As we’ve been reporting, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is coming to Hawai‘i next week, where he’ll visit Pearl Harbor with President Obama. Back in Tokyo, there’s another element at work in diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States. And this is on a much less serious level. HPR’s Bill Dorman explains in today’s Asia Minute.
Let’s start with the “Koi Dance” it’s a set of moves choreographed to the theme song of a Japanese TV drama. Various groups are shooting and posting their own video versions.
That now includes the U.S. Embassy in Japan, led by the ambassador Caroline Kennedy…in a Santa suit… kicking off the Koi dance. And that’s just the beginning.
Career Foreign Service folks and other staffers then join the dance moves. Contributions come from US consulates around the country—from Nagoya and Fukuoka all the way down to Okinawa and then to the far north with a snowy shot outside the consulate in Sapporo, on the island of Hokkaido.
An embassy spokeswoman told the Japan Times the project started off as an internal holiday greeting---adding: “after it was finished, we said ‘this is good! We should upload it!’ And everyone said, ‘great idea! And so that’s what we did.” It went up on Tuesday night and by Wednesday it had more than a million hits and has already generated more comments than most anything else the embassy has done in a very long time.
Caroline Kennedy did another holiday video in a Santa suit—dancing to the song “Must Be Santa” on the roof of the ambassador’s residence in Tokyo—and heading down a chimney with presents. It’s sort of a last hurrah…or ho-ho-ho…she expects to wrap up her term when President Obama leaves office.
Here's the original.
