Asian Provocateurs

It was pretty easy to spot the Filipino, Japanese, Indonesian and other Asian communities at the Harbour Bar this afternoon.

What was a little harder to single out were the Irish, given that we don’t really have any native dress.

Unless, of course, you want to count any crumpled bit of clothing with an uncertain stain.

As GG arrived for the third annual Asian-Irish Cultural Festival this afternoon, the place was, as expected, hopping. A great, big multi-coloured, multi-cultured collection of workshops, language and origami demonstrations, Asian food, Irish dance, Aikido martial arts performance, a Kimono demo, and beyond, it hardly mattered that the weather outside was on Full Irish, as it jumped from sun to showers and back to sun again before you could say “ロッキンギグ!”.

We managed to grab organisers Rie Maruyama and Susan Jackson for five minutes though, to have a quick chat about where this wonderful annual festival sprang from, and where it’s headed…

You can check out our full gallery of shots from the day here.