Tom in Japan: Culture Festival

Last weekend was the weekend for culture festivals in Japan. Japanese students at Kansai Gaidai were given a four-day-weekend, and foreign students were even given a three-day weekend.

This picture is from an elementary culture festival I went to in Higashiyama. This line is for food and activity tickets. The Japanese seem to like the ticket system in many situations.

Having attended a elementary, high school and college culture festival, I have to say that the elementary kids, while cute, did not have a lot of experience at putting on a good festivals.

What fun(?)!

Here is me and a group of hip-hop dancers.

Here are the kids performing. I think that it is a good thing that they cannot understand the lyrics to the songs that they are dancing to. Still, this was the highlight of that festival for me.

Here is one shot of the Kansai Gaidai culture festival. Many different clubs and groups set up booths. They mostly sold foods, but I managed to pick up a souvenir.

Here is another shot. It was originally three pictures. Sorry, the stitching is not great, but you get the idea I hope.

There were many posters and decorations. Here is how they decorated the amphitheater. Why they didn't write "festival" I don't know.

There were many music and dancing performances at the festival. Here is me with two dancers.

In the International building, there was also booths for different countries. Even though the majority of the foreign students are American, no one wanted to help with the booth (USA #1), so it ended up a little crummy compared to the other countries. I took a picture anyway.

Here is the Archery club's booth. We made "tako-yaki-gata" parfaits which were basically hot cakes and ice cream. I think the proceeds from the booth are going to buy me a uniform so I happily helped out all that I could. I like this picture because almost everyone is eating.