What would you like with that?

Maybe everyone would like an order of writing to go with that side of pictures! Just maybe? Well, okay! My school had their culture festival last week. It’s a chance for each class to do their own thing and hope the visitors enjoy it. Since my class is going to Australia in October (minus me of course cry cry) they decided to make Ayers Rock. It was a very stinky process which involved soaking infinite chunks of cardboard in water to create what I guess was supposed to be a rustic rocky appearance. Plus the miles of hair removing tape (that is if you haven’t shaved your arm hair off) we had to use to stick the cardboard to the wall. It turned out nice in the end. I don’t think anyone got hurt from the pieces that fell from above the doorway. Korea was a popular theme with the other second year classes since that’s where they go for their trip. They had students dress up as Pe Yonjun, the Korean soap actor who has made more money doing commercials in Japan than Brad Pitt. He’s a favorite with the 35 and over housewife population of Japan. The third years all made food. My host sister’s class made ‘mochi’. I guess I would describe it as rice gum, but it’s really not supposed to be as gooey as they made it. There were also ‘so hot you’ll die’ versions of noodles and curry, I passed on that. For the main entertainment they had a stage in the parking lot set up. I would say the cheerleaders and cross dressers got the most hype. There were also bands set up in the gym; again I’m not really sure what language they were singing. It was a long day of being crazy and scaring people with my foreignness (mostly the little kids who visited, ‘wooow, a foreigner!’). Then of course we had the Sports festival yesterday. In my opinion, far less exciting, but all the more amusing. We started in the morning at 8 with the rain falling on us as we got into formation on the field. Naturally, to prevent injury from rickety joints, we did synchronized musical aerobics before starting. All Japanese children learn the same routine from elementary school, keeping this in mind you can just imagine the music they use! I think it’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen since being in Japan. The rest of the day was spent cheering classmates on in their different events. Although, there seemed to be a fair amount of jeering as well. Two of my friends came back from a class relay crying because people were yelling ‘I hope class four falls!’ That’s one thing about Japanese high schools that’s really evident, the separation by class, year, and gender. Each class seems to fall into a stereotype, the sports course are meat heads, the S class are nerds, the international course thinks they’re better than everyone else, first year girls are evil, (foreigners rock ;P) etc. When we ate lunch during the sports festival there were little groups of blue, sky blue, and red (the different year’s colors), none of the groups were mixed colors except for mine. And that was only because the first year exchange student came to eat lunch with me because the first year girls in her class were being mean. Anyway, that’s my bit of brain snack for the day, until next time!