Jamaica Fest 2011– Shibuya

The second day of the trip to Tokyo with mom saw us heading towards the cool side of town. We started in Harajuku and moved through Omotesando and back up to Yoyogi park. No real plan, just to look at stuff and take in the sights and sounds of the more vibrant side of the city…

hit the jump

As we were strolling through the park, we could hear what sounded like a live reggae concert of sorts and my mom being the reggae fan she was, wanted to know what she was hearing. Upon crossing the bridge from the park into the public open space outside the NHK Hall we came across a festival of tie dye, Jerk Chicken and Jastafarians.

My mother was quite stoked. As for me, lets just call it an anthropological study shall we?

The outdoor stage had a selection of Reggae or Reggaeish (Japanese Reggae can be a bit questionable sometimes). off to the side was a line of food stalls selling mostly Jerk Chicken and miscelaneous Jamaican fudz as well as booze in the form of Red Stripe and the usual Japanese beers.

There was one African stall though selling African fudz and most importantly, African BEER!!!! They even had Castle Milk Stout. F@cking A for AWEH!!!! Got me my drink on in the sun. 2 red stripes, half a quart of Ghanaian Lager and a dumpie of milk stout. My mom had the rest of the Ghanaian beer. in the end, we were both tipsy. That was rather interesting.

There were also a large selection of stores selling everything from over priced hippy (jippy) clothes to over priced random stuff that didn’t really trigger my brain into remembering it.

The best stalls there were the Jamaican embassy stalls because they had a bunch of cool info and flyers about the country which may be useful in future lessons. It also was nice since I have met actual Jamaicans (and other Caribbeanese) since coming here and they are pretty damn cool!

 

That said Jamaica fest was very not my scene (The occasional piece of fanservice aside of course) but it was great that it happened to be when my mom was in Tokyo. She would probably call it synchronicity or karma. I just say co-incidence.

Will I go again… If I happen past it, I might go and find me more real beer. That aside. Probably not. Did I enjoy it? Yes, I suppose I did ;)