The Activities Fair

Wednesday afternoon, we went to the Activities Fair. I can never remember the Japanese name, but I think it's called Shinkansai. It was my first time seeing the main student population, and it was overwhelming. The field was packed with rows of tables. Students belonging to various activities walked around holding signs, wearing signs, wearing costumes, playing music, shouting, dancing. Everywhere was bright colors from activity uniforms and posters.

It seemed like groups were constantly performing on this stage.

The poster says, "Nada Challenge." Nada is the name of the ward/district we're in.

You can see why I was overwhelmed. So many people, and I couldn't read even half the signs for the activities they were advertising.

This is a really crappy video I took.

This was another performance area, which seemed to be intended for martial arts.

I think they were part of a club performing some traditional Japanese dance.

One of the music groups performing.

Cheerleaders taking their turn on the stage.

I don't know what this giant octopus is for.

I think this was the magicians' club.

A jazz music group.

A guy vs. a girl.

Guy gets pwned.

You could see people wearing signs everywhere you looked.

Some musicians walked around and performed in the crowd.

I don't think T-san noticed my filming.

Pikachu Guy and me. From the paper he's holding, he seems to be part of the agriculture club.

I ended up with a copy of the paper. I was curious about it at first because the drawings are from a manga I read called Moyasimon, but I realized that the only connection was the subject matter after I used my electronic dictionary to translate parts of it. The big word at the top, Tsuchinoko, is the name of a mythical (I think) Japanese creature that kind of looks like a short, fat snake with a skinny tail.

Like the poster you see here, all the clubs' posters were really well painted. I don't know if all the clubs have really good artists or something, but every poster I saw was this good.

This picture is from the performance on the main stage of the dance club JETTER. Their dance was really good.

*sigh* I just spent the past day trying to upload my video of their awesome dance, but I guess the file is just too big.

Anyway, after we left the fair, we went back to the convenience store to buy ice cream, since we were all hot from the nice weather and collective body heat on the field.

Tea and vanilla swirl. Reminded me of artificial watermelon flavor. Tasted good.

The white and red packet is the wooden spoon the cashier taped on when I paid. If you buy a bento (boxed lunch), they tape on chopsticks.

To be continued in Wednesday Night...