学園祭 School Festival

Been pretty busy lately. Last weekend was the fall school festival that is held annually at the Shodai Campus. Schools from around the area and locals come to sell fair goods. Families were selling used goods at the front of the school kind of like a flea market or a massive garage sale. From there you had vendors selling food and prize booths. These tents were run by school clubs or groups to raise money for club treasuries. For the most part it seemed like not a whole lot of money was made but all in all it was a good time for everyone. They had live bands (mostly student bands), what appeared to be a popularity contest, photo galleries, and a booth where you could have 15 minute Chinese lessons. I've been to a few festivals since I came to Japan but this was the first one I got the chance to participate.

A view of the campus during the fair

I was working two booths The English club and the mountain climbing club that were both selling various foods. My job was to stand in front of the booth and try and get wandering eyed customers to come and buy the food. Holding signs and shouting politely if customers would be interested in the various delicious hand made products actually began to get tiring after awhile. I began to feel like the annoying people who stand in the busy streets of Sannomiya shouting at everyone if they'd like to go and sing karaoke. I actually began to pity them because its extremely hard to get anyone to take the sale. The use of polite form makes everything you say so much longer too so you have to speak really fast to get it all out before someone walks by.

making takoyaki!

On the last day there were very few people who came. I don't know who's thought it was a good idea but to have a festival for three days and the last day its on is a regular working Monday doesn't make a lot of sense. Besides some retired folks and wandering children, the majority of the day was slow. That's when things began getting interesting. Since there were was no one to sell to the vendors began trying to sell to other vendors. Promises were made, "if you buy our food we'll come buy yours" and deals were carried out, "Here's some free ____ now promote our booth!". An interesting problem we had over at the mountain climbing club was the confusion of the food being a little different from the usual festival fare. At the festival you usually can get what is called takoyaki Its a dish made from a flour based batter fried into little balls that you put octopus in them and cover it with a sauce and other ingredients. Well in replacement of octopus we used squid; ikayaki. Before the festival I asked what we were making and I was told takoyaki, it wasn't until the day that I found out it wasn't octopus but squid. Which made for a little confusion when we were making the banner.

my drawing of an Octopus. At the top of the banner they wrote: "octopus is not added in"
to which I added "actually it is added in" to which they crossed it out and wrote "its not added in!!!"

Rain...

Unfortunately on the last day we got rained out and things began to get a little crazy. In desperation to sell something a lot of the booths dropped their prices. The foreign exchange group had all you could eat Chinese food for 100 yen (less then a dollar). People started giving away food out of shear kindness. It was insane and I wish more people knew about it or had a minute to stop by and eat practically for free. I ate pretty well this weekend (even if it wasn't exactly healthy) while making some new friends.

A story that needs telling

At the moment this story is incomplete and coming from word of mouth and a few pamphlets I've read. I hope to try and flesh it out in the future and coming back to this post as more information becomes available.

So for the first two months of my stay I've been spending the majority of my time going to school, meeting students, professors, and characters of all types. I've tried, like the Japanese exchange students sent to Evergreen to fit in as much as possible. This has proven to be quite difficult and noticeably impossible at times, seeing as I have very little responsibility assigned to me as a student. It has led however, to a growing curiosity to the inner workings of the college, its history, and the state of the exchange program I am currently taking part in.

From what I've heard from others the state of the exchange program is in a state of looming change, or uncertainty and due to certain complications in the past is not on "good terms". All of this has a pretty ominous feeling but it doesn't speak much truth. I still can't speak as to why the exchange program is not on good terms besides a few past incidents which will go unnamed and claims that communication between Evergreen and The Hyogo Economic/Business college has been what it was.

About 4 years ago the college I go to now was reformed with Hyogo prefecture University, bringing into the fold of a multitude of colleges around Hyogo prefecture. Before that it was a general college but it was forced to split its faculty in to two departments, Business and Economics. History, Law, English, Environment, and other professors who were not specialized in Business or Economics were forced to enter one of the two departments. Apparently professors who were well acquainted with each other joined the same department. So the school was not originally set up to be a Business and Economic school! This makes a lot of sense seeing as the curriculim is a bit strange and the type of professors pecuilar seeing as the college is suppose to be about business and economics. The students and faculty also seem to gravitate towards the department they've chosen.

Recently one of the other campuses had some interest in the exchange program but the problem is that this university would lose the opportunity to send two students to Evergreen. Also what about the students coming from Evergreen? There has been the possibility that the other campuses all over Hyogo prefecture would be open to Evergreen students. So instead of coming here other campus such as the nursing, engineering, or science campuses could be open to Evergreen Students. Would that mean students from those campuses would have an opportunity to come to Evergreen? All of it is a little perplexing and hinges on the fact of whether there is interest from the other campuses and the topic is brought up again whether there will be change or not.

So where do I come into all of this? I'm not really sure and I often worry how I am viewed having an affect on the future of the exchange program (thats probably one of the reason I go to school so much) recently I've felt a responsibility to be a spokesman for Evergreen College or somehow get involved into this mess, or improve the relationship between the two colleges but I think there are some things that can't be helped and other things I think I'm just imagining. Time will tell.