A Japanese High School Festival

Love being able to hang out
with the students <3

Lots of decorations everywhere!

In stark contrast to my dull and boring summer spent mostly alone in a big office, this past week at school was the busiest and most exciting week of the year! It was Omiya's School Festival (学校祭 - Gakkousai), which is a week-long affair including a Chorus Competition (合唱コンクール), Cultural Festival (文化祭 - Bunkasai), and Sports Day (運動会 - Undoukai).

Omiya's Brass Band playing at the beautiful
Medikit Arts Centre Auditorium

The High School Cultural Festival is one of the most amazing things I have experienced in Japan. Cultural Festivals in Japan are amazing feats, and the standard at my school, being a top school, is the cream of the crop. Not only do I enjoy marveling at all the students' incredible talents, but I also love the relaxed atmosphere and unstructured time which allows me to casually interact with the students.

The first event was the Chorus Competition, in which every class prepares one song to sing, hoping for the honour of being one of the top three classes. Because my school is fairly large (about 10 classes per grade level and 1300 students total), the entire school walks to a nearby arts and performance hall for the competition. The Medikit Arts Centre is a beautiful auditorium with incredible lighting and interior design, and topped off with the largest organ I have ever seen!

The classes all practice one last time after lunch.
What dedication and determination!

In the morning, various music clubs and groups showed off their skills, often with fun, lively songs and light effects and even with students dressing up in silly costumes. Some of the performing groups were the school's brass band, chorus club, a small acapella group, and the koto club.

Playing the koto

You wear these on your
fingers to play koto

The koto (事) is a large 11-stringed Japanese instrument which was traditionally played by geisha. It lies on the floor, with strings tuned by being propped up at different points by removable pieces. The player plucks the strings with specially designed picks that are attached to the thumb and first two fingers of the right hand, while the left hand pushes on other strings to attain various notes. In my first year I was a part of my school's koto club, and while I was not very good, it was an amazing experience!

In the afternoon was the actual competition portion of the day, in which each class took a turn to showcase their skills singing a song of their choice. The winning classes are usually the senior classes, having more experience with the level required to win and knowing each other and their skills better. What's amazing is that the students organize themselves and practice together for hours in their summer vacation time! And all just for the glory of winning! Japanese students seem to be driven by friendly competition more than students back home.

The Cultural Festival Day was
kick-started with a dance!

They interviewed me!

The next event of the Festival Week was the Cultural Festival Day; a showcasing of all the other various club groups and activities that the school and the students have to offer.

In the morning, everyone gathers in the gym for various slideshows of school events and other student films and skits. In the slideshow they even showed photos from the Chorus Competition that happened only the day before! One student group interviewed the sweet couple who run a soda and burger restaurant across the street. Another skit was a funny skit of a senior boy dressed in a blonde wig prancing through the empty halls to the song, "Let It Go", from the latest Disney movie, Frozen.

Ikebana and Calligraphy displays

Photography Club displays

Art Club paintings

Next, the afternoon was the open school portion of the day. The school is decorated, the classrooms are transformed into display areas, student talent shows happen in the gym, and various baked goodies are sold.

Parents, past teachers, and even previously graduated students, now in their university summer vacation time, come to see the festivities going on. What's again incredible about this day, is that most of it is student led and organized. The students organize themselves into committees and do all the decorating, scheduling, and even the audio visual or backstage requirements. And they dismantle and clean everything up when it's over. I don't think that this is as much the case in other schools, but I have recently learned that my school encourages student independence and self-sufficiency as much as possible for these sort of events. And they certainly did an amazing job - everything went off without a hitch! I was thoroughly impressed and I think it's invaluable for them to be able to learn these skills early.

Students playing a
Japanese checkers game

Students in the Tea Ceremony Club
dressed in kimonos to serve tea

During the open school festival day I usually wander around with my camera and admire the various displays, watch performances, and talk to students. The students at my school are so eager and willing to interact with me, which is wonderful. Realizing I can't fully understand the program schedule, they will also often come up to me and tell me where to go at what time to see their particular performance.

The Calligraphy Club girls work
together to make a large poster.

This past year, a girl in the Calligraphy Club asked me to watch her group's demonstration, which I had never seen before. They got a large sheet of paper and used various sized brushes and coloured paints and all worked together with music playing to make the beautiful poster you see below. They were so coordinated, even patting down and drying the layers of paint, and so the whole process only took about 10 minutes!

The girls with their final product!

Other exciting things that I was able to enjoy watching were various student talent performances on the main stage. There were various bands, most of them in J-pop or punk rock style, and there were dance groups who did large coordinated dances in J-pop style and even with some break-dancing! Through talking to students, I learned that all these groups had made it through auditions to be one of the groups selected to perform. Quite an honour for them I imagine. They definitely had the crowd support of their fellow peers, as some students even brought glowsticks!

Watching one of the student bands play

The groups were all incredibly talented and it was wonderful to see this other side of my students. What I was left wondering; however, is when the students with private bands and such possibly had time to practice...! This is because Japanese students usually have their club activity 6 days a week, and then some even go to cram school for a few hours on some evenings to study more. Japanese students are very busy, especially compared to most North American students...

Students practice outside
before their performance

(At some point in the future I'll do a separate post about these sorts of comparisons ;) ~ stay tuned!)

Marching around the field

Believe it or not there is still more! The grand finale of the school festival week is the Sports Day. This happens on a Sunday so that the parents too can come and enjoy. And actually, students and teachers come into school the day before also, yes, Saturday, to do a run-through of the ENTIRE DAY, including all the events! We get other days off in lieu, so that's not a problem. Japan is just very particular about its ceremonies and seems to go above and beyond to make certain that there is absolutely no margin for error. I suppose that the students are used to this and in their opinion it's probably still better than regular classes, but surely they must get slightly bored and pretty exhausted doing the same thing two days in a row...? Anyway, that's a discussion for another time, and as it happened this year our trial-run day was half rained out, hehehe.

First in the Sports Day is the opening ceremony. Again, Japan loves its ceremonies. This is begun by the four student colour teams (white, red, yellow, and blue) literally marching around the field in very militaristic fashion while the brass band plays. They even salute at some points!

One group doing well at the jump rope!

Throughout the morning there are the regular running events, followed by some other fun games for the different grade levels.

The first year students (grade 10's) play a game I had never seen before. They hoist a large plastic garbage bin on two poles about 10 metres in the air and are timed to see how many different balls of various sizes and shapes and point value they can get in their bin.

The huge tug-of-war!

The second year students (grade 11's) do large group jump rope competitions, with about 40 students all jumping together around one huge rope! I've seen groups able to get 30 jumps in a row!

A few groups getting ready for the horse game

The senior girls and boys each get their own game.
The girls do a massive tug-of-war and the boys do a game in which one boy, wearing a hat, sits on two others' shoulders and these groups of three run around trying to snatch the hat off an opponents' head. Apparently it represents warriors on horseback fighting each other. It's absolutely hilarious! And of course they love it. I wonder if that sort of thing would fly back home? I've never seen anyone get hurt.

Groups of boys charging
at each other

After lunch, all of the students do a simple folk dance which changes partners as you move around the circle, and as the crazy foreigner I love joining in. The students get so happy and excited that I'm participating. I feel like perhaps students back home would try to look "cool" and either act indifferent or snicker to their friends. Surely some of them do that here too, but it's definitely not the norm.

The last part of the Sports Day involves the Ouendan ( 応援団 ), which literally means "cheering squad". Each team has a group who dress similar to traditional Ouendan fare, but with their team's colour ribbons, and performs an intense coordinated dance to a beating barrel drum. This is of course part of the competition too, and all the groups are scored for their performance. It's mostly sharp movements with the hands, on which they wear striking white gloves, but they also use props such as fans, masks, and this year one team even used samurai swords. Some teams have their gymnastically talented members doing cartwheels or back flips too, but traditionally Japanese cheering squads rely more on drumming, shouting, and using banners and flags.

This is how Omiya's official Ouendan look
- intimidating, huh?

 For the absolute last act before the closing and awards ceremony, there was one more Ouendan performance. This was done by the school's official Ouendan group, and was quite different from the previous dance style Ouendan. Omiya's Ouendan is especially very traditional because of the school's long history; it was established in 1888.

So in this Ouendan, the leader stands on a raised platform and does the main war-cry-like deep throat shouting, which are rally cries about the school, while the other members repeat together after him. These other members also beat drums or wooden planks and one bears a flag so huge that it is strapped around his torso! In between the war-cries, they do some sharp movements with their white gloved hands.

The Ouendan leader shouting rally cries from the
platform and the flag bearer with Omiya's school logo

The strength required for such a
thing is incredible! And he even
 whips it within a metre of the ground

As you can imagine, this traditional Ouendan group's goal is not merely to entertain, but to promote school pride and intimidate other schools or sports teams. I was incredibly surprised the first time I saw them! But I have thoroughly loved being able to experience this traditional cultural aspect. Many of the other schools do not have such intense Ouendan groups and it has even become a source of pride for me at Omiya, so they must be doing their job well ;).

The blue team wins

Finally, at the closing ceremony the scores are tallied and the awards given. This year the blue team stole the show, a huge source of pride for the team leader, as you can see by his emotions getting the better of him when it was announced (see picture to the left). All the students did so well, and I am left, again, in absolute awe of my students here in Japan. They are so dedicated and give so much to their school community. These are some amazing memories that they have made, and I am ecstatic to have had the privilege of observing <3.