October 7, 2008

Bunkasai Through Wessel's Eyes


Wessel and David line up with the Seiritsu Karate Club for the Bunkasai demo.



Wessel and his homeroom, 2F.


Hi everyone! Last week there was a big bunkasai (cultural festival) at Seiritsu and it was really fun! In Japan, school festivals are really common. Before the actual festival, the classes planned a fun activity with their home room teacher. This could be anything from selling food to running a small maze in the classroom or exhibiting things they've made. During the preparation, the festival itself and the after party I spent a lot of time with the Japanese students and I made a lot of new friends.


Three days before the festival all the classes started to decorate the whole school including the classrooms. There was a lot of work to do and I did my best to help out. I was in my own homeroom class (2F) and but I didn’t even know what we were doing at the festival, only that our class was called “Wessel & The Happy Friends Factory”… right.


Later I found out that my class would be selling pancakes (called hot cakes here) and our setting was a "happy friends factory". Therefore, we made a lot of pipes made of bottles and aluminum, covered the walls with black paper and painted a really big logo, "2Factory". I also cut small dolphins and small circles out of colorful cloth, but those were for the stairways and hallways to several classrooms (including ours).


Not everything worked out well. For example we covered the whole floor with small pieces of cardboard and topped that with newspapers. This took us about two whole days, but unfortunately after we painted it black it didn’t really look good, so we had to throw it away.


During the preparation, I didn’t stay in the classroom all day. I also walked around with Poom and Dave to see what the other classes were making. We had time to “talk” with other students (which was really fun to do).


On the day of the festival I woke up earlier than usual so I could be at school around 8am. We still had about two hours before the public would come, so we had enough time to finish everything. For the festival, everyone in my class wore the same black overalls with our logo in gold on our backs. My home room teacher gave it to me for free (all my classmates were jealous). Although it’s a little bit too big (It says 6L!!) I am really glad I have it. It’s a great souvenir.


During the festival I walked around, saw a lot of cool shows from several school clubs and got free waffles and pancakes. I also watched the last part of a really exciting basketball game (Seiritsu won!) and performed some karate moves with the karate club, which David and I took part in. The festival was finished around three o’clock and we had to clean everything up. When there wasn’t much to do in my class I helped with taking down the festival tents outside.


After the festival some classmates and I went to a restaurant near the school. It was really fun and I made some really good friends. They taught me lots of new Japanese words and we talked about manga and many other things.


I think that the bunkasai was a great experience and I hope there will be something like this again this year.


-Wessel Jansen

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about Seiritsu

Seiritsu Gakuen is a private co-educational high school created in 1925 and it is located in Tokyo, Japan.

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