Let's talk Bunkasai

Okay, so what is bunkasai? Does anyone know? I thought not.

Let me tell you what bunkasai is.

For the majority of the year, students in my high school do the same thing every day. Classes, classes, classes, except for when there's a break. There are exactly three days when this changes: first, sports festival, which I already posted about. And second, bunkasai (which happens to be two days long). Bunkasai is when all the classes get to plan fun stuff for two days--making food, putting on plays, decorating their classrooms, putting on music.

In short, bunkasai is a pretty big deal.

Like, a really big deal.

My class made Hawaiian pancakes (apparently that's a pretty big obsession here?), which were pretty awesome. We sold them with either maple syrup, chocolate, or coconut spread. We built a wooden frame like a stall to sell the stuff with (and putting it together was a nightmare, let me tell you).

The brass band also put on a performance the first day in the morning--basically we were the first thing that happened for bunkasai. Then, we went and start chugging out some pancakes (the Japanese had me running around shouting 'COME ON' in English with another girl, who was shouting 'COME EAT HAWAIIAN PANCAKES' in Japanese. I recognize they were using me as a blatant advertisement, but I didn't really mind.), while the other people around us were making THEIR meals. There was some okonomiyaki across the way, dango next door, Italian pasta somewhere, ice cream thingies also somewhere, American hamburgers somewhere, Mexican churros, and more. We sold food until it ran out, then went to the gym to watch a few musical performances. And while not all of them were very good--there was a mostly boy band (with a girl bassist) that was kind of...bad--they knew how to work the crowd.

 Flower arrangements--very pretty stuff.

 The saxamababes just before our performance. I had to be quick--the concert was in a few minutes.

 Some classmates right before we started making those Hawaiian pancakes.

 Our pancake workstation.

 Mii-chan and I, the advertisers for Hawaiian pancakes. At this point I was mostly just confused.

 Some friends got ahold of the camera.

 Me, Machi, and Fuki-chan at Fuki-chan's classroom.

Bustling school day.

Second day was shorter than the first; there were just plays and food, which was just as good the second day. The plays were really cool, though--they were judged, and the best one was one called 'the cat who wanted to be human' (I think--Japanese translation was a little sketch). Apparently the play is American, though I've never heard of it.

So, besides bunkasai, I went to another barbeque. This time my host dad and I were the only foreigners there. There were about three two year olds, all of which were insanely adorable, by the way.  A biking trip or two (ugh--biking in the mountains is HARD. Christ.). Also, physics don't actually work in Japan, which explains why I don't understand it at all during class. See, physics says, what goes up must also come down. This is not true. In Wakayama, Japan, what goes down for five seconds on a gentle decline must come up at twice the incline and three times the length.. During biking, anyway.

At the second barbeque. As you can see, there were many more small children there than last time.

Anyway, I'll add that two days ago I went to a gathering at the Brit's house, where there was an exorbitant amount of beer, by the way. He makes a mean meal, though--very tasty. His wife is an adorable little Japanese woman who spoke English pretty well.

Solar powered lights.

And then yesterday I climbed a mountain.

Still vaguely regretting it, even if I got some nice pictures.

 In Japan you tend to forget how short you are--until you end up hiking with a New Zealander, a Brit, and a Canadian, none of which are shorter than six feet tall.

 Host dad has conquered the mountain.

 Here's me. The picture doesn't quite capture how exhausted I was at that moment.

We also went to a temple right afterwards, which was pretty awesome. Even though I spent about twenty minutes and ten pictures trying to get a perfect shot of the temple.