Saturday, September 17, 2005

Culture Festival

Today I accompanied Will to his junior high's Culture Festival. It usually seems to take place on a weekend and is to celebrate...culture as far as I could tell.

The first thing that happened were the 3 different grades each sang a song. As I can't understand Japanese, particularly if sung, I had no idea what the song might have been about. The students are all in uniform here. The girls wore sailor tops with pleated dark blue skirts and white knee socks while the boys wore short sleeved white collared shirts and black trousers. I'm not sure why Japan thought sailor-type outfits were great for girls but there you have it.

After the singing came a brass band performance and then a rap performance by three grade 9 students. Then the teachers sang another song I didn't understand. A trivia game followed and then some milling around. The fun part was the bazaar. We walked around, bought food from different booths that were run by the students and then I bought a ridiculous looking white vinyl purse for 50yen. Why? Because it was 50yen! Ah I love a good sale.

Afterwards was the closing ceremony, that I skipped, and they day was over. While I don't feel like I got an impressive amount of culture in me it was an interesting enough day. Clean up is extremely efficient. The students are really quick to put away chairs and tables that were used for the food booths. It was all done in about 10 minutes.

I look forward to Sports Day or undoukai tomorrow.

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