School festival called Bunkasai

This weekend my school had it's annual culture festival. Actually the Japanese culture festival is held somewhere in November (probably on the third) but because around that time the high school students have to study hard for their university entrance exams, the culture festival is usually moved to June.

It took teachers around one month to prepare for the festival, planning and meetings with the students etc. On Saturday we surprisingly had good weather and performances were held outside in front of the school. Usually the high-school culture festival is held for two days. The first day is for students at the school only and on the second day students from other high-schools come as well as parent and people from the neighborhood. The third-graders usually prepare food and snacks while the first and second graders put up small events such as a haunted house, quiz shows, games, and other entertaining events.

Classes also had short dance performances on a stage in front of the school. They practiced for about a month everyday after school to remember all the steps and turns. Somehow this year we experienced many problems with the speakers, microphones, and audio players. Some performances were postponed while equipment was being fixed. I've heard this often happens at the schools since the teachers are not professional disc jockeys nor electricians, so things just don't go as smooth as we want them to.

This year I was in charge of photography and videotaping the whole event. I found myself running around from early morning to late afternoon to be wherever events and performances took place. I thought it would be a piece of cake, just snapping a few pics around the school, but it was hard!! Running up and down the stairs from the front to the back of the school. Over two days I took about 1100 pictures!

This year our high-school culture-festival was very successful due to the hard work of the Seitokai, which is the student council, they worked till late at night for weeks. The Seitokai arranged everything in detail and made schedules for classes and teachers with time-tables, location, and descriptions.

Looking back, I must admit that all the little Japanese teenagers at my school did very well to make this year's school festival a very successful one.