japan festival

Last weekend was the Japanese festival at my school. Japanese student groups (including my Yosakoi group), students in Japanese classes and the community came together for the festival, which turned out to be a lot of fun. A lot of preparation including advertising, setup and performance practices paid off.




Here is a giant fan with the word "matsuri," or "festival" written in Kanji. It was set up by the registration table.

This sign was set up outside a room where the traditional tea ceremony was being demonstrated. It shows the proper way to hold the tea cup.

Japan is famous for traditional flower arrangements called "ikebana." Here is one such arrangement.

This is a geisha doll in traditional dress.

Someone receiving a lesson on the shamisen, a four-stringed guitar-like instrument.

Yosakoi danced at the end of a two-hour series of performances including singers, a boyou dancer, and a storyteller. Here taiko drummers are performing a song on their drums.

I helped in the Traditional Toys room. In this game, you remove the hammer from the center of the stacks of blocks. Then starting at the bottom of the stack, you try to knock out the bottom block without knocking over the entire tower. I was really bad at this game, but there were some little kids who were really good.

This is another tricky game. You're supposed to swing the ball up into the air and catch it in one of the cups at the top of the stick. Then, if you're good, you can flip the stick over and catch it in the cup on the bottom of the handle. I never got past step 1.

Most of the day I helped kids with three different kinds of top games. This little guy was determined to get the big tops to spin.

These are a variety of paper cranes folded by the people in the origami workshop. There is a Japanese folk tale that says if you fold 1,000 paper cranes, you will have your wish come true.

walk in the rain, cream crackers, fall festival

Walk in the Rain: It was a quiet, drizzley grey morning. I took a walk to find the university gardens I'll be volunteering at this week. It was a nice quiet walk, and the gardens were gorgeous: lots of flowerbeds, greenhouses, and insect zoo and a vine-covered cupola. I'm excited to see what I'll be doing there tomorrow.

Cream Crackers: Kind of like Saltines, but more, well, creamy. Tastes great with peanut butter. Enough said.

Fall Festival: Tonight was our complex's fall festival. We ate chili, caramel apples, and s'mores, although they were oven-baked instead of made over an open fire, as it was raining and we had to have it indoors. We also got to paint assorted pumpkins and gourds. My roommate painted a gourd with a red-painted 'head wound' and a single tear, and named it Jack (as in Jack-o-Lantern). On the way out, she slipped down the wet stairs and Jack went flying. A passerby handed her the gourd, but she was finished with it, and threw it at a nearby tree. I'm eagerly awaiting tomorrow, when I will laugh if I see the gourd lying on the ground. But I won't be laughing nearly as hard as we were walking back into our dorm, amused bystanders staring after us.