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In August the Buddhist Temple of San Diego and the Japanese Friendship Garden hosted the Bon Odori once again. At the traditional Japanese Obon festival people remember and appreciate the spirits of their ancestors. Apart from the Bon dance, which is performed in a circle, there were Taiko drum combos and food stalls as well.

Drummers of the Naruwan Taiko combo having a lot of fun.

Older lady dancing the Bon-Odori. (Odori means dance).

At the Bon Odori it seems everyone tries to show off their prettiest Yukata.

This is an Obi, a sash worn with a Kimono, or in this case with the Yukata.

A Yukata is basically a summer kimono, a common sight during the hot Japanese summer.

Yukata are also worn at events such as hanabi (fireworks), but they don't have hanabi here in San Diego yet, except maybe the relatively small Fourth of July fireworks.

There were even some children performing the Bon Odori like this one here.

This one got sooo exited! Look at this face!

Vivid traditional Japanese summer garments, gotta love those colors!

I didn't want to carry too much gear this time, instead of the heavy Canon 70-200mm 2.8 IS lens I brought my Canon 85mm f/1.8, and a Kenko Converter, which doubles the focal length.

The festival is perfectly timed, so I could use the light of the blue hour.

Yet another beautiful Obi combined with a beautiful Yukata.

It got more crowded than last year. I love how they put all these lanterns there.

Overall there seem to be many Japanese and Japanese-Americans celebrating the festival, however, there is also a good part of non-Japanese participants as well.

It is interesting to compare these pictures to the ones from last year. I couldn't have shot the pictures during dusk without the 85mm 1.8 lens. My new baby, the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV also helped a lot. This shot is set to ISO 10000, which is a pretty high value, considering the fact that the 5D Mark III and the 6D are maxing out at around ISO 6400, at least if you don't want the quality to suffer too much.