Gakkou-sai (School Festival) - Bunka no Hi

November 3^rd is a holiday known as Bunka no Hi (Culture Day). Most of the children here don’t realize it’s a holiday, which is funny because all the elementary and junior high schools have a school festival around the beginning of November. (I have no idea about Highs School.) This year Ooya Higashi Elementary School’s festival was actually on the holiday!

School Festival day is a day for the students’ parents to come and see what their children have been working on this school year. Artwork, calligraphy, sewing projects, club projects, and things like that. Also, some classrooms hosted activities for the students and their parents to participate in, and the school yard had been turned into a mini golf course! A lot of preparation went into it all.

mini golf course painted on the ground

club art - some japan characters

club art - elephants (posted just for you, mom!)

club - Gundam models

club - pillows

I saw only glimpses of most of the activities. I stayed longest in the kaleidoscope making room. With instruction from a teacher and help from their parents, the students made their own kaleidoscope with small mirrors, 2 toilet paper rolls, a clear plastic (maybe?) sphere, and stickers or wrapping paper to decorate the outside. It looked so fun! In addition to this activity, there was balloon art, bead-making, helicopter making, wreath making, tree art, and dango (dumpling) making. I saw a lot of the wreath making too, though I left for a while during the macaroni sticking portion of it.

kaleidoscope - taping the magnifying sphere to the toilet paper rolls

someone's finished kaleidoscope - look at all those stickers!

these sisters were so cute, though the younger one was told several times that she was "jama" (in the way) she just loved watching her older sister (:

more gluing macaroni

drying gold wreath

drying silver wreath

"tree art"

another tree art

Each grade had displays set up in classrooms throughout the school. The 6^th years’ included book bags they had sewn and various wooden things they’d made. The 5^th years’ had aprons and calligraphy. The 4^th years rooms had calligraphy too, as well as little painted owls and pinball game boards each student personalized and painted. The 3^rd years had made sparkling little trash cans (at least, I think that’s what they were) with all sorts of different pictures in them, and also had calligraphy displayed. The 2^nd years all made various animals or whatever out of paper and cardboard boxes and whatnot, while the 1^st years had made similar things out of plastic cartons and bottles. 1^st and 2^nd years also had pictures they’d drawn displayed, and a few writing assignments.

6th - book bags

6th - wooden creations

5th - calligraphy

5th - aprons

my favorite apron

4th - owls

4th - pinball things

more pinball things

3rd - calligraphy

3rd - trash cans (flags!)

3rd - trash cans

3rd - trash cans

2nd - art

2nd - art (my fave) under the sea Halloween shopping center park?

2nd - paper and cardboard creations

1st - plastic creations

1st - pig

There was so much to look at in the morning. The students and their parents were split into groups and directed to specific locations. Half started with activities while the other half began timed rotations through each display room. The students had their clipboards out to write down answers to multiple choice questions found in display rooms, take notes on which displays they liked best, write down any secret kanji they found hidden in the rooms, and to collect stickers if they greeted a teacher energetically. (Handing out those stickers was hard, especially when they tried mobbing tactics!)

After a simple lunch, everyone gathered in the gym for the closing event. The Ooya Higashi Jr. High band club came and performed a few pieces. Following that, some of the grades had presentations to give, and then it all came to a close.

packed in the gym - 911 students

a play?

In less than an hour after the closing assembly, nearly everything was cleaned up, and all but the oldest students gone. Amazing!