So two weeks ago, we had a school festival here at Tokai! This was my first time participating in such a big event and it was overall fun! Back home, there's no way that the University of Winnipeg could pull something off that is nearly as similar as this, therefore I benefited greatly from the experience.

Now what exactly was this festival all about? I'm not quite sure, to be honest. All I know is that, from the south gate all the way down to the bottom of the "Tokai Hill", tents were set up and sold foods from different countries all over the world. On top of that, if you went up the hill, there were even more booths set up there! In total maybe... 100 or more booths were set up, selling various things (mostly food), where the average price was about 300 yen (about 3$ dollars). There were also concerts here and there, at night some Korean artists came over who are apparently very popular from the looks of it; the line up was huge! Within some of the buildings there was a few more activities from all the rec activities and clubs from the university, such as sign language and drawing. The last night of the festival, there were fireworks, but the best part was that we had no school the next day nor throughout the festival! So you can imagine how much fun it was!

I myself didn't participate too much in it for a few reasons. First of all, I still had judo practices. Second, I wanted to study haha. But I did walk around quite a bit giving "FREE HUGS" with Anzu (my sister's roommate when she came to Japan) and a few others girls. Now what is this whole free hugs thing? Don't ask me, I still don't know haha. I just like doing it and it's fun with Anzu. She kind of sucked me into and I had to say yes haha. We just hold signs saying free hugs and those willing come and give us free hugs. Now in Japan, hugging isn't really a common thing so many people are too shy. ESPECIALLY THE WOMEN! It really hit me that weekend how women can be reluctant to touch anyone. Obviously, I'm a stranger to most of them, therefore it's understandable, but for example, one girl was trying to push her friend to give me a hug, and her friend was soo scared, she fell to the ground in order not to get any closer to me. Heart breaking right? But yeah, during that time, I get to practice my Japanese with my friends so I don't mind doing it. I got a LOT of hugs that weekend.

My friends from the Japanese staff at both international dorms were working to help the Russian booth. I have also come to befriend most of the Russians that are part of the Bekka program and so I would find myself hanging out there as well! I tried their soup which was... okay. My mom has really ruined me for life when it comes to food. I would also help them a little bit, and I helped them bring down the tent on the last day!

One night, after the day of work was done, the staff and I went back to the dorms and cooked Nabe. I wrote already about this and you can read about it here: http://thesoundsofjapan.blogspot.jp/2014/11/friends-and-food.html

All in all, the festival was a pleasant experience and I was glad to be able to take part in it.

Here's a little taste of how it looked.