Alice was a boy!

How is it already halfway through November?   And why haven't I posted in so long?  Well, basically I've been busy (and lazy) over the past couple weeks and for that I am sorry!  So, first I'll explain about the Hashi Junior High School Bunkasai (culture festival) which occurred on October 30th (gah! So far behind!).   It was fun but a bit exhausting (even though I was just watching) since it was an all day event.  I got to school as if it were a regular school day (even though it was a Sunday) around 8 AM (but I got to drive myself which was nice).  The cultural events started around 8:30 and continued until 5:30 with just an hour lunch break around noon. All the different classes sang a song and performed a play together.  Each of the three grades also sang a song as a whole and there were many small-group and individual performances as well.  For example, the brass band played a few numbers and some individual students did English speeches in front of the school.  Students had previously hung various art projects on the walls too (all the students came to school on Saturday to prepare).

 Some of the art projects involved colorful paper cranes.

The whole event took place in the gymnasium (which doubles as the auditorium since there is a stage).  There isn't any heating in the gym though (or maybe it just hasn't been turned on yet for the season) so I used a small blanket that I keep in my desk (a gift from Miyu-sensei) to keep warm.
During the lunch break everyone had a delicious meat and veggie stew over rice which had been hand made by some volunteers at the school.  Meanwhile in the gym a silent movie was playing (with an instrumental sound track) which seemed to have been recorded from a car's dashboard.   It showed the car's viewpoint as it went through some narrow streets of a seaside town on a drizzly day.  I thought it was pretty cool and so I watched it for a while.  Some of the landscape looked vaguely familiar to me and I heard some of the students saying "Natsukashii ne" which means 'I miss that!'.   I realized that I was probably looking at the area around the school before the tsunami. When I asked a teacher when the footage was taken she said early spring of 2010, just a year before the tsunami.  I think it had been recorded as part of a film project by someone in Sendai and had been recently sent to the school after the principal requested a copy.

After the lunch break there were many student-run performances like a talent show and a cross-dressing competition (yes, you read right)!   The mister-misses competition was extremely popular and had many competitors (mostly guys actually).  It was pretty hilarious, especially since some of the young male teachers participated as well.  I can't imagine that the mister-misses competition would have been popular in my junior high school... I wonder what makes Japan different?  Maybe the focus on cuteness?

Anyway,  I think I mentioned that some of the first years at Hashi wanted me to be in their class play during the culture festival.  Luckily that fell through but they still decided to do 'Alice in Wonderland'.  At the beginning of the play one of the female students was playing Alice but as soon as she went through the rabbit hole a male student (in a dress) replaced her, it was pretty clever.  The other first year class did Cinderella (also played by a male student) and a second year class did Snow White (again a boy).  The other classes created original plays that had to do with school life and (from what I could tell with my limited Japanese) all the students were playing their own genders.  So... it was an interesting day.