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This past weekend, festivities began to celebrate the one hundred year anniversary of Japanese immigration in Brazil. The event kicked off with a huge celebration in São Paulo’s Sambodrome, where 25,000 people attended. The event included Japanese rhythmic dancing, drum groups, and traditional dances. Since the celebration honored the melding of two cultures, there were also Brazilian cultural traditions represented, including a samba school and floats.
Another highlight of the celebration was the participation of the Japanese crown prince Naruhito, who is currently traveling throughout Brazil in honor of the centennial. He was in the parade in the Sambodrome and also gave a brief speech, promising to work with the Japanese and Japanese descendant communities in Brazil, which encompass some 300,000 people. On Monday, the Prince arrived in Belo Horizonte, after traveling to Paraná and Brasília.
To see more photos of the event, click here.
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During the winter months in the Southern Hemisphere, the penguins of Patagonia migrate north, and some unlucky ones wind up on the beaches of Brazil. Just last week, seventeen pingüins (penguins) were found on the beaches of Santa Catarina, and are being cared for by Brazilian biologists.
Each year, more than a million penguins swim north from icy Patagonia, entering cold currents coming from Antarctica that flow north towards Brazil. Often, penguins are found tired, malnourished, and weak on the beaches in southern Brazil.
When penguins are recovered by civilians, they think it’s best to put the penguins in ice or cold water. However, these penguins often come in contact with oil pollution in the water, causing them to lose their protection against the cold. As a result, some of the recovered penguins have been placed near heaters to help them recuperate.
To watch the news coverage about the penguins, click here.
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Last Sunday, Brazilian opera singer Paul Szot won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his role in “South Pacific.” But it was a long road to success on Broadway.
Paulo was born in 1969 in São Paulo, and grew up in Riberão Preto. He is the son of Polish immigrants who wound up accidentally in Brazil, thinking it was Argentina. His interest in the performing arts began early, and he trained as a pianist, violinist, and ballet dancer.
As a teenager, he won a scholarship to study dance in Poland, but a knee injury prevented him from continuing his dance career. He began singing instead, and performed in a Polish chorus. Later, he made his professional opera debut in 1997 at age 28. He has performed all over the world, in thirty roles in sixty productions from Spain to New York.
But it wasn’t until 2008 that he made his Broadway debut, winning the role of Emile de Becque in the revival of “South Pacific,” which received rave reviews. During his Tony acceptance speech, he sent a birthday wish to his mother, and said he was proud to play a character who “opposes war and fights for love.”
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The latest American reality show to be adapted in Brazil is “Miami Ink,” which has become “Rio Ink” on Brazil’s People and Arts channel. Like the American version, the show follows the day-to-day operations of a tattoo shop, this time the Bonzai in Ipanema.
Over 22,000 people applied to be on the show, but the producers only picked twelve of the most interesting clients, and only six will be featured. The tattoo artists, which include the famed Lúcio Tatoo, had different requests than their American counterparts, which included Iemanjá, an Afro-Brazilian diety, and the Flamengo soccer team emblem.
The show is due to air later this year. To see the official site, click here.
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Though traditionally Brazil has had few natural disasters, global warming has begun to change that trend, so let’s take a look at some weather vocabulary:
hurricane: furacão [foo-rah-cownn]
tornado: tornado [tor-nah-doh]
flood: inundação [een-oon-dah-sownn]
earthquake: terremoto [teh-heh-moh-toh]
storm: tempestade [temp-est-ah-gee]
water spout: trombra d’água [trohm-brah dah-gwah]
This water spout, right, was spotted in Santarém, in the north of Brazil last week.
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