It’s that time of year again! When the temperatures start rising, listen for the sound of taiko drums carried on the tradewinds. Summertime means bon dance season in Hawaii.

From June through September, you can attend a bon dance nearly every weekend on Oahu, so get your hapi coat out of the back of your closet and put your dancing shoes on!

The first bon dance of the year will be held at the Waipahu Plantation Village this Saturday, June 7 from 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm. Here’s a videolog from last year’s event. (Sorry for the poor quality of the video. This was before I discovered the optimal settings for saving video for the web.)

I will be documenting the season in photos and video and you can keep up with the “dancing fools” at a new website that I’ve created specifically for this purpose at dancingfools.org. Why “dancing fools,” you ask? I touched on this in a previous entry, but to elaborate, it comes from a saying that I started quoting at the end of every bon dance videolog last year:

“We’re fools whether we dance or not,
So we might as well dance.”

The reference I obtained that from indicated that it was a Japanese proverb, but I discovered that it’s actually the lyrics to the Awa Odori song (reference: Wikipedia.org):

踊る阿呆に
見る阿呆
同じ阿呆なら
踊らな損、損

Odoru ahou ni
Miru ahou
Onaji ahou nara
Odorana son, son

Translation:
Crazy Dancers
with other crazies watching them
Since both alike are mad
You might as well dance, might as well dance

Whatever the case, I believe it suits us nicely.

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