School Festival

September 18th and 19th was Meichu's 25th annual school festival. The students and teachers work very hard for about 2 months in preparation. The first day is a culture festival where each class puts a performance on stage in the gymnasium. Most performances are some kind of dance to music, but the last couple years they have had taiko, jazz bands, and one class even did a rendition of "Stomp" using Coke bottles, drum barrels, and brooms. Culture Day becomes a chance for each class to show off, and the pride and competition the day of the performance is almost palpable. It tends to be a little over-done, however. One 2nd year class decided that they wanted to form a jazz band, but most of the students had never touched an instrument before and never learned how to read music. It was an effort in effort, if that makes sense. The key ingredient of Japanese education, effort, blind as it may be, got these students to put together a jazz band from scratch and perform a difficult Jazz piece in front of the entire school. The result was the semblance of a famous Jazz score "Sing Sing Sing" only slightly out of tune, and severely slowed down. The second day is Sports Day where the students compete in various physical activities such as relays, jump rope, and the notorious "mukade" (centipede) where the boys and girls from each class split into groups of at most 18 students, line up behind one antoher, tie their feet together, and race across the school grounds. This one sees the most skinned knees, hands, and tears from the students as they trip and dogpile onto each other on the gravel. The school festival is designed to teach the students the difficulties, the failures, and the successes of working together as a team.

At the end of the day on Sports Day there is a large bonifire and the students gather around and sing an "image song" of their choice; a song that they think reflects their lives. This time was "Kimi ga tame" by "Road of Major"...Think Green Day...in Japanese. At this point the whole school comes together and celebrates the end of the school festival. That day I left the school early compared to other teachers, 7pm, and I had been there for 12 hours. The other teachers circled the neighborhood making sure that all the students went home and were not out partying(hard to imagine in such a tight community, but probable). Thus ended their day after 9pm.