Ahhh it’s that time of the year: Waseda festival! While last year is about the experience from a visitor’s perspective (see here), now that I know my way better around here, instead of just going to see my friend’s performances, I performed in one myself! 
It’s the 10th Waseda-sai, or Waseda School Festival, and this huggeee school event spans 4 days: Thursday and Friday are off-days for us to prepare the festival, and the festival is held over the weekend. I’m only going for the event today, as I am only scheduled to perform today and my throat is dying for some rest >.< Maybe I’ll catch the ending concert of Waseda-sai in my fourth year
The day before the performance, I had my usual a cappella practice and before heading home, I caught a glimpse of the outdoor preparations for the school festival.
Setting up of food stalls, students literally hammering pieces of wood together to finally form a stand. It’s amazing how Japanese have a sense of pride in making things from scratch on their own… I’ve seen carpentry stuff being done in the student centre for the past few days and i bet it’s for the stalls over here! We have our own speakers, mics and even lighting in our a cappella circle, everything bought from the circle fund, which is quite a large amount so as to be able those expensive heavy duty equipment.
Now for my performance by my circle!
I was surprised because unlike last year, where the a cappella groups were split into different venues and being able to perform all over the school campuses, this time the circle has booked a room exclusively to themselves, and throughout the whole entire day the 100 odd bands from my circle would perform on that very stage. one, whole, day. O___O We had to come at 9 to make preparations, and then stay till about 5 till everyone’s finished, and we had a debrief, then called it a day. Nothing too complicated or very special, but it did feel kinda good to be part of a group contributing to the event’s liveliness.
An example of the performance… That’s my band! The room was in the basement of a building and totally out from the main campus where the noisy crowds were, soo people who came are those who know that we were performing. (which there were very few people at first)
And this was one of our performances As the day goes on, more and more people entered into our cozy concert venue; maybe because they were tried of the crowd or simply tired from walking.
Of course, I did not get stuck in that basement for the whole day. I went out for quite a bit after my band’s performances to catch my friend’s performance!
yosakoi!
hip hop street dance
And, i’m still soooo amazed at how merticulous Japanese can be of clearing the trash for that day. They split it into more than 5 different types of trash: pet bottles, pet bottle caps, incombustible trash, combustible trash, wooden chopsticks, metal cans…
After all the performances were done in my circle, we were in charge of the rubbish near our area, so we looked through every single trash bag to see if all the trash were placed in the right bag. If they were to find a mistake, they would take it out with their bare hands in a-matter-of-fact way, and threw it to the right bag. I was just… in awe when I saw them did this (of course I help out LAHH). Such cooperation with the trash collectors. woww.
Yepp soo that’s about 3/4 the picture of what you’ll do/experience in the Waseda School festival. To round it off in 3 things, it would be: Watch performances, watch weird people, and spend money on (most of the time) yummy self-made food by enthusiastic students.
