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.
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.
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.
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.