Two of the big, all school events at most Japanese high schools (that I've seen anyways) are Sports Day and the Culture Festival. By "Culture Festival" really, it means the school's culture. When I first got here i thought it meant learning about foreign cultures and stuff, but I was kind of wrong on that account.
All of my schools, and pretty much all of the other ALTs I talk to, have these two events. Sports day tends to be held in September, while the school culture festival can range anywhere from September around when classes start back (rendering any attempt at actual teaching relatively useless) to Octoberish. One of my other schools doesn't have theirs until later.
Culture festival is broken up into two parts at my schools. The first day, usually a week day, usually a friday, is dedicated to student performances as a whole class or block. Most of the time it's by class. Classes will put on skits, plays, sing songs, make videos... just about anything for this part. Unfortunately, I missed most of this because I was at other schools on every single day one of my schools was doing this first day.
The second part, usually a second day, is dedicated to a bazaar bit where students will sell food that they make and decorate their classrooms and have exhibits and stuff. The clubs, at least, the academic clubs, will often decorate a classroom and have something as well.
This year I helped out with the English classroom and I (kind of) did an ikebana display. By kind of, I mean that I made the poster for it and watched the teacher put in all the flowers. She gave me the last bunch, a handful of purple flowers, to place around the main flowers she had set in. So I did. And she made approving sounds so I hurried out afterwards to watch the students do their performances. That was not my happiest time. I still don't quite understand why I couldn't have done it after watching the students; it's not like the teacher wasn't there after. But whatever. It's the past.
Either way though, I got back to the classroom afterwards and the sensei was there carefully rearranging all the flowers I had put into the bowl. So I really really just don't understand ikebana. Oh well.
Anyways, the second day is all I'e been able to go to, but it's pretty fun to see what the students come up with. Today, I visited Niimi South Campus's culture festival ("Lightning"). They had a bunch of interesting things, including a ghost house (which I did not partake in) and a Tonari no Totoro maze room made for small people (that I partook in anyways). Thankfully, I went through with one of my students who already knew the way, so I didn't get lost. Almost got stuck, but at least I didn't get lost haha. It was really hot so I kept sticking to the plastic things they were using to decorate the inside of the maze. Really cute idea though, since Mei-chan goes through the mazes and stuff in Totoro too. The food was pretty awesome too. I think it's a rule that if you're selling some kind of consumable thing in the summer, shaved ice, or kakigori, must be one of them. They also had these really tasty (and probably unhealthy) rice balls that were flavored with either curry or tomato sauce/spaghetti sauce, then rolled in panko and deep fried. Sooo tasty. It was a lot of fun, and I saw a bunch of students whom I haven't seen in a while.
One of the students I saw, I'm proud to say I knew the name of haha. Mostly it's because last year for Halloween, I gave them candy, so after that he was always asking me for candy. Eventually, instead of saying "Please give me candy" he switched instead to shouting "I LOVE JESHIKA" whenever he saw me. Now, (I think/hope) it's become something of a joke between the two of us. We chat, usually in Japanese with English thrown in here and there, and he helped me learn his name by asking me every time I saw him if I remembered his name. Eventually, I did. When I saw him today, I guess he must have seen me earlier or something because he was selling tickets and was like "OHHHHHHH JESSHIKAAAA" and then showed me his shirt (one of the special ones they were wearing for festival). "I love ジェシカ" was written across part of it.
I think I just kind of laughed and asked him what he was selling. Fried potatoes, it turned out. Those were pretty tasty.
One of the more interesting foods they had there was 流しそうめん "nagashi somen" which is like "flowing somen" when they told me. Instead of just eating it straight from the bowl, they give you a cup filled with somen sauce and you stand by this big bamboo trough. At one end is a bucket with a thing to caulander kind of thing. The other end is elevated and starts in the kitchen. From that end, they put the noodles in the bamboo trough and then pour water down the trough. The water pushes the noodles down, and you have to pick it up with chopsticks and dump it into your cup. As it flows down. You can't miss, otherwise it'll keep flowing down into the bucket. The whole time I was doing that, I was like "aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" in my head because I was super worried about missing it completely. ._.
Last weekend was Takahashi's culture festival, and it was a little different. For one, I (shamefully) woke up late and didn't make it to school until 10 o'clock. No idea what happened either. They were selling kakigori, ice cream, curry, tapioca... and for some reason they had TWO haunted houses this year. I feel kinda bad, cause I didn't go into either of them. Our school has a tea ceremony club too, since there's a tea house in our school, so I had some tea, Japanese ceremony style. Last year it was ridiculously bitter, but this year... was actually tasty.
The cooking club also made gyuudon (beef bowl) again this year and it was suuuuper tasty.
One of my favorites though, was the "science is mystery" room. A couple of my favorite students were in charge of that room, including one student whom I'm doing interview practice with. It was really cute haha, he was like "JESSICA YOU MUST COME IN HERE" and showed me all the things they were doing. It's a bunch of stuff that like, I did as a kid that you can do with cool sceincey things. For example, the cornstarch thing, and another thing with dry ice. They put it in some film cases (though damn, film cases!) and left it covered, and after a while it exploded. They also had soapy water they dropped dry ice in. This made the soap bubble like... a lot. But the cool thing was, when you burst the bubbles, smoke came out~ It was super fun. :D
Little punks also shocked me through a chain though, lol.
Oh, another really cool thing they did was a demo of large scale calligraphy, by the calligraphy club. It was pretty sweet.
Sorry for the lack of pictures, especially on this. A lot of the pictures I took have my students in it (to the point of where you can really see their faces) so it felt a little weird putting those up. :) So you'll just have to take my word that it was a really awesome show. :3
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