ICU School Festival

A Mix of Traditional, Modern, and Everything In Between

Okay this one will be more fun than the last one; I promise! So on November 1 and 2nd, ICU held its annual School Festival!! Most schools in Japan, from elementary school to university level, hold annual school festivals in which classes are canceled and the entire campus, from clubs to sport teams to classes themselves, pitches in to create a hugely elaborate festival. ICU was no different and the two-day festival was amazing; which is also why I got nothing done that weekend and had to do homework this entire past week....

So I'll start with the first day. I had tennis practice in the morning still but afterwards I headed over to check out some of the food stands (most clubs and sections set up stands where they sell food; anything from fried ice-cream, fish tacos, yakisoba ((my favorite!)), kabobs, juice, popcorn, and the best of all: chocolate-covered bananas...) and tried just about everything I could get my hands on. The problem with these school festivals is that you inevitably know someone from every stand, and you feel obligated to buy something from them because they're your friends and you want to buy from them; but then you end up eating a ton of weird food all at the same time and by the end of the day you feel like a pig with a stomachache...hehe. But its still all worth it for the chocolate-covered bananas....so good.

After exploring those for a while I hung out at the Ahoyama Stage for a while watching performances (there are two hills on the ICU campus; one called Bakayama and one called Ahoyama. They literally mean 'Stupid mountain' and 'Idiot mountain' respectively. Don't ask me why....but anyways the main stage was on the 'Idiot mountain' hill on campus...). They had everything from local bands; the Ballroom dancing club; the modern theatre club, traditional Japanese dancing, choir singing, magic acts, comedians, jugglers, etc. Pretty much anything you can think of, performed at some point on that stage that weekend. After hanging out for a bit I went to the Taiko performance in which some of my friends from UC Irvine were participating (and they were absolutely amazing; the Taiko drumming club at ICU is intense...and it shows in their amazing performances) and then off to the Koto performance in which my friends Steph, Ryan, and Wesley were performing. Koto is a traditional japanese string instrument that the three of them had learned to play over the semester though the koto club on campus. I went and took pictures and recorded them playing 'Sakura', one of the most famous songs in Japan. Then we stayed to watched the Para Para dancers perform on stage before being sent home by the cold.

So the following day was a bit more active on my part; I spent the morning in kimono and the afternoon performing with my soulrun bushi dancing club. In the morning; a few local women were offering international students the chance to wear a Japanese kimono; a long silk robe that is very very expensive and very traditional. So me and a couple others signed up and spent about two and a half hours walking around the festival in kimono; taking pictures and eating more food of course. And I tried out one of the game stands where you could try and catch a goldfish...and I caught two! But I couldn't take them home so I had to put them back sadly...=(

In the afternoon we were all nervous; we went and changed into our happis (long cotton bathrobe-looking thing....you'll see the pictures) and practiced a few times before we went onto the Ahoyama stage and performed. It was amazing! Even though I messed up, haha. But apparently so did a lot of people. But it was still one of our best performances and we were all just so happy afterwards!

So a friend of mine recorded it and put it up on youtube so if you'd like to see what it looked like the link is below; but just be warned that I'm way on the left side so I'm out of the screen for most of the video; until the last 45 seconds or so when I move to the middle to do a pose with my partner and then I'm front and center for like 30 seconds. Its kinda blurry though so you may not even be able to tell; but I'm on the ground and in black; a little bit on the left:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tDPX-umsIA

Soulrun Bushi is basically a traditional Japanese fisherman's dance that they used to use to keep fisherman awake late at night when they were hauling in the fish; so a lot of the moves represent fishing. The pull represents pulling in the ropes on the ship; the throwing back is throwing back the fishnets; the pushing and pulling motion we do is supposed to represent the waves on the sea; etc. It's supposed to be very masculine and powerful (originally women weren't supposed to do it; although ironically most of our club is female, haha).

Anyway we stayed to watch the closing ceremonies and see who won best performance (Taiko, of course. They are one of the biggest clubs on campus...) and then left for a big SoulRun Club After Party! Basically a drinking party, of course. We went to an all-you-can eat and drink place and two of the club members, Lianne and Akari, bought flowers and made copies of our club photo for the older members in the club; and we all basically just partied the entire night, ending up at the nearby park and doing soulrun bushi on the stage there just for fun, hehe.

And that was the end of the festival. It took two days and was so much fun; I was on campus all day for both of them and got nothing done but oh well. It did make me sad though to have our semester here ending; and that we can't perform with SoulRun anymore. But we're all supposed to go to Tokyo Disneyland together two weeks from now so I've still got stuff to look forward to, hehe. =P Anyways here's some pics of the activities and SoulRun and me in kimono. enjoy!

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