokkaido's best hair stylists. I felt more like I was in a hip club in New York, rather than here in Sapps:

Sometimes you just gotta get away from everything for some sweet bathroom self-portrait shots! Love that mixed-lighting:

The Dream Team:

Finally, all of the entrants' photos (including our own) were on display at the tres urban CAI02 Art Gallery downtown. I guess this can technically be my first gallery showing here in Japan, so that's pretty cool:

So, there's nothing like a bit of fashion photography to keep me in gear in between festivals, parties, and a little traveling! It's a world I've yet to completely delve into, but this little sampling was quite fun. Yet another one of those crazy experiences to check off from my time here in Japan!

Soran! Soran! Soran! Yosakoi!

Okay, so the Sapporo Snow Festival gets all of the fame and notoriety, but it's the Yosakoi Soran Festival that is the most awesome, colorful, and energetic high-light of the festival calendar year here in Sapporo! As I mentioned last year, this festival is a five-day frenzy of some of the most amazing dancing you'll ever see. Seriously, it's like all of the shackles of the longest winter ever simply melt away with every shout of "Soran!"

Sapporo holds Japan's largest Yosakoi Soran festival, hosting some 300 teams with about 50,000 dancers! How can you not get pumped up and ready for a whole new outlook on life with 50,000 dancers running about your town!?!

Dancing on a costumed and choreographed Yosakoi team may seem a little breezy, but some of these folks spends MONTHS practicing everyday...they're hard-core serious! Among all of the sweat and hard work however, they look like they're having the time of their lives, which is pretty darn awesome:

Even Coke has jumped on the bandwagon to quench all of your Yosakoi needs (and caffeine fixes):

The best part of this year's festival was that I got to participate on a team as well! Remember what I said about the hard-core serious months-of-practicing stuff? Not really up my alley. Good thing there's the Hokkaido JR team...we not only learned our dance in an hour, but we also got to perform on the same day! Who's hardcore now!?

Our Nippon Ham Fighters naruko. Naruko clappers are required for every team performance in the festival:

Our team consisted of about 50 members altogether, but here are the "Hokkaido University students" (ahem) represented in all their glory:

You don't really get a true appreciation for Yosakoi until you perform your dance about five times down about five blocks under a blanket of intense sun! Um, TOTALLY worth it! It's amazing fun, and one-day is just the right amount of devotion for me:

And with that, the summer festival season has officially kicked off here in Hokkaido!