Culture Festivals: Kita-sho

This past week, a couple of my schools have had their Culture Festivals. Kita-sho had theirs on a Wednesday (2 weeks before this writing) and Uo-chu had theirs the next week Friday.

Kindergardeners being shuffled in.

Getting the kids ready

When I went to my elementary school, Vicky came back to island to visit. I met her at school around 9am, right when things were in a frenzy getting last minutes preparations complete and getting the kids to their respective places. During that frenzy, there were a couple of surprises waiting for me. Ten minutes before I go to the gym to watch the start of the festival, I was pulled aside by one of the teachers. She told me that I would conduct all the teachers and students in their big finale song. She gave me a baton and dashed off before I had a chance to say "huh?!"


All the grades had a performance to do. The first graders did a song with their air power portable keyboards.


Next were the fourth graders doing a report on school trips and the importance of recycling. The report was followed by a traditional Japanese dance and then a performance on their recorders.


The third performance was done by the third graders. This year they did a play on the chinese zodiac. It was hilarious how they had to gesture who they were and making animal noises. The parents seemed to have a good time.

Intermission

After the third graders, there was a brief intermission where the audience could check out the artwork of the students. Some involved crafts that they made in class, as well as science projects about Goto History. During this time I was able to chat with some of the students and asked how they felt about their performance and what they thought about the performances that has happened so far.



The next group were the fifth graders. Before the play started, they did an "Interview the new teacher" segment. Again, like the baton incident, they shuffled me up there before I could say "huh?!!" A couple of the boys asked me some questions in English and I responded back. It wasn't hard, but it would've been nice if they warn me of things that involves me talking to a large group of people.



They did The Three Little Pigs in English. I did the script for them to memorize. If you think back to the story during the dialoge between the fox and the pig, you remember it was a little sing songy. I made them do it that way and had the fox exaggerate the "blowing down" motion. It was hilarious during practice, but it was really good. After the play, they did a dance that Vicky made last year but could never get the students to learn. So this year, they managed to do it. When I first saw it, I was pretty impressed that the teacher was able to come up with it. When I realized that Vicky did it, it made sense. The only reason is that their dance was very...western. All the dancing I've seen on the islands are traditional ones that mimicked the motion of fisherman from the old days. This dance was an actual dance that we're accustomed to seeing.


After their performance, they had another interview. It was with Vicky. They asked her if she enjoyed the performance and what she thought about the festival in general. I think she was a little surprised as well.



After the interview, they had the kindergarderners do their performance. They did a little dance and a hula hoop demonstration. It was hilarious because when they were dancing, it was clear that they were just following what their teacher, who was hiding behind the curtain on the side, was doing. So all their heads were turned to that side as they all fumbled along the dance. When the hula hoop demo started, everyone was laughing because some kids could do it very well.


After the kids were finished, it was time for the school to sing a song. This was the part where they asked me to conduct the teachers and students. Lucky for my drum major year, or else I would've been lost counting to four..haha


After the song, they had yet another, unexpected after performance interview. This time, my support teacher did the interviewing (she didn't know she was going to.) I did a impromptu self introduction and she asked me questions about how everyone did and stuff.



The next group were the second graders. Their performance was a play on how to write kanji. They would do full body motions on how to draw them. It came with noises and little kicks to signify dots or whatever. It was very funny and everyone had a good laugh!



The final group were my sixth graders doing a news cast on school trips. A little boring for the last play, but it ended with them coming out in costume to do a short skit on something. I didn't quite understand what it was, but it was funny anyway.


The festival only lasted until noon. In America, school would be out and you're free to go home. Not in Japan. Afternoon classes resumed starting with the students cleaning up the gym and putting stuff away. I ate my lunch with the first graders. They showed me how to eat rice using nori (even though I knew how, just wanting to amuse the kids). It's funny seeing ten kids trying to grab your attention on how to put rice on the nori. School resumed as normal afterwards.

It was a pretty fun day.