Today was the school’s culture festival. It was my first culture festival, so I didn’t know quite what to expect. The students have been preparing for almost three weeks, and everybody was walking around excited and nervous.
Generally the culture festival is for showing off some non-academic skills, and there was a nice blend of the traditional and modern cultures blended into a day-long extravaganza. I helped the ESS club put the finishing touches on our project, and then went into the gym and sat down with the other teachers to watch the show.
The show started off with some fanfare, and a quick speech from the principal. Soon after that, the koto club did a performance. The koto is a harp-like musical instrument that lays on the floor. The students played two songs, one a modern tune that I recognized, and another song that sounded pretty good – maybe traditional Japanese.
After that, various acts came up and it was like a talent show where everyone had to participate. The acts were different – some dancing, some skits, some attempts at stand-up comedy. There was one styled after Stomp, and another that had some music in the background full of English swear words. I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but the singer said “Fuck” about 300 times during the dance routine.
Since the performances were done in the dark with lighting on the stage, it heated up pretty quick in the gym. By lunchtime it was a sauna in there. We broke at lunch and had a nice big bento lunch in the teacher’s room.
During the three hour lunchbreak students, parents and teachers walked through the various classrooms to see the displays. There were some interesting ones – a castle built out of chopsticks, a giant robot filled with students that you could throw baseballs at, and a nice photography exhibit. While I walked around the students were eager to chat with me and joke around. We took lots of pictures of each other, and had a great time.
Back in the ESS room, quite a few people came by to check out the displays. Since they were all in English people had a bit of trouble figuring them out, but I saw a couple of students translating the posters line by line to understand them.
Out in the quad the jazz band played a set of tunes. Some students had built a giant sign for Pocari Sweat entirely out of soda cans. They had also hung up a giant logo of the school made entirely of origami cranes.
After lunch there were just a few more performances by clubs and classrooms, and then the brass band took the stage and played for forty minutes. It was pretty good. There was an odd moment when they had five girls doing an interpretive dance to one of the songs. The dance moves were really strange, and the girls all looked embarrassed to perform them.
At the end of the day, Mie-san and I cleaned up the ESS room, and I snuck out of there 15 minutes early. I was pretty tired sitting in a hot gymnasium all day, and I was craving a cold beer. Luckily I had plans to meet up with Antoine in Suma after school.
I got there a little early, so I walked around the beach a bit. In front of the beach there was some major construction. It looked like they were building a beachfront bar there. If that’s the case, I’ll definitely be back later on. The place was styled similar to the bars and restaurants on the beach that I enjoyed in Mazatlan, Mexico.
Once Antoine made it, we went to an izakaya for greasy food and beer. We spent the time comparing notes on each other’s culture festivals.
Afterwards, we stopped in to buy a six-pack of beer at the local convenience store and then sat out on the beach and enjoyed the cool ocean breeze while locals fired off fireworks up and down the beach around us. It was a nice end to a busy day.
