JHS School Festival

 Ishikawa River from Asahibashi Bridge in Asahikawa looks great in the morning.

Here are some other pictures I took on the morning walk back to the station.

My junior high school held its school festival on Sunday. Since the school has so few students, rather than having an event in each classroom, all the events were held in the gym. I made it back to town just late enough to miss all the boring opening speeches but see the student performances. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures.

First, each of the three grades performed a short play. They were all plays written by the students. The first and second year kids did plays that parodied existing stories, which made them easy to understand for me.

The first years performed "The three cute wolves and the great pig Gonzales." The standout scene was when Gonzales (the only student who was really acting rather than just reading lines) tried to blow down the three wolves' brick house (which came first in this story), failed to blow it down, and left the stage only to come back with a real sledgehammer and smash a hole in the prop.

The second years performed "The selfish Princess Kaguya." This one was filled with a lot of slapstick comedy, accompanied by exaggerated sound effects, which is always entertaining to me.

The third years performed "In search of the colour of summer." This one was a teen summer drama rather than a silly comedy. As expected of the oldest students, it had the best acting, and some attempts at real emotion. During one girl's monologue, I recognized the music they played as the sorrowful song from Persona 5, which is at least a pretty good song.

After the plays, I got some cheap festival food for lunch. A bunch of elementary school students were there too, so I got to talk with their parents a little.

After that, the students performed some songs. They were the same songs I could hear the choir practicing from the music room every day during lunch break. Then, they did taiko drumming and dance performances. For one of the dances, the kids were all in No-Face costumes. The effect was not unlike Jabbawockeez. Japanese kids don't seem to quite understand dabbing.

For the grand finale, there was the infamous crossdressing beauty contest! Crossdressing is much kinder to the girls than the boys. A male kimono barely looks different from a female one to begin with, except they generally have more subdued colours. Anyway, that was a lot of fun. Five teachers, including the principal, were the judges.

After the festival, the teachers and I went to a hot pot restaurant for a celebration dinner. Everyone gave speeches and made toasts, which I was not prepared for. My speech wasn't that great since I didn't have time to think about it beforehand, but I think I managed to say what I wanted to. Once nice thing about eating with the teachers is that the conversation naturally turns to food, which is a topic I have a pretty good vocabulary in.