My favourite time....Bunkasaiiiii!

Last weekend was our school festival or bunkasai in Japanese. The festival lasts two days, Friday is just for the students to enjoy and Saturday is when the parents and past students come to take part. We don't have anything similar to this in Ireland, which is a shame because its so much fun and the students organize everything. It's a lot of responsibility! Each homeroom class decides on a theme for their class and decorate accordingly. They decide if they will have a game or serve food in their room. Students spend days painting, drawing, gluing and crafting so that the school becomes a colourful wonderland. These are also performances such as dance, singing, and instrumental.

Me as Wally in the middle with HR21

The students preparing their Line activity

Even the stairs were transformed

I got to hang out with the students teachers on Friday

I really enjoyed the shooting room

The Math club had so many puzzles, which were a lot of fun. My neighbor Jill came to enjoy the festival and this is her trying to solve a puzzle, she was good at them but this one was too difficult. Our English club had some boards about world food and also about our cooking club day. I think people liked it as they were informative and had great drawings.

Two members of English club

The third year English club members who will be leaving club now

I love the science clubs room too, there is always so many interesting creatures. My favourite is the Salamanders (above). Science club also play a common summer festival game called Kinyoshui, the object is to catch goldfish in a cup using a paper covered hoop as a net. You have to be careful not to rip the paper as when it breaks your turn is over. I caught only four goldfish but I watched the science teacher catch 23! 

I was so excited that my friend Jill came to visit my school. She is the ALT at Gotemba High School and we had so much fun visiting all the games rooms and eating lots of food. We really enjoyed the Coco Curry from HR33 and various things made by the cooking club.

The Brass Band club performed on Saturday morning and they were brilliant. As well as music some students performed a dance routine. Unfortunately my video isn't uploading but I will hopefully be able to fix it and upload at a later date. Until then, there are some picture below. Four of our teachers joined the club for the performance Miss Unno, Miss Goto, Mr Heima and Mr Atani, they were excellent.

Some of the first year students who watched the performance with me

The music clubs room was so much fun but it was very hot, so I didn't spend too much time in there.

Some of the students art

School council

All the students worked so hard and should be proud of their achievements. The students council worked tirelessly for weeks and most are third years so I hope they have many great memories of their last school festival. I certainly have lots!

Our Principle waiting to give out awards

School Festival

Recently, we had our school festival. The Thursday before the school festival, we prepared for it. I helped the English Club with their exhibition. They decided to do an exhibition of four American States. This year was a little different than last year's festival. The sports teams didn't sell food outside this year. The school decided that it wanted to focus more on exhibitions this year. The festival lasted for two days: Friday and Saturday. It was open to the public on Saturday.

Here are some students at the opening ceremony.

During the day, there was a room designated for bands. I thought this one was especially good. They sung a song by RADWIMPS which is my favorite Japanese band, so I really enjoyed it.

Every year, my favorite exhibition is always the Biology Club's. They always have lots of animals like axolotls and frogs. Last year, they had a snake. I really like axolotls because I actually have a pet one. He's really cute, and his name is Uppi. This year, they had this thing where you could catch goldfish and keep them. Apparently, it's really popular at summer festivals in Japan. You are given this paper net type thing, and you have to try to catch as many goldfish as you can with it. However, you have to be careful because the paper breaks really easily. You should only move it side to side. I caught about 5 including 2 big ones. However, I decided not to keep them because I didn't want to have to take care of them.

This year, the third year students were in charge of the food stands. There were such things as hot dogs, shaved ice, and donuts this year. They also all made a themed display to go with the food. My homeroom chose traditional Japanese and sold anko donuts.

Students walked around with signs trying to get people to buy their food. The student below was advertising her homeroom's donuts.

The second year students made exhibitions. The one below had lots of hands-on acvitities. The student below is playing with some weird substance. If you grab a handful really hard, then it would make a ball. When you opened your hands, it would become loose again and turn into liquid.

The first year students were in charge of the stairwells. They decorated them, so that you could see a design as you walked up them. The designs were all of different countries.

Also, there was a cross dressing contest. Here are two of the boys that participated in it. Recently, I was looking at high school pictures of when we had a cross dressing contest. I think Japanese boys make a lot prettier girls than American boys. It was difficult to tell that some of the Japanese boys were even really boys. In America, the contest is more just funny, but in Japan, I think they like it when the boys actually look cute. This year was also different because they had girls cross dress as well.

Below are some of the students who were walking around during the school festival. I guess that pretty much sums up most of the festival.

Culture Day - School Festival

This was my first time going to a school festival. At my high school in America, we had an art festival, but it was just some of the art classes' works displayed in the gym. It was nothing on the level of the Japanese school festival. I couldn't believe how much effort and work was put into the school festival. I was really proud of the students, and I think they did a great job.

The weeks before culture day, the English club worked hard on making their exhibition. The 3rd year girls decided on making and displaying English movie posters. I think the exhibition turned out well. I hope next year, we can make something even more amazing. My favorite exhibition was the science exhibition. There were so many animals. They had a snake and beetles. Also, I was viewing the exhibit with some of the English club girls, and one won a beetle. It was really cute. I think she really likes it. She took it home and bought wood for its box.

Also, I was really happy because 21 homeroom won the homeroom display contest. Every morning, I go to 21 homeroom's morning meeting, so I think of them as my good students. In addition, I got to help the girl's basketball club with their food stand. They made fried chicken. The food prepared by the clubs was really good. I got to try a few things for the first time like agepan.

Also, there was a cross dressing contest. I thought this was really weird, not because it was cross dressing but because a lot of the girls actually thought the boys looked cute dressed as girls. I didn't think they looked so cute. I guess that's it for culture day. Next, I'll talk about sport's day.

21 homeroom's display

English club's display