SCHOOL LIFE, SPECIAL INTEREST, CULTURE: Gakuensai

 A huge college tradition in Japan is Gakuensai, (学園祭, or School Festival) an annual event most colleges take part in, not only for the enjoyment of students but to show their appeal to outsiders by trying to display an exciting campus environment. There entails a great deal of preparation and planning for the festival, often weeks beforehand. The fact that it requires students to involve themselves with the festival in the middle of an academic semester says a lot to its importance. While these type of events occur in Japanese high school as well (culture and sports festivals that are carried out with vigorous preparation all while classes are carried out as usual), college festivals attract a much broader range of people from outside the school and undoubtedly entail a much larger amount of money. In short, it's a big deal.

 The most prominent of features at Gakuensai is the involvement of school clubs in being vendors of food, drink and other novelty items, as well as providing festival entertainment. The food is standard Japanese festival faire: yakitori, okonomiyaki, takoyaki, fried chicken, croquette etc. The drinks can either be soda or alcoholic beverages, if the school allows it. The University of Hyogo certainly did allow it.  As for entertainment, there are contests and events held on stages, and the music-oriented clubs perform concerts.

 The first Gakuensai festival I went to was at the arts college that neighbors the University of Hyogo campus. This festival had the fewest attendees between the other festivals I went to, and most of the people there were college-age or older. Because it was an art school, student creations were prominently displayed in exhibits and galleries, along with in vendor stands outside. One stand, which was mainly an alcohol vendor for shots priced at about 200 yen (around $2, although sadly more with the exchange rate, but still a cheap price for a shot), featured products made with hemp and some Japanese students who were very enthusiastic about studying cannabis. There were also performance art pieces featured inside the auditoriums. The amount of people I knew at the school was next to no one, and I had gone alone, so I did not know too much about what was going on.  I had fun, however, and left the festival somewhat inebriated on to other adventures with no academic value whatsoever.

 My second time at a Gakuensai was at the Kobe School for Foreign Language (神戸外国語大学). A friend from the school had invited me there and so I went for around three hours or so. Rain was steadily falling (ironically, they had delayed the festival from the day before when the forecast predicted rain but ended up not raining at all) and so it was hard to be enthused about experiencing anything at the festival. As the school focuses on foreign studies, there were plenty of other foreign students there. There were exhibits at the festival that displayed photos from students' travels overseas. I mainly focused on the music-oriented clubs, their "Keion" (generally the same as what the Folk Song Club does, as I had explained originally, but with a more serious focus on music) and their Folk Song Club. I paid more attention to the Keion club and their performances, which were generally well played but lacked any real sense of passion or vigor, something that mirrors the Keion club at the University of Hyogo. And after that, I left.

 While visiting the Gakuensai festivals at other campuses with as much thought as what I put into this blog entry, I was more focused on experiencing the festival at my school. Last Saturday through Monday brought the experience and left a clear impression of what Gakuensai is all about.