Bunkasai!

A teenage boy arm wrestling a cow while Minnie Mouse in fishnets dances on the side? Is it the latest Japanese variety show? Nope, it's the Yoshida High School Bunkasai!

The Bunkasai, or Culture Festival, is THE event of the year for Japanese high schools, on the same level as Homecoming for American high schools. The students spend months preparing - planning theme rooms, ordering food, making decorations, practicing dances and designing costumes. And for two and a half days, the entire school turns into a carnival/talent/art show, open to the public to come and enjoy. The kids pour their souls into it, and all the creativity that gets stifled the rest of the year comes bursting out all at once. It is a TON of fun too, by far the best day I have had as school while I've been in Japan.

Of course I took oodles of photos! I will put some of my favorites here, and the rest are up online -- WARNING - there are a lot of photos of students smiling and giving the peace sign, so if that drives you bonkers, then you may want to pass :)

Click HERE to see the rest of the photos online!

The preparation.

These are some of my general course third year students. Their "booth" was a carnival style series of games that stretched for 3 classrooms.

Me with some of my 3rd year English course girls, a cow, and a French Maid.

One thing that became abundantly clear to me is how difficult it can be to get candid photos of Japanese students! My theory is that Japanese teens have a sort of disease which causes them to explode if their photo is taken. Apparently there are three ways to counteract this unfortunate side effect 1) Forcing several friends to join in the photo (safety in numbers) 2) Give the peace sign, and 3) Hide behind your hair.

For every good photo, I also had to delete one crappy one. Sigh.

I tried to be sneaky, but usually the students were faster than me. But sometimes it resulted in some really cute shots, like this one:


Of course there are exceptions to the camera-shy disease, thankfully:

Lorrayne (pronounced Ro-hai-ne), one of my best third year English course students. She is half Brazilian and half Japanese, surfer girl, star student, and definitely NOT camera shy.

I don't know this girl, but I think this picture is absolutely darling!

I think he was dressed as a cow because his class was selling hamburgers and ice cream.

This is 33HR, one of my absolute favorite groups in the school. They did a very difficult traditional Japanese dance, which they practiced for almost 4 months before the festival. It was worth it too, because the dance was AWESOME. After the final performance, they were all in tears, two had heat exhaustion and one ended up with a sprained knee. All part of the experience I guess!

The Bunksai was also an interesting peek into the world of Japanese school regulations. a guessing game - look at the next two pictures:

Picture A - Pot Leaf T-Shirts

Picture B - Middle School Uniforms

Guess which students got in trouble for their clothes. Picture B - the middle school uniforms! I know, what? That's typical Japan though - first of all, nobody here really knows what marijuana is, or they don't know what the leaf looks like. Every other person has a pot-leaf air freshener in their car, but they don't know what it is. The teacher for the class with the big pot-leaves on their shirts thought it was a maple leaf, as did most of the students. I know that teacher pretty well, and when I told her what it really was, she was shocked. She had no idea!

And the other girls got busted because they wore school uniforms with the skirts rolled up too short. Outright defiance in the eyes of even the least strict Japanese teachers - they were NOT happy about this at all.

Another funny thing was that even on festival day, the students could not wear make-up, paint their nails, or have hair-dos that were too crazy. They had to have on their uniforms during the morning and afternoon ceremonies, and were only allowed to don their festival shirts *after* the official start each day. Yet, at one point, the girl dressed as Minnie Mouse, while MCing the Opening Ceremony, removed her poofy skirt and shirt and was wearing ONLY fishnets, high heels and a lingerie style top that ended two inches below her waist, essentially dressed just like a prostitute, and nobody blinked an eye. I suspect it was alright because she was not breaking any pre-established rules - nobody told her it was not ok to be half naked in front of the whole school.

Lisa and Miho, two of my favorite 3rd year English course students.

I swear I don't know these foreigners.San-nensei soccer boys.

Giant calligraphy demo

This is what my school looks like, by the way:

And this is the view from the 5th floor, with Koyama Castle up on the hill: