Festivals festivals festivals!

This weekend is a festival weekend, for some reason. I'm going to (or will try to go to, at least) not one, not two, but THREE festivals in only two days.

Three festivals in two days?

Challenge accepted.

This first festival was today. It was my Takahashi technical high school's open festival day (there are also performances and stuff but that is usually on a weekday). They had stalls and cares and a haunted house and displays and crafts or things the students made that you could buy. 

And so. Much. Food.

Once again, I purchased more food tickets than my stomach had room for, because it is so freaking hard to say no to students you actually like (and want to like you). Thankfully for my waistline, the portions were all Japanese sized (that is to say, tiny) so having two cookies and some juice meant having a small cup of milk tea (like teacup size... A small tea cup) and two cookies about the size of half dollars.

Basically, I ate my way through the whole festival, since I lack the desire to not be able to sleep at night (no おばけやすい, haunted house, for me). I could probably be coerced into that if I had a copious amount of alcohol in my system. But I was at school, so I didn't. 

So what kind of food did they have at the festival? There were a lot of repeats from the other festivals...

Yuzu ice cream daifuku (ice cream wrapped in mochi)
Yuzu pound cake
Two country ma'am cookies (country ma'am is a popular cookie brand here, like nabisco)
Oden (I got set A which had daikon, or Japanese radish, konnyaku noodles, and a cabbage roll, which is just cabbage wrapped around meat. The cabbage rolls are pretty tasty. But. It had no chikuwa (fish paste) or the other things I don't like in oden! It also came with this Yuzu flavored pepper paste stuff that was AMAZING.)
Curry and rice
Milk tea
Black tea
Cold green tea
Chocolate churro
Plain churro
Kinako dango (mochi balls rolled in this peanut-y powder)
Azuki dango (red bean paste mochi balls)
Mitarashi dango (mochi flavored with a thick soy sauce and sugar sauce)
Chicken yakisoba

I ate the dango and yakisoba after I got home. But I also bought bread they had made (how could I not!) and an apple pound cake. I'm saving those for later. The bread has cheese and BACON in it. I'm excited.

Other foods they had but I didn't eat:
Frankfurter and juice (despite this being sold by one of my favorite classes, I really don't like the frankfurters here. I really want to... But every time I buy one it just turns out to be a disappointment since the casing is usually ridiculously thick).
Caramel popcorn
Zaizen (I think,that's what it's called... It's mochi in red bean soup. Not the biggest fan of red beans)
Udon
...these pancake things with custard or chocolate or red bean paste in them
And
Deep fried takoyaki (takoyaki are balls of dough with pieces of octopus in them. You should google them if you don't know what they are. But these were deep fried and the line was always at least 30 minutes... So I bought a ticket but ended up giving it to my team teaching partner instead cause I wanted to go home and work on my grad school app)

I also missed out on eating at one of the cafes. THERE WERE THREE CAFES. WHY WERE THERE THREE CAFES?! Seriously... I think they were all run by the design classes. There was one themed around Christmas (there were a lot of christmas themed things... It made me kind of sad...) run by the third years, and the second year's was called Hayabusa, after the... Space thing. They built a model of the satellite and had the movie running. It was pretty.

The one run by the first years had one of the male students (whose english is pretty okay) in a dress and long brown wig. The poor thing looked MISERABLE. Some male students wear drag and girls clothing proudly and seem to be even more excited about wearing a skit and a wig than they do in their own clothes... But this kid was a poster child for unhappiness and embarrassment. I wonder if he lost a bet or dare or rock paper scissors... Or was being punished. But their theme was a manga cafe, so they had a bunch of people,dressed up in cosplay. It was really cute.

Yeah, the design kids usually have amazing things. They also had a life sized model of the wolf from princess mononoke- the one that she rode. Like, you could ride the model if you were a small Japanese person. It was really really good.

Oh I should make a note, that here, juice is sometimes used the same way 'soft drinks' or 'pop' is used or 'cold beverage.' IE, orange juice, soda, cider, calpis, and  sometimes tea are all included in this category. It still throws me off sometimes.

But yeah. That was my school festival. A lot of fun. I think the students were happy I came? They seemed excited... Especially when it came to selling me things lol. 

But now I am off to an all night karaoke... For charity! ALL YOU CAN KARAOKE FOR THR CHILDREN. And tomorrow there are two festivals I will attempt... Providing I can catch the first train back, get at least an hour of sleep at the karaoke place or McD's, change, and get out the house again. One festival is on the way to the station and the other is out in Yakage. Weeeee. Full weekend go! I guess it's a good thing I basically have a holiday on Monday... I still have to go to school, but I have no c,asses. And it's my base school. So yeah. Excellent.

And I mean, I'm doing cultural things, so like... That's a good thing to be out all weekend for, yeah?