PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: There will be times when I describe totally awesome stuff that the students do, and you will wonder why there are no pictures of students doing said totally awesome stuff. This is because posting images of my students--even in the background--to a public blog is not only creepy, but illegal. It's a rule I agree with wholeheartedly, and in order to share school events with people back home, I will always take pictures of where the event took place or things the students made. /PSA
The Komatsu High School Cultural Festival took place on the second day of the school's anniversary party. KHS is 111 years old as of August 30. One of the students reading the banner over the stage before a performance read 111週 (111th) as 川週 (river-th). The Japanese language is tailor made for puns and malapropisms, intentional or no. At the assembly, Drama Club, two homerooms, and even the baseball team performed skits. These were all in Japanese, and all involved crossdressing, which meant that when I eventually had class with these homerooms, rambunctuous and terminally cool boys would introduce themselves as Cinderella.
The singing went suprisingly well. The day before, I had introduced myself in English and Japanese before the school at the opening assembly, so they knew who I was. My two beribboned interrogators, the ESS emcees, had so much genki that I thought they would explode. They also had Japanese emcee humor (one is ridiculous and the other the straight man) down pat. I'm not sure how attentively the students were listening to the interview, because there was a chorus of "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh?" when we all burst into song. There was also waving in time with the music. The students did beautifully singing in English--they practiced every day so that they could hit the higher notes in the key we sang in. They even were practicing right before we got on stage. And that was when I realized that I am dealing with a small flock of perfectionists.
Speaking of perfectionism, the assembly included two movies by the broadcasting club. The first was made of vignettes of school life from the past year, with footage from sports events, concerts, classes, and practice sessions for the sports festival. It was set to music perfectly--it looked like each of the students filmed was doing whatever they were doing to the song played. At the end, they stopped the pop music suddenly and transitioned to the school song (which is, unlike my high school song, actually pretty) played with old pictures of students from 100 years ago. Honestly, if I were a graduating senior or a teacher about to retire or transfer, I would have cried.
The second video they played was a medley of commercials from each homeroom. During a Japanese cultural festival, each grade level has a theme--this year, first years did activities and the second years made food. Each room decided what theme they would have. For example, one room was a かきごり(shaved ice) stand with a bar theme, so all the students manning it wore slacks, white shirts, and ties and the room was lit by candles. Each homeroom worked with the broadcasting club to make a commercial for their activity or mini restaurant. Most of the commercials prominently featured the class clowns using very manly Japanese. Some of them had fight scenes or directly parodied commercials or scenes from dramas. All of them were hilarious. It ended with an outtakes reel of kids flubbing their lines, cracking up, or crashing into walls. In addition to all this, the broadcasting club made a miniature movie about the ghost of a girl who had been bullied. Their preview was something I would expect to see on TV. Komatsu Broadcasting Club is serious business, folks.
After the assembly, I managed to get my hands on a program for the cultural festival. Each group doing something for the festival had made a little picture advertising what they would do. They ranged from adorable (bunnies playing instruments for Brass Band) to intricate (a Chinese dragon for a fried rice stand). Expect these photographed and posted for your viewing pleasure soon!
The festival itself was fantastic. In addition to the homeroom events, each club did an event as well. I had my first tea ceremony with the Tea Ceremony Club and saw a display made by the Ikebana Club. ESS also did a "quiz rally," in which identifying the correct spelling of my name was a question you could answer for a prize. (The kids thought of that one on their own.) You had to buy tickets in advance for each kind of food you wanted, so there was often a ticket exchange as people changed their mind. I had curry flavored popcorn at an American-themed homeroom (pop music, Tom and Jerry, American flags, and a Statue of Liberty created this ambiance), visited the shaved ice bar, had bubble tea, and gazed longingly at the curry and naan stand, for which I had no ticket. There were pictures involved at almost every booth, at least on part of the students. Photos of me looking baffled and terrified now occupy the memory discs of many a KHS camera. I also tried my hand at fishing for rubber balls with a paper paddle, shooting candy with rubber bands, and not getting caught by a student who chased people through his homeroom's maze.
All in all, cultural festival was awesome.
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