まつり(matsuri)

This weekend was the university festival. In England, and apparently in America, we have nothing that remotely resembles a Japanese school or university festival. For a school one, every class in the school decides on a stall or a performance, but at the university there are all sorts of groups, so it's huge.

We arrived quite late, at 4pm, and it was already getting dark so unfortunately I have no photos, but I will try and describe it. There was a small stage outside the Education Faculty building, on which the 'Miss Education Faculty' contest was being held, with an audience of maybe 200. Walking for 5 minutes across the campus, there was a large area of stalls, mostly food - yakisoba, ramen, fried chicken (kara-age), beer - and then the main stage.

When we got there, the main stage was occupied by a very good a-capella singing group, doing covers of famous Japanese pop songs, who made way for a similar group singing Western stuff. Then came a fashion show, which I guessed was put on by the fashion department. After that, though, was the highlight - the university's 10 or so hip-hop dance troupes, each performing for a few minutes. Hip-hop dance is huge in Japan, and some of the troupes had 40 or more people in them. There were a couple of all-female ones, a couple of all-male ones, some with equal male and female, and one with a single girl, who was brilliant to watch and completely held her own with all the guys. All of them were fantastic.

Finally, when they were all finished, there was a huge fireworks display to round everything off. I really wish English universities had events like this - the atmosphere was brilliant.