Culture festivals!

Good morning everyone! I’m enjoying a long awaited TWO day weekend! Those two days would be Sunday and Monday. Where has my Saturday gone!? (to school!) Well, this is the season for school culture festivals in Japan! I went to Edogawa High School the other day to see my host sister’s school festival. It was definitely different. Edogawa High is a public school unlike mine so that translates to artistically altered uniforms… For anyone who has read Japanese high school romance manga, well it certainly took place at a public school. I saw my first ‘ganguro’. It’s pretty much the scientific name for a girl who gets really tan and wears white makeup creating the look of a backwards panda. Not to mention the bleaching of hair. All the skirts were quite mini and the socks were quite saggy. If you go to the sock department in a store you’ll see these long white things that look more like scarves than anything, but they’re really high socks. They come as long as a meter and are popular among the more daringly fashion conscious girls. They look much like the skin on a sharpee puppy when worn. And to keep them from slipping further down the leg than desired, well what else would you use but a glue stick! The festival itself was yummy. All the senior classes were making food and my favorite was the taiyaki, a fish shaped pastry filled with chocolate. It tasted like peanuts for some reason though. They also had school bands playing. When we left there was a group called something like ‘George Stroganoff’ playing Offspring songs. It’s a very funny thing to hear Offspring sung by a Japanese high school student. I’m sure there were some English lyrics in there somewhere. Well, I get to look forward to the same thing, without the socks, at my school at the end of this coming week. And then the next will be the school’s sports festival. I’ll tell you about it all if I survive the 20 person jump roping contest! Noooo