Minami Bunkasai

The countdown of lasts begins. This week was the last Bunkasai (culture festival) at Fiona's school. Minami's festival lasts for three days, two days are spent at school and the third occurs at the Yokkaichi town hall where the students perform well rehearsed dances, and the choir, drama, koto and brass band clubs get to strut their stuff. The other two days are the strangest. I Japan kids spend the entire day with their homeroom class, so homeroom loyalty is strong. Bunkasai allows them to display their creativity, but of course it is also competitive. The kids are given free rein to create a themed classroom and some of them are allowed to serve food. This year there was everything from an Indian restaurant to a haunted house.

This class had recreated a summer fair. The aim of this game is to catch a balloon by it's tail with a safety pin without popping it.
Takemori sensei's class made okonomiyaki and yakisoba. I had the yakisoba and it wasn't bad.
This class had filled their classroom with bamboo, to take this photo I was sitting on a bamboo stool they had made. They were selling anindofu ( a Chinese tofu dessert) and scrummy pineapple smoothies.
This first year class created a Santa's workshop out of all kinds of snack foods!

This third year classroom was the most impressive, the kids had created a beach using real water and real sand - crazy!

Mascot for the Okinawan food stall.

The Irasto club (Illustratio club) had an exhibition this year. These kids are obsessed with manga and create very impressive art works inspired by their favourites.

One of my favourite parts of Bunkasai is tea ceremony. The sweet was made of kanten, chesnut and adzuki beans, delicious.

Seedy Night in Tsu

Our good friend Aileen has just left these shores for her next adventure in Indonesia . To celebrate her final nights in J-land we hit the oh-so-exciting streets of her hometown Tsu for soba, green tea ice-cream and fun. Oh, and she'd never tried pachinko before, so we exchanged our money for little metal balls and threw them down the drain in an orgy of mindless, trance-like waste. Yay! Bon voyage, Aileen.

Aileen's final green tea icecream indulgence.

Shiny happy Pachinko balls and sad Sean after blowing 500 yen.