Cultural Festival

(Big Danger in Little Osaka #13, 2008)

On Saturday I attended my school’s cultural festival, which was essentially a day for the students to showcase their various talents in music, dance and theatre. One of the first acts I saw was a dance troupe of second-year students who had called themselves ‘Let’s Dancing!’ I didn’t have the heart to tell them their mistake, especially since they’d had t-shirts printed. I also caught the last few minutes of a play but had absolutely no idea what was going on. However, I did understand one thing: even in Japan, dressing men up in women’s clothing is a guaranteed crowd pleaser. When two guys came out dressed in Sailor Moon outfits and attempted to seduce the male lead, the kids went nuts. Then someone jumped out of a box and instigated a dance routine, by which point I was completely lost.

But the day wasn’t just about the live performances: each class had also turned their homeroom into a stall of some kind. Some classes were selling things like food or hand-made pillows, while others got a little more adventurous. One second-year class actually turned their classroom into a maze made from cardboard boxes and school desks. When I tried to go in, I was told that it was actually a ‘Love Labyrinth’ and was made to go through holding hands with one of the female teachers, which got a lot of cheers from the kids. (They must’ve been having a slow morning.)

I was impressed at how much effort and planning the students put into decorating their classrooms and rehearsing their performances – especially since some of them can barely muster the motivation or energy to write a single sentence in English. Still, I can understand if they care more about showcasing their artistic talents than they do about study. And to be fair, there were some attempts to use English during the day: there was of course ‘Let’s Dancing!’, plus a band called ‘The Shakers’, and several stalls with English signs. One of the homerooms was displaying signs advertising different musical genres: ‘reggae’, ‘rock’, ‘pop’ and, uh, ‘fuck’. Did they mean ‘funk’? Knowing my students, probably not. Less ambiguous was a piece of graffiti on the Labyrinth wall: ‘Fuck Me’. Honestly, any chance to swear in English and they’ll take it.

As I walked the halls of the school, students were constantly asking me to come try their food, watch their band or walk through their profanity-filled love maze. Now, I get along with most of my students during class, but there’s always some tension there: I want them to learn English, and they would rather not. But at the festival, it was like we were all pals. The students were more relaxed and eager to chat, and I didn’t have to worry about keeping them in line. In fact, the kids were pretty much going wild and it was all perfectly fine (I assume – perhaps I neglected a huge chunk of my teaching responsibilities and will be fired on Monday). Instead of being the weird new foreign guy, I actually felt like a real part of my school. Lets hope this warm, fuzzy feeling doesn’t disappear the next time one of my students forgets how to spell ‘the’.