yagami campus festival 2011

Note the smug beaver in the middle

 I've had a busy last couple of days (just realised now it's been a weekend, but somehow my weekends tend to be more busy than weekdays...hrm) and on Sunday we went to the Yagami Campus Festival just next door to our house.

Universities here have lots of festivals, and only at Yagami (which is a fairly small one) they expected over 20,000 visitors over two days. In November there is Mita Festival, expecting roughly 200,000 people! Yes, insanity.

So what is Yagami Festival? Well, a lot. There was the Mr/Miss Yagami beauty pageant contest thing where five candidates of each sex compete and one is crowned at the end of the festival. They were sadly highly disappointing and neither the guy nor girl I voted for won. Bad, bad, bad. Clearly people here have no taste. At Mita Festival there is the slightly bigger Mr/Miss Keio contest, and whoever wins Miss Keio is apparently sure to get a good job in TV in Japan. There was also a competition for the best guy-dressed-as-a-girl (see left) but I don't know who won that one. At the festival there were quite a few guys dressed up in maid costumes with heels, tights and everything. Did I mention Japanese guys can come across as even more...metrosexual...than Swedish ones?

 Everything was very 'homemade' and I think really most of it was for children. Flee market, plenty of food stands ('why don't you, why don't you?' shouted all over the place) and even a Haunted House! Now, what needs to be noted about the Haunted House is that a. my friends and I were the oldest ones in there. Everyone else was below 12, and b. the interior was made up of black plastic bags so it sort of killed the mood. But, in all fairness, it wasn't bad. I have a slight phobia of Haunted Houses from a horrific one in my youth and was a little bit hesitant about going in. Have you ever seen The Ring? Yes, well, imagine that. Somehow it gets a whole lot scarier when there are Japanese people scaring you. They were lying under tables and shooting out in front of you (my friend almost accidentally stamped one in the face), and some would just stare at you. Funniest part was when a 'ghost' scared my friend, she screamed, and the ghost bowed to her as we walked away. Only in Japan.

The maze

The 'Kick-A-Croc-Competition.' Not ok even then, people! Not going to happen.

Science house (note the kids in the background

Bug society

 The night ended with fireworks. I semi-don't get the point with fireworks, but this particular shower of rain/waterfall was awesome. During the show (there were mostly Japanese people there) you'd hear 'Ooh! Aaah!' from the audience as the colourful images spread across the sky. So cute.

Then we went home and on the way I picked up one of these thingys. I think it's called goma and it is a bun with black sesame paste inside. Kind of good but the bread was like an uncooked dry-ish dough. Not so sure about that one.

Yesterday we went to an arts event with class and met some artists and took plenty of photos. To catch them, watch this space.

Jo x