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Tag Archives: culture festival

Viva Bunkasai!

18 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by scalesoflibra in Other Things JETs Do

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Tags

bunkasai, culture festival, piñata, school festival

Well, the school festival was two weeks ago, but I’m just now getting around to posting this.

At my old school I didn’t really get a chance to experience the culture festival as a whole because I spent the morning of the second day judging the speech contest for junior high students that my high school hosted. In the afternoon I would see the second performance of English play, and by the time that finished the individual homerooms’ and clubs’ “exhibits” would be over.

At my current school my responsibility was to ESS, which means English Speaking Society. In other words, English Club. We decided a few months ago that we were going to have an American Festival. The plan was to have several games: darts, the touch game (手探りゲーム? Milton Bradley makes one called “Feeley Meeley” but I don’t know what you’d call this type of game in English; you put your hands in a box and try to guess what it is you’re touching without looking at it), face painting, fortune telling, and the centerpiece: piñatas!

Looking up to the ESS exhibit room (which wasn’t the usual club room; the exhibits are done in the homeroom classrooms) from the inner school garden.

I explained to the ESS students that “Viva!” was sort of like “banzai!” I also tried to explain that there had been a freakishly adorable TV show called “Viva Piñata,” but I’m not sure how much of an impact that made.

Well, the school said no to face painting (too tattoo-like?) and no to putting candy in the piñatas. No one wanted to take over the responsibility of being fake fortune tellers, so we were left with piñatas, darts, and the touch game. Piñatas are mostly associated with Mexico, and we put konnyaku in the touch game…so ultimately the only “American” part of the “American Festival” was the darts. ^_^; Sure, the U.S. being such a diverse (if segregatedly so) country lets us get away with this but…

Ah, the day of I learned to make balloon animals from the instructions on the balloon’s package. That’s pretty American Festival-ish, right?

We also put out some books and magazines around the room. I pick up some mags for the ESS girls when I’m in the States. In the background there’s Seventeen, The Oprah Winfrey Magazine, and…I don’t remember what else I got for them. Something youthful, I’m sure. Ahaha…

As for the piñatas themselves, we made it so that each person only had 30 seconds “at bat.” Well, “at shinai.” We didn’t have a regular stick so we borrowed a bamboo sword from a member of the kendo club. I wish I could share the precious photos of students hitting the piñatas with those formal kendo downward strikes, but alas.

We made 5 piñatas in total. The rules written on the board explain the piñatas and the darts game.

Since we couldn’t put candy in the piñatas, we just put in different color superballs, and people who grabbed a pink or green superball could choose a small prize. We had things like tissue and folding fans with Disney characters, notebooks, mechanical pencils, and glossy bookmarks that I’d brought back with me from Spain. The rest of the prizes (as well as the materials for the rest of the exhibit) were bought with the special “school festival club budget.”

This piñata was the model for the others, decorated by yours truly. Before it was murdered by the guests, it thought stoically, “It is a good day to die.”

The first day of the festival was just the brass band concert and the chorale competition. The exhibits were opened, but in ESS’ case we didn’t actually let the guests play the games since, in the case of the piñatas, our hard work gets destroyed. The second day we had guests from the community, elementary and middle schoolers, and even a local radio station drop by and check out the zaniness, as well as the students of the school itself.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts to reinforce the piñatas around where the string is inserted into them, all of them just ripped off the string and ended up on the floor. One pair of youngsters just stuck their hands in the hole to get the superballs, not understanding the “you can hit it until it breaks” concept. The boys of my own school, however, had a blast just beating the life outta the poor piñatas à la suikawari.

(That last sentence was quadrilingual. Nyeh!)

While all this was going on, I sometimes went out of the ESS room to check out the other exhibits and of course, the “Culture Stage” which featured live music. I made sure to check out the band of seniors that went by the name “Williams” because they had L’arc~en~ciel’s “READY STEADY GO” on their set list. I also went to see the shamisen performance of one of the first year students.

Now that bunkasai is over and finals are upon us, we have to plan the farewell party for the senior members of the club. From second semester on, the seniors “retire” from their clubs to make time for studying to get into a university. The ESS members said they wanted to have a piñata party, since they themselves didn’t actually get to play. Part of me sheds a tear whenever a piñata is put out to fulfill its cruel destiny, but ah! such is life. Again I must go to the dastardly enterprise.

Aight, I’ma stop using the thesaurus now.

☆

In case you didn’t learn how to make piñatas while doing full time volunteer work in the AmeriCorps program City Year, here’s a video that shows you how to do it: http://video.about.com/familycrafts/How-to-Make-a-Pinata.htm

Haha, and I learned how to make balloon animals on JET! XD

A Tale of Two High Schools

25 Saturday Jun 2011

Posted by scalesoflibra in Living in Fukuoka, Other Things JETs Do

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Tags

bunkasai, culture festival, school festival, 文化祭

Which also happen to be in two different cities.

Three weeks ago, my school and many others in the area had their 文化祭 (bunkasai), which literally translates to “culture festival,” but all of the English Teachers at my school call it “school festival.” As with last year, it was spread out over two days.

The first day, Friday, we had the finals of the Chorale Competition, the brass band concert, a presentation from the students of the High School for the Blind which included acoustic guitar-accompanied covers of two songs with similar titles which now elude me, and of course, English Play. While all this was going on, the Common Hall had been set up as an exhibit space, and there was shodou lining the halls of the second floor, too. As always, Art Course painted large boards that decorated the school gate. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera on Friday and had no time to photograph it Saturday, so this shot taken with my iPod will have to suffice:

The theme was "Memories." Not exactly sure what a phoenix has to do with that, but it's cool, isn't it? ^o^

Brass Band’s performance was really cool, but this year, I didn’t recognize a single song. A short break after the concert, and we came to English Play: Disney’s Camp Rock.

Now, the final rehearsal had been abysmally atrocious. There were mistakes by the pound; problems that had already been resolved manifested once more, and in general the kids seemed to think they were doing well when nothing could have been further from the truth. Some senpai had come to watch, and thankfully, when asked to give comments, they were honest. One of the directors broke down in tears, and went off backstage. The other director said to the cast, “We can’t let her tears be for nothing.”

That said, the superstitious former-orchestra member in me was glad for the horrible final rehearsal. After all, that meant the real thing would be incredible. I had faith that it would be good. I even said so to one of the directors, and I meant it.

But it wasn’t.

^_^;

Well, it was okay. It wasn’t a train wreck, just a train delay. Things started off with some bad luck that was beyond the kids’ control; namely, the sign that said “26th Annual Culture Festival” that was suspended above the stage fell on some kids while they were setting up. They went to the hospital, but they were fine, thankfully. The curtains opened 10 minutes late, and in another stroke of bad luck, the large backdrop that said “Camp Rock” lay crumpled at the back of the stage; apparently they were unable to rig it.

Once the play started, it seemed like things would be fine. The cast was speaking loudly, I could actually hear all of their lines. The audience was in love with the boy in the role of Mitchie’s mother, the incongruity of one of the tallest, skinniest kids in the whole school in a long brown wig too much not to like. It seemed like things would be okay.

About 10 minutes into the play, I started trying to gauge the audience’s reaction. I heard sounds of confusion when the scene changed for the 3rd or 4th time, and thought that maybe I still hadn’t done a good job of pacing the script. Well, I’m assuming that was the source of their confusion. Maybe they just couldn’t read the Japanese supratitles that were being projected above the stage.

In another stroke of bad luck, for the first song in which the real guitars come out, one guitarist’s amp wouldn’t work. With only one guitar playing along to the CD, I wonder if the audience didn’t even realize that those two kids were real guitar players. I thought the audience would be surprised, but there was no reaction. And when I say no reaction, I mean zeeeeeeero. This was perhaps the worst thing. After the high of Mitchie’s mother, not just for that song, but for all the songs, the audience did nothing but watch stoically. Even though the dancing had actually come out fairly good, the audience didn’t clap. At all. I thought, “maybe they don’t know if they’re supposed to clap or not?” For the life of me I couldn’t remember what it had been like last year. Did the audience clap for the dance numbers? I still can’t remember.

At the end, the only thing that brought the audience back into it was another appearance by Mitchie’s mother, this time, dancing in the middle of the audience with some of the other cast members.

After the show, the kids gathered in the school yard for a photo together. They seemed glad to have it over with. I gave honest comments to the kids who had performed well, and called it a day.

At least I thought this was cool.

The second day, Saturday, as last year, I spent the morning in the Recitation Contest for middle schoolers, so I missed the second brass band concert, and everything else that was going on. This year, I had offered to do the names on the certificates for the winners myself in Gothic Black Letter. Usually one of the teachers just wrote the names in with a regular pen. Mine came out okay, but I’ve definitely done better. There was no time to take a picture of them, as I had made the process take longer by needing time for the ink to dry, and the certificates were unfortunately given to the students with the penciled-in guideline still visible, as the ink hadn’t been dry enough to erase it. You can sort of see the results in the group shot of the winners, so I cropped it to show one, and put it at left. The kids didn’t seem particularly impressed; I heard no comments about the writing, not even “I can’t read these strange letters!” Ahahaha…^_^;

After the speech contest, I went with my three friends (two of whom had served as guest judges in the contest) to see the second performance of Camp Rock. This time the beginning was also plagued by bad luck: the kid playing Jason and the kid playing Mitchie’s father had been horseplaying on the stage, and somehow this culminated in the latter getting his thumb broken about 30 minutes before opening curtain. ^_^; Another kid was trying to learn the father’s lines at the last minute, but the original father got patched up at the hospital and was able to be back in time for the play.

Even so, this performance was a train wreck. That’s really all there is to it. My co-ALT, who had broken his home rest and taken a taxi up to school to see the play, told me that he had gone to talk to the kids after the play, and that they all looked upset, and some didn’t even answer his compliments. He interpreted it as “they knew they could have done better.” I don’t know if that’s the case or not, but I hope it is. I hope they realize that they only reaped what they sowed, and take on their projects with a little more zeal next time.

After the show, my friends and I walked around looking at the artwork, and were invited into one homeroom’s “Bowling Alley.” We threw a soccer ball at plastic bottles filled with water, and got cookies for playing. The background music consisted of American songs, including Eminem’s “Beautiful,” a song that I really like. But it was the explicit version. ^_^;

Here’s a detail from a pen & ink piece that I really liked. It was done by a 2nd year, one who, as a first year, had drawn herself on her English Passport in Hatsune Miku’s trademark outfit, but then written above it, “not Miku.” ^o^

Maybe she likes Yoshitaka Amano's work?

So came to an end the 26th School Festival.

The next week, I went to the second day of a friend’s school festival. I didn’t take my camera, a fact I sorely regretted. My friend said she would email me some photos, but has not had time to do so yet.

My friend’s school is academically higher level than mine. Boy, did it show! Everything was done with such gusto! From an artistic point of view, the many pictures decorating the school were nowhere near as good as the ones my school had, but they had heart, and what’s more, it wasn’t just art class projects that were on display, there was artwork everywhere for everything. The stairs had been decorated with copies of famous ukiyo-e prints, a thin part of it on the risers which viewed from far away created a complete, unbroken image. The flyers promoting the various events throughout the school weren’t handwritten midnight specials. My favorite was definitely the one for “HITOSHI – 仁”, a parody skit of the TBS live drama adaptation of the manga JIN – 仁. (The kanji 仁 can be read as either “Hitoshi” or “Jin.”) This flyer had obviously taken a little bit of Photoshop, as it featured the students playing the lead characters copying the poses of the drama’s actors, and the whole art direction of it (if we can say that flyers have art direction) parodied the official promotional art for the drama!

The main thing I had wanted to see was the puppet play the English Speaking Society (AKA English Club) my friend runs had put together. It was a puppet version of Snow White. I thought the kids were going to perform it live, but it ended up being a video of the performance. The puppets were really cute, and the little set was also well done. I couldn’t help thinking, “why don’t my kids do something like this, on a small scale but well done?”

Next on the itinerary was a skit based on the American show “Glee.” I’ve seen only one episode of it and am not a fan, but even so I was curious, and couldn’t help but wonder, “will this be better than my kids’ version of Camp Rock?” It turned out that they didn’t perform in English, nor were they worried with staying true to the show, which is, I think, a much better way to go about things. They localized it; it took place in their own school, and the jokes were based on both the real show and on their own school life. An American exchange student, “Dylan,” goes to their school, and wants to start a glee club. He recruits the Popular Boy (who wore a sash saying 人気者 and always had two girls – played by boys – clinging to him), the rugby players, and the troublemakers into the club. The whole thing was HILARIOUS, the kids actually acted, and they did sing in English. The only blemish on an otherwise perfect performance was that the student playing Dylan represented that he was a foreigner by wearing a curly blond wig (ok) and a big plastic white nose (-_-””’). Even so, when I happened to run into two of my own students in the hallway later, English Course girls at that, I told them, “Go see ‘Glee’ if you haven’t already seen it!!!”

After that, we looked around, then saw a live performance by one of the kids’ rock bands. They mostly did songs in English, including “Song 2” by Blur and something by Muse. By this point, I was pretty jealous of my friend’s students. ^o^;;;

The last thing we did was go through a “shrine festival” at…get ready…神社エール! XDD

For those who can’t read Japanese, that says “Jinja Eeru.” “Jinja” means “shrine,” but with “eeru,” it looks like what it actually says is “ginger ale”! ^o^♡ Not only did this win my heart by being a bilingual pun, the kids had also constructed torii out of cardboard to cover the two classroom entrances! @o@ They were painted red and everything! The outer wall of the classroom had been covered in black construction paper, and the guests were given little pieces of cardboard cut out in the shape of those little things you write your wishes on at real shrines, and these were then taped up on said wall. There was even a string on the windows opposite the “shrine” on which to tie any bad fortunes one received! The shrine festival itself consisted of 4 events: Guess the Item in the Box, Whack-a-Mole (the “moles” were kids), Charades, and Target Shooting. At the end you got a chance to pull a mikuji (fortune) and write a wish on the little wish plaques.

Keep in mind, that whole shrine festival set up was inside one classroom! The areas had been divided simply but effectively, using opened up black trash bags hung from strings strung across the room. It was so well done.

Although, once we got to the end of the maze-like setup, we came to the front board, on which the kids had written in romaji, “Jinja Yell.” I was confused and said, “Oh, so is it not supposed to be ‘ginger ale’? What’s the joke then?” but my friend didn’t know either. The place was too packed with guests waiting to go in, so I didn’t want to take up a student’s time asking them.

I saw several of my own students at this festival, and I hope they were taking notes.

☆

次回!I wonder if I won the chance to buy pre-sale tickets?

Notice

As my time on JET has ended and I've said all I wanted to say about it, I will not be adding any new content to this blog. I leave it up for reference. However please keep in mind that the usefulness of this reference may drop as the years go by, because sometimes things change. Anyway, thanks for dropping by! ~September 2014

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