Since coming to Akita we have been hearing bits and pieces about this school festival that was supposed to come sometime in October. In Japan, school festivals are kind of a big deal, which is hard for an American like me to imagine, simply because school spirit isn't something America is known for. Sure we parties, and the school sets up events every now and again, but I school festival in this sense means that everyone is involved, and everyone puts work towards it. Kind of cool, but I really had no idea just how big a thing this was going to be. I was excited, but had I known just how cool it was going to be I would likely have flipped out.
Setting the Atmosphere
So as we happened upon last week, and both Jessi and I began working on our contributions to the festival, I'll go into that more later, we began to notice little things showing up in hallways and on walls.
As days went by just about every surface on campus was covered in painted crate paper, bows, ribbons, balloons, and pictures. I mean every surface.
You may notice a green dog in some of the pictures. His name is Juan (Wan, One, Woan) he's the school's mascot. He's the mascot of Akita university, in Akita, guess what kind of dog he is. Thats right, an Akita.
We couldn't be sure who was doing it, it was obviously students, but we're not sure if it's the student government, or if certain classes did it or what, but some of the stuff was pretty interesting. We found out later that the japanese students are divided into some form of home room based on their english Toeffl scores, so they may have been up to it.
But what we found most impressive was this. . .
It's a pirate ship that showed up in the cafeteria late the night before the festival.
As impressive a size as it is, the entire thing is made out of chopsticks. It stood as a symbol for things to come. That hard work was being put into something incredible and it was just begginning to show signs of paying off.
More to come later.
-Mack
It was an odd luck for me to visit during the festival, and I took a few pictures. I parked at the back lot near the supermarket. Too bad I didn't get to talk to anyone.
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