On matters cultural...

Ooh, crikey - managed to let the old journal lapse into neglect once again these past few weeks. It's mainly because I'm spending most of my considerable downtime at school between lessons beavering away at this free Japanese languge course we get to do courtesy of the JET corporation. Spending my evenings indulging in my ever-swelling PS2 games collection isn't really helping either. Nor is spending time at Aikido, at Nohan onsen, attending social gatherings, yada yada yada...

Anyway, want to make a note of this, so let's get on with it. Two weeks ago(ish), October 21st or thereabouts saw Wakayama High School host its annual three day Bunkaasai or 'Culture Festival'. Yeah, you can stick your Sports Day where the sun don't shine, this is the real deal...

An idea that ought to adopted by the UK's Secondary Schools forthwith, the Bunkaasai is a sort of three-way cross between an arts showcase, a talent contest and a school fete. The first event to get underway is the poster contest. Every form class designs its own poster advertising the Bunkaasai itself which takes place over three days in October. Drawing heavily on the high-contrast, bright, brash style of anime, the standard of these is incredibly high, as one might expect from teenagers in the country that came up with the artform.

Next up are the displays/diaramas produced by some classes and one or two clubs, usually illustrating a cultural tradition, either from within Japan or abroad. With these projects usually underway weeks in advance, the days of the Bunkaasai itself are centred around an elaborate talent contest that takes up the morning and afternoon, and on the Saturday, the temporary 'food village', erected in the school's car park (aside from a sandy baseball pitch, Japanese schools tend to have no open playing-field type areas to speak of whatsoever). Here, the students of various forms prepare and serve a variety of Asian foods with the assistance of their form teachers and sell them to the remaining staff and students, as well as parents, siblings and other visitors to the school. Employing a ticket system whereby one purchases coupons of various denominations (roughly 50p up to 5 pounds), the school gets to cover its costs and also make a bit of money on the side.

The really good part? Over the course of the Bunkaasai, EVERY student has to do something, whether it be to help with a display, do something for the talent show or cook. My contribution was getting the after school club to put together a display illustrating that great British tradition, Bonfire Night. We even made a Guy and everything, though my distinctly amateur painting efforts on his papier mache head left him looking like a rather unsettling combination of my dad and the Aphex Twin. Alas, Japanese health and safety laws forbade us from burning said effigy and letting off fireworks in the process. After the initial reaction of my colleague Toyoda Sensei to what Bonfire Night is actually about ("Okay, so basically there's this terrorist who attempted to blow up the UK's seat of governement about four hundred years ago, and we make dolls representing this person that we then ritually cast into a blazing inferno...no, really..."), perhaps that was just as well. Judge my efforts for yourself...

The food fair really was great, during which I had the pleasure of sampling the Korean dish shizhimi for the first time (reminded me greatly of particularly spicy falafel) as well as moku roku which I was assured comes from the Japanese community based in Hawaii. It essentially consists of rice, sauce, egg and pork served in a plastic cup. Most odd. With many of the students in attendance in pretty high sprits to say the least (as can be seen up there), much fun was had by all, even before taking in the karaoke contest being held simulataneously in the school gardens.

A quick word about the talent show - similar to last year, I found this to be pretty much in line with what I remember from watching my own school's talent shows all those years ago. The glammier female members of the student fraternity took the opportunity to wear not very much while performing a variety of somewhat risque dance routines, while the lads tended to treat the whole thing as a laugh, mugging and gurning for the benefit of their mates in the audience. Wearing drag seemed to prove surprisingly popular among the boys, however, with many a schoolgirl's sailor uniform used to accommodate the unsuitably bulky frames of various members of the school's Baseball and Judo team. Those crazy guys.

As if all that weren't enough, as the day was winding down the school hall played host to a frighteningly professional school band from Osaka (winners of a prestigious inter-schools competition held in the Kansai region, apparently). With ten members and a huge amount of extremely expensive-looking equipment onstage, they performed renditions of a number of J-Pop tunes I completely failed to recognise but Wakayama's student body joyously reacted to, as well as a blistering rendition of that unbearable pop standard, 'Wannabe' by the Spice Girls. The latter was improved immeasurably, however, by an unfortunate linguistic error that resulted in the vocalist stridently delievering the immortal line, 'But if you really bugger me, than I'll say goodbye'. Top class.

All in all, an event by turns informative, gloriously absurd and highly memorable. Just a bit of a shame that I probably won't be around to catch all the madness again next year...