School Festival Weekend

That weekend, my visit school had a 文化祭 (bunkasai---a school festival), so I went with another ALT, Catie, the first day. I bought some deep-fried chicken called karaage (much to the delight of the 3rd graders selling them) and made a bookmark in the school library! Two students in one of my 1st grade classes helped me make the bookmark...the student helping me didn't speak much English, but the other student did his best to help the other student. I heard them speaking about how to say certain things in English and I heard the first student expressing his worries about not being able to speak English in Japanese lol From the window, Catie saw a play put on by the students. 5 students dressed up like Power Rangers and fought 3 bad guys. While I didn't see them that first day, I got to see them the second day...the video is below. After making the bookmark, we watched a food-eating contest where students stuffed an entire riceball into their mouth and another where they had to chug a can of coke as fast as they could.  Some students were surprisingly dainty for high school boys, but others packed the food down (as expected haha)! We then watched a concert by some bands in the gym...some of the boys had no expression while playing music! It was kinda funny haha Catie was wondering what would happen if she just ran up there and started rocking out hahaha They probably would have been so confused!!!

The next day, I visited the school festival again by myself to try to bond with some of the students. I bought cooked sweet potatoes (cooked in a box by depleted charcoals) first thing...and they were sooo good (and surprisingly filling, which may have been for the better, since I didn't buy as much food as I could have)!

While I ate my sweet potatoes, I watched the play that Catie saw the day before. It was about the 駒ファイブ　（こまファイブ --Koma [short for Komagane Kougyou] Five) fighting evil to protect the school and keep it clean. Or something like that. They used simple enough language that I could mostly understand, but it was still a little confusing at times haha

Here's a picture of the bad guys in the play:

Here's a short clip of the play:

After re-watching the clip, maybe my guess about trash wasn't completely incorrect haha  ^^;;

After that, I talked to Mami-san and a nearby 3rd year (whose English was surprisingly good). He and Mami-san were really easy to get along with and talk to, so I was happy to try to exercise my Japanese while they tried their best to speak some English. I ended up speaking mostly Japanese, but I was really happy that they were having fun talking to me :) Since the next event was starting, Mami-san and the 3rd year had to leave, so I went along my merry way and visited my 1st years rooms. My first years had 3 separate rooms set up, one for each class. 1-B made a haunted house (in the beginning, it was scary, but as it went on, it was more funny than terrifying for me...^^;), 1-C had some sort of set-up that I didn't understand, and 1-A had a station where you can make a design on a mug/cup and they'd print it out for you! While I don't care much about the design, I hope to get all the students to sign it before the year is over! I think that'd be a really cool idea. :] During the time it took to make the cup, I got udon, which also took forever to make due to the lunch rush (in addition to the cheap prices). As soon as I was finished, I got my cup, and then left to go home. It was a tiring day.

But, to be honest, I think speaking Japanese at length can be as tiring as walking around a lot. I guess this is what could be considered a mental workout haha  ^^;