Much Ado About Bunkasai: Day 2

Hello, again. I have come upon a stroke of luck as everyone is in the Gym for Health which means I get the run of the classroom for one free period and have decided to use it to try and catch up on my blogs despite my efforts. Today I've got Sadou bu which means I won't be able to write tonight so I will try and get as much done in the next 35 minutes as I can.

I spent the other time googling a show called Liar Game which is shaping up to be a very interesting drama. Although right now they are on Season 2 and I kind of wanted to see if I could download season one. I've found links but they are mega upload which I can't use at school which means I'll have to do it at Koto's house. By the way mother, what happened to Quiz Show?

So, the second day of Bunkasai. Let me get my thoughts together. Okay, I've now shoved in all my pictures both to help me remember what to write about and so that everything doesn't delete all over again.

At the beginning of the second day, like the day before we all seated ourselves in the gym. I was right towards the back being number 40 in the class, we are seated by number. Vertically. Which means that I had to use my zoom to the fullest to get any idea of what was going on. Probably to the annoyance of the people behind me but this is my one and only Bunkasai so I don't really care.

The first item of the day was the school's band which is really quite impressive considering you can here the members practicing almost every day after school. Their performance had a variety of songs, two of which I knew I think, I'd heard them on the radio and was able to hum along and then for their final piece they did a Walt Disney medley and everyone put on Mickey and Minney Mouse ears, even the conductor which gave everyone a good laugh. Straight after the performance Ikeda left Bunkasai claiming Influenza which was the first signs of it in our class and left us worried about her and what Kiyo would do without his partner in Mamma Mia today.

After that, Baton Bu featuring Minori and Sayaka, they were pretty good although you would hear the occasional thump of a baton dropping to the floor and the footsteps scrambling after it whilst trying to look like nothing had happened. The second years did their performance to Aqua's Cartoon Heroes, a song which I haven't heard in quite a while so that was nice. They also did a cheerleading performance with Pom Poms.

With that over and done with, it came time for one of the biggest anticipatory events in Bunkasai: The Fashion Show. Class 7, I believe is kind of like the Home Economics class which means instead of doing ridiculous amounts of English they get to sow and cook. I have seen the class working in my spares but I didn't realise how amazing some of their skills were. It wasn't until the fashion show when we got to see their best works from the year that I understood how hard they worked. The dresses were really impressive, they made Yukata's, Kimono's, Fashionable dresses, Bridesmaid's and Wedding Dresses all of which seemed to be of a high quality.

It was a scramble to take photos, every one was clicking and flashing away, standing or kneeling on their seats, absolute chaos and being selfish, I promptly did the same in order to get some decent shots.

Most of them were blurred as the person was moving or on the stage too far away that even a Digital Zoon of 16.9x couldn't reach clearly. But I did get some decent ones although they turned out more arty than the kind of straight forward shots that I wanted but nonetheless, it was good.

Especially when the girls in the Wedding Dresses came out and everybody squealed when the teachers came out one by one in suits to be their partners, the best of which was the last when he actually lifted her up and carried her up the stairs. The students nearly died. Lolz.

Then they got this massive cake and fed it to each other like a real wedding. How hilarious. I actually got to eat some of the left over cake which was sponge with pieces of mandarin in it. After the hype of fashion show was over everyone departed to their various places and Coccomi got together in order to get changed for our performance at 12.00. I went over and got my stuff, being deprived of a watch I didn't realise that we were an hour early but everyone wanted to curl their hair to look pretty for their 10 minutes of fame. I was like, do mine!, but they were like, 'It's already curly...n00b...' It may be curly but it isn't pretty curly not after it has been put in and without hair stuff. >_<

So we changed and I hyped myself up, warmed up my voice, tried to calm down the people that were nenrvous and soon enough we were hauling ourselves upstairs for the big show that we'd been practising so long and hard for. Well, the performance itself was fine. The nerves in my voice showed a little on the first bit of my solo but I soon got into the groove of things. You could clearly see the audiences faces, not that many people came...maybe 50 or so. You could see Go-chan (our teacher) filming us on his video camera, I'd ask for the footage but he doesn't know how to do it and he wouldn't trust me with his precious video camera and Matt wearing a bright (!) orange shirt. Right... Chris also came which was nice, first time I'd seen him in quite a while, didn't get around to talking just a wave and a smile.

Once the performance we posed for some photos before I got changed and shot out the door hoping to be able to squeeze into the Haunted House between now and the 3rd year Coccomi class' performance one hour later. Yuki-chan kind of hoped along with me but I bumped into Mie-san (Hikari's mum) along the way and had to stop for a chat.

Once we got to the Haunted House I realised it was quite impossible as we only had half an hour left and the line was considerably long. I didn't even bothered to get in the line, instead I directly changed course for food considering I had to buy my own lunch today. Once I got to the bread, there wasn't much left and the line for everything else was long so I bought some sugary thing and ate it while walking towards the Gym, something you're not supposed to do but meh. Yuki-chan ditched me saying she wanted to get back the Gym although to be honest I didn't mind that much. Yuki is like the shyest person you'll ever meet, nice but socially very awkward which makes it a bit hard for her to pick up on some social clues. Very smart though but おとなしい to the max.

I got back to Gym with 10 minutes to spare, found Mie-san again then she ditched me and I sat minding things for Arina and Hikari just because I was sitting there. Mie-san's seat was stolen by Matt who I poked fun at. I think we've become friends, at least I've told him that the student-teacher relationship does not exist within the Communication Lounge where I spend half of my time. The dynamics between Japanese students and teachers and the Australian version differs greatly. You can muck around with teachers but still respect them but if you played around with a Japanese teachers they'd get mad. Except for Yamasaki sensei, he gravitates on the friendlier level, at least to me.

Anyway, sorry about that. I watched the third years performance of 'Oh Happy Day' and another Jebus song which I don't remember the name of right now. They weren't too bad, had a lot of energy.

After that, I had a quick wander around but not enough time to really do anything having to beat feet over to Sadou to do my stupid Kouken. (Kouken is when you help the person making the tea and greet the customers and stuff) I was second to go and luckily, only two actual customers were in the room, the others being an assortment of teachers and students. Yay.

I also got to leave early.

After that I ran to the haunted house, didn't care whether or not I had to go in by myself or not as it was my last chance and I had to get in. The line was shortish but I was still worried about getting cut off but luckily I saw some Coccomi people ahead of me, waved and discreetly sidled along beside them both moving up the line and finding company to scream with. In the line was Miyuki, Anna and possibly Akane (Don't remember) and Nami was also in the line. Nami was all like: 'I'm gonna die!' so I said, 'let's die together.' and then An-chan pointed out that she was with her boyfriend so I was like, well, 'I'll just die over here then...'

We got in pretty quickly and I wasn't scared at first,though the darkness in the classroom exceeded my imaginings. We were confronted with a rolling heads, spider webs, rounded a corner and there was a 'The Ring' style girl with the white dress and long hair reaching out to us. I promptly told her she was cute and asked her if she'd come home with me. Then there was a tunnell....my precious...., through the tunnel a person emerged from nowhere with a flashlight shadowing her face but around the corner laid horrors beyond my imagining.

You know the creepy chick from the Grudge? She was rolling around in the narrow corridor in front of us, we all sidled past and then she tried to grab my ankle which propelled me several feet into the air with a loud squeal and we all kind of just ran out of there like a bat out of hell while people chased us with a water squirty bottle. >_<

With the Haunted House over and done with, I had no more time but to return to the Gym for the closing ceremony which had a pretty slideshow with lots of pictures (I got in it again) and they announced the winner for the pictures made of paper. Of course, being awesome, our class won and Arina went up to accept the award as she had done the most work on it by far.

We had to end the day on a slightly more domestic note, cleaning, replacing desks and you remember that giant shoe in the planetarium? I helped take that apart. There was a hell of a lot of bottle lids glued to cardboard and everyone had trouble getting them off but I was like, 'Let me at them!' and I was by far the fastest, ripping and tearing like I was a dog without concern for my fingers (I even started bleeding) everyone was speechless and my unabashed enthusiasm. All I thought was, damn, this is a great stress reliever. Sometimes it feels good to be able to rip and tear things without getting in trouble.

With that, the day ended. We had some speeches and we thanked everyone. I was asked to do one, just like a thank you or our thoughts on how it went. Mine went a bit like this: 'This is my first and last bunkasai ever'...and every one went Awwwww... and then I kind of got teary as I'd had a lot of fun over the past few days and realised how sad I would be when I wouldn't be able to create anymore fabulous memories with these people. Then I just said I'd had a really good time and was happy I could share it with them.

Gah! I'm missing vs. Arashi so I'm going to wrap this up. I also was given a mini tea set by my Sadou teacher so I can make you n00bs tea the proper way when I get back.

Okay, I think that is all. I will get around to Sunday's numerous activities when I can. Possible Sunday or sometime next week, I'm going to a wedding on Saturday.

<3

Ashley-chan


Lolz.