Saturday, 10 September 2011

Ballet Class

We have started taking Hannah to a new ballet class on saturday afternoons.   We found a class in Harajuku using the Royal Academy of Dance program, which Kyoko recommends for children.




















The teacher, Yuko-sensei, runs a very nice little school in the classroom of a kindergarten attached to the Togo shrine, of all places.    The building was built in the 1953, and although it is very nice, the first time we went I thought, "I wouldn't like to be here in a big earthquake".    Sure enough,  towards the end of the class the building was shaken by a long quake.



The Tōgō Shrine (東郷神社 Tōgō-jinja) was built in 1940 and dedicated to Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō.   Admiral Togo was commander-in-chief of the Japanese fleet during  Russo-Japanese war and famous for destroying the Russian fleet at the battle of Tsushima in 1905.   He  had studied in England for 7 years, and was praised by the British press as the 'Nelson of the East'.   So perhaps his shrine is an appropriate location for a Royal Academy of Dance class after all.