Bunkasai time!

This past weekend was my school's bunkasai. Bunkasai roughly translates to "culture festival" or "school festival." However, it is much more involved than any school festival I have ever attended in Canada. The bunkasai is a very important event for schools, mainly because it attracts new students, money, and popularity. If a school has a bad bunkasai, their enrollment for the next year may be in jeopardy and their ranking will no doubt go down. 

My school has a fun bunkasai, but it is not as good as other schools. I suppose this is mainly due to money; My school has the reputation of being the cheapest and stingiest school, so any effort the students put in is supported financially by their parents (students generally have no money, and they aren't allowed to have jobs at this school). The schools with very impressive bunkasai(s) usually have a lot of time, money, and supplies to work with. That being said, I'm always so impressed by the creativity of the students, because they can make something amazing from almost nothing (the main supplies are garbage bags, cardboard boxes, and paints). The most impressive thing is that it is organized entirely by the students. They decide what their class theme will be, they acquire supplies, they plan, they work tirelessly to decorate, and then on the day, they run their attractions. There is not much teacher involvement or direction. I can't imagine pulling off something like that when I was in high school...

The way the bunkasai works at my school is each classroom is responsible for creating an attraction. This attraction may be a haunted house, a food/drink shop, some other type of shop (one year a class sold fair trade goods), a game attraction (where you go through various challenges and can win prizes) or demonstrations and displays. In addition, many clubs put on events, too. For example, the tea ceremony club (茶道) allows visitors to participate in a tea ceremony, the flower arranging club (華道) displays their creations for visitors to see, the kendo club makes and sells udon, and the music and dance clubs have performances. During the bunkasai, there is always something to see: the choir, the brass band, student bands, debate, student dance groups, etc. 

After the bunkasai, awards are given out to classes who had the most visitors or made the most money, so there is a competitive aspect to it as well. 

This year, I couldn't take part in many parts of the bunkasai, but I served as judge for the debate club, I bought things from the students, and I walked around observing and chatting. When the festival was opened to the public, I got to see a lot of familiar faces from previous years. It's really fun to see old students, and especially to catch up with them :) My impression of the bunkasai this year is that there were too many haunted houses! Out of the 26 classrooms, there 8 haunted houses. Haha. Too many! But they seemed really popular, as there were always lineups to get in.

I didn't take photos this year. Even if I had, they can't be posted online, for safety reasons, of course.

This is the front of the program. It was designed by a student.

1st floor events and introduction. On the right are mini versions of posters for each classroom. The posters are voted on and the best posters win prizes as well. 

2nd floor guide.

3rd floor guide.

4th floor guide.

Club event advertisements. 

More clubs (lower) and then a performance schedule for various groups (upper).

Saturday's performance lineup.

The bunkasai lasted two days, but it was only open to the general public on the Saturday. On Friday, it was limited to PTA, teachers, alumni, students, and parents. Also on Friday, my favourite event of the bunkasai was held... It is something that is unique to my school... The Couple Contest. Each classroom selects two students to represent them in the couple contest. In other words, it's the fantasies of high school girls played out in front of the entire school by two girls pretending to be a couple (heterosexual couples only). Each couple performs a little scenario and dresses up for the part and the students vote on the best ones for each grade, and overall. The scenarios are the fantasies (usually, in some cases they're funny) of typical high school girls and the reactions from the audience are amazing. If the couple hugs or pretends to kiss, the students go wild and scream. It's a sight to behold. It's very strange to watch, but it is like a car wreck, you want to look away, but you can't. So odd.