Last night was a very good night. Both Jessi and I had seen posters advertising a "Gathering Party" for a while, and we decided to attend the event. It was an excellent choice. Before the party we had some free time and not an awful lot to do, so went wandering. Our travels netted us a looked at the AIU Kanto team practcing. It's difficult to see in the dark, but these guys were balancing these huge poles on various parts of their body. The pole is made of bamboo and covered in lanterns. Very impressive.
-Video coming soon-
We also saw some girls in kimonos wandering around.
-Video coming soon-
We eventually figured out that they must be going to the party to set up. We decided to follow them. At first the party was slow and a little awkward. A bunch of people standing around to quiet music, and vaguely congregating to various area's to talk. However, as the auditorium began to fill up (the auditorium being on the fourth floor of the adminstration building, taking up the entire width of the building with windows on both sides) it became more interesting and fun. The MC's, one english, one japanese, we enthusiastic and started pulling people from the crowd to introduce themselves. Which got some laughs and applause.
We started with a weird icebreaker, where people formed groups, put your hands in the middle to form a human knot, and then you attempt to untangle it. It was fun, but we gave up after other groups finished before us. Then we were all treated to a dance performance by a group who moved like girls in a japanese music video. Small movements, a lot of turning, cool corresponding moves. I wasn't able to get my camera out fast enough.
Following the performance was another icebreaker game. The MC's did a hilarious job of setting up a tutorial with various volunteers. Two lines facing each other, you have 30 seconds to introduce yourself, then they yell out a number of steps you have to move right or left. This worked out, because for my Japanese 102 class, we had to interview a couple japanese students and keep track of their answers.
This was followed by another dance performance, by girls in maid costumes. See for yourself.
Hilarious. This was followed by pair bingo, where both people in the pair have to get bingo. My partner got bingo twice, but I never got there. Then there was an eating constest.
They ate soba, it was certainly a speed race. The girls in kimono's had cups of noodles, and as soon as a person finished a cup, they set down another one.
A singer followed up the eating constest, she sang three songs, two in Japanese, one in english. I had forgotten to dump other videos off of my Zi6 earlier, so I was beggining to run out of space.
The english song was "No One" by Alicia Keys. Her other songs were "Story" and "First Love". "First Love" is pretty popular, and Leech sensei made us sing it back in highschool.
After the singer was a hilarious game of "discerning qualities" a video was shown with two options and a question was asked, and you had to go to either one side of the room or the other to demonstrate which one you thought was the correct answer.
At first the questions were like "which is the more expensive intrument" and then they played two different flute tracks. Or they'd show two pictures and ask which one was taken by a professional photographer. After everyone had chosen, a short video was shown with the correct answer and a short hilarious comment.
As they went on, they proceeded to have a lot of "which is the native speaker" and you'd here two people saying the same thing. It was hilarious because they'd show both people afterwards, and the person who was the wrong answer would repeat it, followed by "TRICKY". Many laughs were had by all. they had three rounds, Jessi and I never made it that close to the end.
Fillaly they had a musical duet. "The Unpluggeds" they explained because there are two of them. "It may not be good english, but . . . who care." They were pretty good, they sang "What's going on."
It reminded me a lot of Ithaca, just the sort of folksy music duet, singing a mildly political song, but really jamming to it.
This was the end of the main program and was to be followed by a DJ and dance floor time. Suddenly the room exploded into hardcore rap and hip hop. Like immediate swearing and all that jazz. We decided to call it a night,and it was a great time all around.
-Mack
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