KOKUYOSA turned the Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden into two days of color, rhythm, and cross-continental friendship this weekend — and the festival's own co-founder told us why Lethbridge, of all places, is where it happens.

This past Saturday and Sunday, the Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden hosted the second annual KOKUYOSA — the North America International Yosakoi Festival — and once again, Lethbridge held a title no other city on the continent can claim: home to the only Yosakoi festival of its kind in North America.

The energy at Nikka Yuko was authentic, high, and unmistakably positive. It was, plainly, a wonderful day — the crowd was locked into every performance, and there was real passion radiating off the stage. That's the thing about Yosakoi: it doesn't ask you to just watch. It asks you to feel it, and Lethbridge clearly did.

The festival ran from 9 a.m. to 6:20 p.m. on Saturday and 9 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. on Sunday. Saturday was built around an opening parade, two rounds of judged competition, guest performances, and a closing mass dance; Sunday shifted into free public workshops where anyone could learn the basics from visiting instructors. Admission was free throughout, with a separate ticket only required to walk the paid areas of the garden itself.

Twelve teams and roughly 150 dancers travelled in from Japan, the United States, and across Canada — including Lethbridge's own Setsumai Yosakoi, Calgary's YOSOCA, APPARE Yosakoi Vancouver, Kogyoku from New York, and Narutaka from Tokyo and Osaka. One standout new addition: Ōzora JCAM Yosakoi, a team born entirely out of a KOKUYOSA workshop held in Winnipeg earlier this year.

Yosakoi started in Kochi, Japan in 1954 and has since spread to more than 100 festivals across the country, and to teams in 29 countries worldwide. The style is built around large, synchronized groups, colourful costumes, and music that ranges from traditional Japanese sound to rock, pop, and electronic — with only two real rules: every dancer carries naruko (small wooden clappers originally used to scare birds off rice fields), and the music has to include a phrase from the folk song "Yosakoi-bushi." Everything else is left to the team.

We sat down with Tomo, one of the founders and organizers behind KOKUYOSA, to ask what the festival actually means to the people bringing it here.

Tomo has run a Yosakoi team in Calgary for nine years. The problem, he explained, is one of distance: North American teams can perform Yosakoi, but they can rarely compete at it, since the festival's real home — and its real competitions — are in Japan.

"Because we're the North American teams, we can't really go to Japan all together to join the festival," he said. "So instead, I thought it would be a good idea to have the festival in here for us to meet with the other teams around the North American teams as well."

There's a cultural mission behind it too. Yosakoi, he said, is one of the greatest cultures Japan has to offer, and he wanted to bring it to Alberta so people here could see it firsthand.

So why Lethbridge, and not his home city of Calgary? Two reasons. First, the Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden itself — what Tomo called a genuine link between Japan and Canada that already exists nowhere else in Alberta. Second, ambition: his own team had spent years performing at other people's festivals without ever getting to compete. KOKUYOSA was his way of building something bigger — a stage where North American teams could finally face off, not just perform.

Last year's inaugural festival, he said, was a trial run to see if the idea would even land. It did. "We had a very good feedback," Tomo told us — and this year, his hope is bigger than good feedback. He wants Lethbridge to start thinking of KOKUYOSA as its own festival.

"I'm really hoping the people in Lethbridge think this is their festival, so that every time that we come back here, I want them to treat this as their celebration," he said, "so that it will boost the economy in here, and then the tie with Japan and Canada will be much stronger as well."

Is KOKUYOSA here to stay? Tomo says that's still being worked out. The team is weighing whether to eventually rotate the festival between the East Coast, West Coast, and even into the U.S., since it is, after all, a North America International festival, not just a Lethbridge one. But for now, nothing else compares to what Nikka Yuko already offers.

"Without doing any decoration, this already has the atmosphere of Japan," he said. "If we have a stage, this is already a Japanese festival we can make it." Translation: they haven't found anywhere better, so Lethbridge should expect KOKUYOSA back again next year.

A local garden, a nine-year-old Calgary dance team, and a founder who wanted his people to finally get to compete instead of just perform — that's the quiet origin story behind the loudest, most colourful weekend Nikka Yuko has seen in years. Dancers from three countries, a brand-new team out of Winnipeg, and a founder who's hoping this becomes our festival, not just his. That's the kind of story Worth Knowing exists to tell.