Dressed in green and pink costumes and topped off with Afro wigs, eight Japanese people, including this writer, gathered in the lobby of a hotel in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's samba capital, at midnight on Feb. 15.
"Are you ready?" Keisuke Sakuma, the organizer of our group asked me. "Yes," I answered — though every nerve in my body was jangling ahead of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dance in the street in Rio's Carnaval 2010, as the event is termed in Portuguese.
For several years I have taken part in Tokyo's Asakusa Samba Carnival, which models itself on the one in Rio, and for years, too, I longed to perform in the most famous one of all.