culture and sports festival

文化祭 / 体育祭

Bunkasai/Taikusai 

culture festival/sports festival

Hello to todays post. Last week I had culture and sports festival at my high school and because this is a very unique event in Japan, I’d like to write about it. 

文化祭 > culture festival 

It is basically a day to celebrate the artistic achievements of the high school. This means there will be performances of the artistic clubs. In the case of my school these performances took place on the stage of our nearby culture hall. The brass-band gave a concert, the tea-ceremony-club organized a „lesson“ for parents and students to take part in, the art club made a stop-motion-animation movie and there also was a live writing-calligraphy-to-music performance. As I am a member of both the art and the calligraphy club, I had a tough schedule during the weeks leading up to our culture festival. It is (together with the sports festival) one of the biggest events during the school year, so everyone is really focused, eager to participate/help and excited! This goes along with longer hours spent at club and for me it also meant: coming home covered in paint and calligraphy-ink from head-to-toe for about three weeks. Please take my case very literally: I had black feet almost everyday after school. Why?, I hear you ask. Well, as I mentioned above: with the calligraphy club we rehearsed a live writing.

So how does something like that work? 

1. We chose something we wanted to write. Popular here are for example seasonal poems, quotes out of plays or other famous japanese literature. In our case, our calligraphy teacher created a text for us to write. Kind of like a cheering slogan about our school’s spirit.
2. We chose a song to write to: 22 by Taylor Swift
3. We settled on the choreography: Who writes which characters/words? What do the rest of us do, while someone’s writing? When does who start to write? etc.

4. Practice,Practice,Practice.

5. Be excited and perform on stage.

You see there’s a lot to organize beforehand. Well, all this took place on stage for everyone to watch and hopefully to enjoy. We wrote on a large version of the traditional calligraphy paper and used the biggest brushes available. Also because of the size of the paper and our characters (they should be visible for everyone to read) we walked on the paper while writing, which brings me back to the point. During practice sessions it was very likely that you stepped into another person’s writings, while writing yourself (because you were still unsure about coordinating your moves) which then lead to ink-black feet.

Also: the paper we wrote on is very expensive, so in order to not „waste“ the good performance paper, we actually practiced on old newspapers which we glued together and laid down on the floor. Now, calligraphy paper absorbs the traditionally used heavy ink fast, in order to prevent smears. But newspaper has a very cheap paper quality, so you’ll end up with ink puddles all around you, which are lovely *not* to step in. : D

For our performance there was a little extra step: Because I’m in the art club, my calligraphy teacher asked my to paint something on our performance paper, that should serve as a colorful, happy background. I asked everyone, what would fit our song and our writing the most and we voted it to be a rainbow. So I had the honor to design a gigantic rainbow for our performance paper, which we then painted on or paper together about a week before the culture festival. It was a lot of fun and also very touching/inspiring for me to see „my rainbow“ on the pictures my host mother took of us, lifting our work and presenting it to the crowd, at the end of our live-writing.

At my high school's culture festival there were also performances of the third year students (such as dances, movies and plays), food stands by the second year’s and games, organized by the first year students. I’m in the second year of senior high school here, so my classmates and I sold Ice-Cream floats. 

I experienced the culture festival as a very happy, very engaged and fun community event. It showed me once more how important it is, to „stand-together“ in order to create something nice for everyone to enjoy. This is a main thought at japanese schools (at least what my experience showed me so far) and therefore and because of the club activity system, there’s a lot of volunteers and a warm feeling of community and pride towards your school. It’s very nice and because everyone engages and practices/works really hard for it to be a fun event, there were so many creative ideas and the decoration of each classroom was super awesome! My school looked really pretty that day! For me, being an exchange student, it was also a great opportunity to really, strongly and truly feel part of my school. The calligraphy performance and displaying the movie we made in the art club was a huge amount of good feelings for me: happy, to be a part of something, to matter, to be included, to be cheered for and encouraged! My culture festival was great!

体育祭 > sports festival

So there is something like a sports day at my school in Germany (EBG-Sporttag), but it’s nothing like the Taikusai I experienced here! 

So first things first:

1. The whole school participates (all teachers, all grades) and there will come a lot of people from outside of school to watch and cheer. Not only parents and siblings will be there, but also people who live near the high school or former students, who might already be at university or even have a job and family now. This, again, represents that school is a strong center of community in Japan. In the weeks leading up to the culture and sports festivals many former students visited my high school, to talk with „their“ teachers and visit „their“ clubs. Often they brought Omiyage (jap. souvenir, most of the time in the form of sweets, typical for a certain area) with them, so the hard-working hours of finishing everything in time, turned into little food parties to catch up on each others lives. 
2. My high school got parted into three groups each group with a color as their name: white 白 red 赤 and blue 青 .  Each group then got about 10 leaders. These leaders are the authorities for the practice week (at my high school we had time to rehearse the games and performances during the week before the sports festival). The leaders, which you call leader-san リーダーさん, practice cheering chants, songs and marching with you. The teachers are basically not that important for one week.

The schedule of my sports festival:

1. First our three groups gathered in the back of our school ground-field, then the brass-band started to play and we marched in order and rythm(left, right, left, right) to the middle of the sports-field. There was an opening speech of my school principle and afterwards we marched back to our group’s place.
2. The games began: there are the typical competition games such as relay race, 50meters/100meters/200meters sprint races, but also some japanese sportive games: I’m going to explain yagiri as an example. Before that I’d like to add that all games at my high school’s Taikusai were separate for girls and boys, so there were always tow rounds. So basically you team up with your group’s girls, you choose one „runner“ and the fun begins. Every girl except the „runner“, bows, places their hands on their knees and tightens their back muscles. You stand very close together in order to create a „human-race-track“. Now the „runner“ will take the hand of one of your leaders, for balance, and run over your backs as fast as possible. Girls are supposed to compete at 100meters of Yagiri, which means, that after the „runner“ ran over your back, you straighten up and run to the front end of your „human-race-track“, bow down again and wait for your „runner“ to pass your back again. All this takes place on a line, which marks 100meters. All three teams (white, red, blue) will start the race at the same time and whoever finishes first, wins points for their group.    

   

   Yagiri

3. There were many more of these games and at each game you could win points for your group. 
4. After lunch break, there were two folk dances. These were also rehearsed with our leaders, earlier that week.
5. Last was my favorite part: The unique performances of our three groups. So I mentioned it earlier, that your leaders teach you chants and encouraging songs, but what do I mean by performances? Well, as I wasn’t allowed to use my phone during the sports festival I don’t have footage of MY sports festival, but I found a video of my school’s sports festival of three years ago, were you can see what these performances can look like. Here’s the link to the video: https://youtu.be/nGuxt2fBqd0
6. Explanation for the video: the shouts in Japanese are things like „Give your best!“ „Fight!“(the Japanese often yell that at sportive competitions. It’s meant as an encouragement.) „Stand together!“ and the names of your group leaders and your group (in my case we shouted: Hakugun 白軍, in case of the example video: Sekigun 赤軍). So if these performances are at the end of the festival, why do encouraging chants? Well, you are actually cheering for your group leaders, who perform a choreography. You, as their group, stand behind them and shout along to their choreography. The leaders are dressed in gowns made by „tailor-students“ of their group and they are painted in body-tattoos or wear make-up (like symbols that represent your group-color). They look super awesome! It’s really a fun show to watch! Also: this last act at the sports festival before the closing ceremony is another contest: in the end it will be decided which performance(including the dresses, the styling, the choreography, the rhythm, the chants and synchronicity) was the most skilled one.
7. Lastly the points of the sportive competitions will be counted and the winners will be presented. My group won first place for the best performance and placed 2nd at the sportive competitions.

I experienced the sports festival as a huge team-building-event and I enjoyed it very much! Also: the leaders of my group were very cool and even though strict during practice sessions, they were a lot of fun to hang out with afterwards. Coming home with aching muscles and paint and ink all over me, for a whole week before was totally worth it! Why am I repeatingly telling you, that it was hard? Well, because I want to show, that wonderful things/events can happen, if everyone is putting equal effort into them. Everyone worked with heart, body and soul to make the school festivals memorable and fun events. I will carry them in my heart forever! Especially because they brought me closer together with my classmates.

In the end I’d like to say: It is difficult to explain this feeling of „community“ I felt during culture and sports festival, but I wanted to try anyway, because for me, they were an „eye-opener“. I wish there was something like Bunkasai and Taikusai in Germany. Something like this „feeling of communty“. I really didn’t enjoy the festivals or project-days of my school back home in Germany. The majority of people at my school usually saw them as „compulsory“ and therefore they were simple anything but fun or important in their opinion. It was always the same people, who put effort in the preparations and in the end they failed because some students just didn’t participate at all and boycotted the fun. This made me feel sad and angry, because I always knew there could be a community at school and now I no longer only believe in that thought, but I’ve experienced it in Japan. I’m very happy to see, that it really can work out, if only everyone equally participated!

Thank you for reading by again and I’ll see you next time! 

PS: I’m currently working on a Q&A so make sure to click by soon. XOXO Avria

image by Google images

What I eat

What I eat

a picture collection of the delicious japanese foods

So today’s post will be all about food. Yep, that’s right: about the nice, delicious and broad variety of the japanese *cuisine*.

But before we start I’d like to tell you the recipe of this post:

Please keep these few „cooking steps“ in mind while scrolling through my menu, so you won’t burn your impression of japanese meals. 

Even though I currently live in Japan with a japanese host family, I can only show you examples of japanese food. 

That’s also the reason why the title reads: What I eat.

I can only write about the dishes my host mother likes to cook and about the places I’ve been out to eat. This is in no way a manifest of what all japanese people eat, cook, like or dislike, or by which ingredients to identify whether something’s japanese or not. It is only my personal experience. The food of a country is especially during times of globalization influenced by so many things, that it is hard to determine what’s the countries very own kitchen and it is  also so versatile, that it would be rather harsh to say:

I’ve eaten it all! 

Without further Do: Please come in, have a seat and enjoy your (virtual) meal!!!  Say: Itadakimasu! [You should say this before you start your meal]

Let’s have Breakfast

I usually have rice and some of the leftovers of my Bento. What do I mean by leftovers? Well my host mother always prepares my lunch box [Bento] before I come down to have my breakfast. She's always cooking side dishes that go along with the rice, that I'm taking to school with me and because she's also filling the Bento of my two host sisters, there are always "leftovers", which then serve, along with rice, as my breakfast. On cold or rainy days, there will be some Miso Soup, too. Sometimes I also have some toast with a yoghurt or I sprinkle some flavors(most of the time dried algae) over my rice.

The smiley face consists of a jam-bread mouth and Nashi-eyes.

He wishes you: Ohayougozaimasu-> ‘Good morning’ in Japanese.

For those of you, who don’t know Nashi:

It’s a sweet fruit, which tastes like a mixture between an apple and a pear.

Lunch

On school days, I will eat my Bento together with my classmates at school. I go to school from Monday to Friday and I also spend my Saturdays with the art club. So I have most of my lunches at school in the form of my Bento. In my classroom I usually sit together with my friends and we talk, joke and enjoy our lunches.

This is actually my very first Bento, my host mother ever prepared for me:

It is rice with a kind of hamburger patty and the yellow food is called tamagoyaki

[this is kind of like a japanese omelet, it is cooked in a square pan and it is rolled up and stuffed.

My host mother usually fills mine with cheese, because I like it that way the most.] In my bottle I

usually take some cold tea with ice cubes during the hot summer.

On very rare occasions I also get my lunch from the Konbini[japanese for convenience store].
That day I bought my favorite Onigiri[loosely translates to rice ball, with various filling options, wrapped in Nori, a typical kind of algae. My favorite one is filled with spicy fish eggs], rice wrapped in Tofu[slightly sweet], Edamame[green beans] and fruit jelly.

How to unwrap your Onigiri:

You might ask yourself, why do I need an explanation for that kind of thing?

Well, Onigiri is wrapped in tow layers of plastic, one to protect the whole rice ball from the "outside world" XD and one plastic layer that separates the Nori(algae)  from the rice, so that the algae won't get soggy. So you are supposed to first pull at a strap on the upper corner and  then on the sides.

Here are some Sunday lunch examples,

I ate together with my host family.

Smashed potatoes, I made for my host family and
veggie Tempura[japanese for deep fried dishes].

Rice, which is typically part of almost every meal, Miso soup, salad
and my host mothers delicious burger patty with tomato sauce.

Here are some pictures, when we went to a restaurant for lunch:

My hostfamily really enjoys restaurants in which you can
self-cook part of your meal. This one is Yakiniku[fried meat].
The grill rack is in the middle of your table and will be heated from underneath.
Everyone will share the meat order and then fry themselves their
part of the meat, the way they like it best. I also had some rice with
an egg and vegetables. This dish is a lot of fun and really delicious.
The rice will be served in a steamingly hot stone bowl and the rice won't
yet be mixed with the veggies. Also the egg will still be raw. As soon
as you get your dish, you mix all the ingredients together and it will sizzle
and your egg will be cooked in your bowl. It's a lot of fun!

This time we were shopping in the local mall and went to have lunch afterwards.
This particular restaurant offered an all-you-can eat buffet of raw meats and fish,
you could then deep fry at your table. You could get rice and salad along with your
meat and different sauces to dip in. It was very tasty!

The upper picture shows a lunch set that I got. It consists of the usual basics like
Miso soup, rice and tea. This time there were some beans in my rice that gave it
a purple color. The main dish was deep fried pork and cabbage. They also served
a small assortment of pickled vegetables.
The second picture shows an Udon-Set I had. Udon are a typical kind of japanese
noodles usually served in a brown soup which can be slightly spicy.
Along with my Udon I had a Tempura bowl: different deep fried foods served on top of rice.

Dinner:

These were both special occasions' dinners:
the upper picture was from a welcome party the friends of my host sister
organized for me during my first week with my host family. It contained a stew with
vegetables and meat, tamagoyaki, bread, tofu and pickled vegetables.
The second picture was my host sisters birthday dinner:
Caprese[yes my host mother also likes foreign kitchen], fried steak, spicy shrimps
and Sashimi[which is an assortment of raw fish, very delicious and pricey].

This shows Takoyaki: Tako means Octopus and yaki means fried.
Takoyaki is cooked in a special kind of pan: The takoyaki pan has round
holes, which serve as molds for  shaping the Takoyaki balls.
You basically scoop a bit of dough, which reminds of unsweetened pancake dough,
into the pan's molds, then fill it with cut up octopus and cabbage.
You then scoop more dough over you filling and try to shape the whole thing
into a beautiful round ball by continuing to turn it around in the mold. This dish
is a lot of fun, when throwing a party with friends, because everyone has something
to do, dinner will take forever and you can eat a lot of the small sized dough balls.
Delicious!

Sweets/Cakes/Desserts:

Strawberries, from my host grandfather.

 The upper picture is "Omiyage"[loosely translates to souvenir,
and is traditionally brought back to your family and friends
from a journey/trip you took] from one of my friends, who visited the
"Universal Studios Japan" in Osaka and therefore also the
 "Wizarding World of Harry Potter".
The second picture shows flower shaped panna cotta, my host mother
bought for dessert one day.

 This is Kakigori--> shaved Ice with poured-over syrup.
It's the typical japanese summer festival dessert.

Traditional japanese "sweets" or better to be described as: 
slightly luxurious delicious things(as I like to call them)
The left picture shows a wrapped up matcha cake and a cup
of freshly brewed matcha. Matcha is a special japanese green tea
powder, which can be very pricey, if it's a high quality one.
Matcha is used in a lot of sweets here in Japan and there is even
Matcha KitKat here! 
The right picture shows Mochi, which is a kind of rice cake,
even though it doesn't have a lot in common with european "cakes".
It's made out of rice flour, water and sometimes sugar and it is very sticky.
Mochi on its own, does not have a strong taste, but a very typical
consistency. One traditional way to eat it, is with algae[please excuse the
wrong spelling in the picture] and soy sauce.

Delicious cakes from a France inspired fancy cake shop.

 Ice cream Crêpes and a local variation of shaved ice.
The shaved ice in the lower picture is called: shirokuma
(which literally translates to: white bear-->polar bear)
It is a typical dessert from Kagoshima. 

I like to call this: "The pudding fish"
It's a crispy cake[I'm guessing made out of a dough similar
to waffle dough] filled with vanilla or chocolate pudding.


Caution: 
I do not count any calories and I'm not following any specific diat. I'm not a vegan, nor a vegetarian or a sportaholic. I don't weigh myself on a regular basis nor do I want to loose weight. I like to fit into the "normal-for-your-height-and-age" collum on my doctors chart and I fit in there perfectly fine. Not too much and not too little.
I want to enjoy all the delicious food while I'm here and I also find diats in general pretty idiotic. I hate to see girls stressing out over "body image" or feeling "ugly" or "fat". I would wish for the media to start to represent us girls and no skelleton-like Barbie-dolls.
But: All this does not mean I don't care for my health! No, I'm particularly concerned to eat healthy, but I do this without any of these "eating plans" or following "the new raw trend".
I try to listen to my body. It's my self defined "healthy". I believe that I know myself best and can therefore know best what does me good and what doesn't. I want to eat "conciously". I don't eat only for the sake of it, but because I enjoy it and it is a natural way to keep yourself healthy and confident. If you only pay attention to your own needs and stop wanting to fit into a size you are not normally fitting into, you will be more confident with your body. That's my philosophy.
I'd also like to pay attention to what my grocery shopping does to the environment and therefore put some effort in researching food. In Japan there are a lot more ways(than for example in Germany, even though we're getting there) for eating conciously/eating healthy on the go[because of Knbini--> convenience store]. But don't get me wrong they do of course also have not so healthy foods and fastfood chains.
Like I said at the beginning of today's post: I'd like to emphasize that this is a very personal blog entry, because food is something very different in every household.




Gochisousama deshita! --> Thank you for the meal!
[You should say this after finishing your meal.]



I hope you've enjoyed today's post and it got you hungry for more.
 Make sure to click by any time soon!
 Take care and until our next shared meal.
 Yours Avria<3