Foreground: Guests invited to a Sado ceremony. Background: Host preparing the tea.
With the objective of leveraging its soft power to extend influence, Japan has pushed forth a number of initiatives in its overseas embassies, one of which is the Japan Creative Centre set up at the Japan Embassy in Singapore. To prepare for its official launch sometime next year, the JCC has lined up a series of events, mostly cultural and social in nature, to celebrate and bring attention to the official opening. The Fuku No Ne Ensemble's performance held at Victoria Concert Hall a couple of months ago was the first event I attended. This time, we also took part in a mini-presentation of Japanese Sado which featured a live demonstration. Other upcoming events include Natsu-Matsuri (Summer Festival), Rakugo (humorous story-telling), Noh (YES!), Shamisen concert (YES YES!) etc. What would have rounded up this series of exciting events/performances nicely would be Kabuki (similar to Chinese operatic performance). I have written to JCC to express this wish but so far there are no plans for it. Nevertheless, whatever that have been lined up are already good enough, especially if we note that admission is free. What impresses me most is that the Japanese never compromises on quality and effort just because it is a free event. For them, the mantra is either we do it well or we don't do it at all.
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