KTC School Festival

The school has a festival every year. Last weekend was the festival. That means I had to work both days. It was pretty cool though, there were dancers, drummers, other performances, and I did not take as many pictures or video as I had wanted. Here are some highlights:

The drummers were great. I really, really enjoy Taiko drummers. They put on a really good show, and I'll have to get a better memory card for next year. I also got my picture taken with them:


There were beautiful Ikebana flower arrangements all over. The school always has a couple in certain areas, and I didn't know that there was a club here that does the Ikebana. I'm planning to join for next year. You pay your membership fee and get fresh flowers you've arranged every week. They also have you get certified along the way. I figure if I still want to do it when school starts again in April, I will, but it may just be a passing fancy. They had a few arrangements in places like the tea ceremony room and then there was an entire room full of the arrangements. I took pictures of a bunch of them and put them on Flickr.

There were dancers, and all dance troupes performed on the floor in front of the stage while flag wavers waved their flags on the stage as a background for the dancers. I was much more enthralled by the flags than the dancers myself:

There was a lot of food, sold by the student clubs as fundraisers. There was traditional food, like squid fritters and bubble tea, as well as American food, like hot dogs and popcorn. They consider hot dogs in buns to be called hot dogs but hot dogs eaten not on a bun, like on a stick, to be called weiners. Interesting factoid of the day. You could buy a $10 raffle ticket and it came with five $2 coupons for food, so you could get $10 in food. There was really no point to not buying a raffle ticket. They had things like a Nintendo Wii and WiiFit package, a PS3, a very large television, a sewing machine, and the first couple prizes were two containers of orange juice. It was a good time. There was a food tasting contest that was judged by a panel of professors and students, and the professors were given interesting hats from theballoon guy. There was a balloon artist who was really very good, a haunted house, an English Lounge where you could play board games and eat Halloween candy (my favorite room), Bingo, arm wrestling, a room where you shot corks from wildly inaccurate guns at small boxes of candy for prizes, karaoke, rooms for the fifth year students to show off their projects, a bazaar, and all kinds of other things.

Some students dressed up. There was a Snake from the game Metal Gear Solid, and he would hide in boxes like in the game and jump out to scare unsuspecting passers by. The students did a lot of work setting everything up. They put up banners and decorations, and even decorated the school statue of a fisherman. He's only wearing a loincloth, so it's a bit scandalous from the backside! The teachers did very little except show up and patronize the food booths. I enjoyed it greatly and will be looking forward to next year. Next year we'll have two festivals to go to, both the KIT and KTC festivals, as they're held on different weekends in October.