Tsushima High Bunkasai '08

We had our culture festival today. The first- and second-year students all prepare presentations for the festival. (Almost all the third-years are kept too busy either finding a job or preparing for the college entrance exams.) Every homeroom and school club does something. The festival began in the gym, with opening remarks from the principal.

After he finished, the chorus came out and performed. There aren't any guys in the group this year, which makes for a very different sound, but the girls are good. After them, the first group--the Korean program--set up for their presentations. A girl representing the third-year class gave a speech in Korean reminiscing about last year's school trip to Korea. The first-year Korean students made a video parodying Korean dramas. I've never watched any, so most of the parody was lost on me, but everybody was cracking up at the cheesy dialogue, makeup, and hairstyles.

After that, the homeroom classes' presentations began. All the teachers received evaluation sheets with spaces for each homeroom. It wasn't something to stress the students out; I imagine they do it to give the students an incentive to apply themselves. Most of the homerooms performed a choreographed dance number on stage, set to various Japanese music. Occasionally, the homeroom teacher would make a cameo appearance, to raucous applause from the students in the audience.

The commercial-track students--the academically lowest-ranking program, for students who plan to head straight into work after graduating--hosted a market during lunchtime. They sold local restaurants' goodies, with a slight upcharge that I assume went toward the program. There were things like onigiri, okonomiyaki, and, oddly enough, crepes. I've just finished teaching the third-years a shopping lesson, so I was more than a little overjoyed when a few greeted me with "May I help you?"

The tea ceremony club was also active during lunchtime. The girls in the club, all wearing yukata, performed the tea ceremony for anyone interested. I know next to nothing about the details of the ceremony--only that it's very intricate. I recognized almost all the girls, and made a concerted effort not to break their concentration by waving goofily at them.

With the homerooms performing on stage, their classrooms were unused. Most of the clubs took advantage of this, and set up some kind of exhibition in the classrooms. The art program displayed their sketches, paintings, and sculptures, and the ikebana club had their works out for viewing. The science club had some nifty things set up, like a soda-bottle tornado and a homemade kaleidoscope.

The English Club made posters of translations of songs in English and Japanese. We spent a couple of weeks working on this. The second-year girls did pretty well on their own, which gave me the time I needed to help the first-years. Yuki wanted to translate the school song into English, which proved very difficult: just getting the lyrical Japanese simplified into colloquial Japanese took one of the grammar teachers a long time. Nozomi and Aya did the theme song to Ponyo, the newest movie from the animation studio that made Mononoke Hime and Totoro.

Shino did her own work on a Japanese love song, and Azumi did the same thing with something similar. Akane, the head of the club and one of the smartest students in school, came to me for help with a love song she was trying to translate. We went line by line, and unlike with the first-years, I was able to explain things to Akane in English, rather than just give her the answer. Using more English also let me convey subtle differences between words: whereas I had to settle for telling Nozomi and Aya what the "right" translation was, with Akane I could present her with three or four phrasings, explain the distinctions, and let her choose what she thought fit the best.

Yuka chose "Girlfriend," by Avril Lavigne. By the time I got to the classroom one day, she was already halfway through writing the lyrics on posterboard. She was also using the uncensored version. As tempted as I was to let the second-verse f-word fly, knowing that 95% of the onlookers would notice, I just couldn't let it go. (I also remembered that the principal was an English teacher last year.) I explained as best I could about profanity, eventually getting some help from an English teacher, and she blurred out a couple of letters. (I've gone ahead and further blurred out the words in my photos.)

Anyway, the girls had their posters on display in one of the hallways. I quickly checked out all the exhibits, then hurried back to the gym. There were so many groups presenting so many different things that there wasn't enough time to have designated breaks; there were at least three events going on simultaneously. I made it back to the gym in time to see the 1-3 homeroom performing the theme to Ponyo, complete with costumes.

The last few performances were the best. There's a popular song performed by two guys, which the school chorus performed last year. I still haven't caught the title or the name of the group, but it reminds me of Extreme and More Than Words. Anyway, the 2-2 students recorded a re-enactment of the music video, using props and settings around the school. They did it so well, in fact, that they put their video and the original side-by-side and let them run simultaneously. The reaction was awesome: the whole gym roared with laughter and applause, especially at the close-ups on the students.

Before the next group was announced, the curtain closed. The announcer declared the next group to be X-Japan, the famous heavy metal group. The curtain opened, revealing five students on stage. None of them were holding instruments. Instead, they were holding cleaning tools from around the school: a broom, a mop, a deck brush, etc. Those were their instruments. A song kicked up, and they lip-synched and air-guitared, -bassed, and -drummed the whole way through. It was awesome.

The final group had some problems with their CD skipping, so two boys from that homeroom took the stage and stalled for about ten minutes. They performed a stand-up routine that I think was in the style of a famous comedy duo; at any rate, everybody got a kick out of it. They got the CD working, and that homeroom danced to "Girlfriend."

The brass band gave the final performance of the day. They played a couple of songs I didn't recognize, and then closed with "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You." I'm amazed at just how much American music these kids are exposed to.

The vice principal came out to give a closing speech, and we all scattered and helped clean up. On the way home, I saw some students playing catch in a park near the school. As I got closer, I noticed one of the students was playing the guitar. They saw me, and started talking to me--in English. They turned out to be 3-1s, meaning the highest-level seniors, and they remembered me from a cameo appearance I made back in July. The guitarist even remembered I had majored in anthropology. I noticed that one of the boys playing catch was winding up and pitching, and that the other boy had a catcher's mitt. Sure enough, they had been on the baseball club, before the demands of senior year took them away from club activities.