Advertisement
Published: November 4th 2008
Japanese love festivals and days off. This past weekend plus Monday was "Culture Day" which means its time for Wasedasai - a tremendous gathering of students from all over Tokyo and the Waseda-Keio baseball game.
But first, the weekend before, was another festival. The obi-sai festival. It's essentially homecoming minus the game. The campus was packed with Alumni, the Waseda alma mater was sung probably about 50 times throughout the day. There were performances by the brass band, cheer leaders, tap dancers...just endless. I took part in the cooking with the Waseda International Club. About 120 participated in this cooking, divided into 4 teams: Europe, Asia, America, and Middle East. Best part was there were only 4 international students. We had to make 3 dishes to sell throughout the day. I was on the Europe team and was responsible for pasta. There was also paella and a chocolate banana cake. The day before we prepped and then finished things in our tent at Waseda. There was a ton of food, and it all sold out. Easiest way to sell food was go up to the alumni that were drinking already (waseda beer of course) and tell them that it went
good with beer. They couldn't resist. Other tents were sake, wine, yakitori, grilled whole scallops, grilled whole squid, hand-made soba (really good). I love soba and stood on line for 30 mins waiting for this one. Afterwards all 120 of us went to an izakaya for a good time. I have never seen a group of people get drunk so quickly. It's got to be body chemistry because this was unreal. After an hour everyone was red faced and sauced. Except me because apparently Americans have a liver where as Japanese don't.
That festival was big, but Wasedasai was ridiculous. This was a 3 day festival, I only went for one. I knew something was going on but not sure what exactly. When I got out of the station, I knew something was different. 5 minutes out of the school the streets were packed with high school and college kids. Getting to the Waseda campus was a chore because everyone was in the streets looking for things to eat because the 90 stalls set up on campus weren't enough. And this is just one out of the 4 Waseda campuses that participated. 500,000 people came in the span of
those 3 days, and Waseda takes up about as much space as Lafayette. In every building in every room there were student groups playing. Got to see soul bands, new orleans jazz, the waseda philharmonic orchestra, all kinds of dance troupes, the bagel club, the fair trade coffee club. I've been writing about student life for a while but words cant describe the devotion that Japanese students have towards their school.
Waseda, Waseda, Waseda....
On Sunday I met up with the Halls, friends of my Aunt and Uncle. They moved here over the summer as expats working for a Japanese subsidiary of AIG. They showed me a bit of expat life and it really was great being around an American family for a little bit in a Western-style apartment. We went out to the restaurant in the final scene of Kill Bill where Uma Thurman kills or dismembers 88 guys in black masks. Oh yeah, G.W. Bush ate there too. The separation of expat life is tough, but the company is supposed to take care of you and it seems like an amazing chance to see and live in a different place. If the opportunity comes up later
in life to come back to Tokyo, I don't think I'll be turning it down.
One piece of good news...I had my first dream in Japanese and it hasn't been 2 months yet. Proof that if you run into a wall enough you may just get through...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.141s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 12; qc: 27; dbt: 0.059s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
mom
non-member comment
Wow! what great stuff you are experiencing. Love the video, go team go!! such an interesting culture. Enjoy every minute!