3/11 Waseda University School Festival

Having always seen school festivals in dramas, manga and anime, I was really excited about going to the Waseda one. Waseda University is one of the top universities in Japan, sitting right at the top together with Tokyo University and Keio University.

A-san, the volunteer who invited us to come, had warned us about the hugeness of the Waseda festival. And true enough, the place was packed! It was like the morning rush train but on the street, you kept on bumping into people's shoulders and it was unfortunately really difficult to get a general picture of how the festival was like. There were stalls and stages set up outside the campuses while clubs held activities inside the buildings. We walked around for a bit, mostly trying to keep track of where everyone walked and to make sure that no one got lost. As many as 150 000 people were expected to come on the two days the festival was opened, and it wouldn't surprise me if there were way more than that. Just looking at the amount of people, it was pretty amazing.

After a while, we got tired with just walking around so we decided to go to the main performance stage to see if something fun was happening there. And guess what? We came just right in time for the Boys Cheerleading performance! I think it's a great thing that a club like that exists, that it just isn't a girls-with-short-skirts-and-pompoms-thing anymore. Some of the guys seemed to be afraid that it'd look "gay" and really put a distance between themselves and that word. I don't really understand this unjustified fear towards gay people that a lot of men (not trying to be sexist, but it just seems like that) have. It's not like you'd get jumped on just because someone is gay or bi or anything that isn't heterosexual. We need to get past labels and view people as people! Although I do admit that labels are a comfortable system for people to choose who to deal or not to deal with. I'm not sure how Japanese people view this though. Sure there's a huge yaoi market, but I don't think it's representative of the whole population. You don't see homosexual couples openly showing their sexuality (we're just talking about holding hands and such) here much, so in terms of that I think Japan resembles Sweden. Though I'd like to think we're a bit more open, because, yeah, we Swedes like to point out how open we are about different sexualities and we pride ourselves on our welfare system and gender equality and so on. :D

Back to topic! The cheerleading acrobatic guys were amazing! They were so synchronized with each other and did breath-taking moves left and right, bulding human towers, air loops and what not!

They did seem a bit like idol boys though. I'm sure they have a loyal following of girls, heehee.

Walked around some more and went inside one of the buildings to check it out. We saw the last two minutes of a traditional Japanese dance performance. The moves were so refined and elegant, that was very interesting to watch. They also had a room where they played Morning Musume (girl idol group) music which people could freely dance to. I thought it'd mostly be otakus doing it but there were girls dancing too. A really wanted to but I think she didn't want to keep us back so she didn't try it. >_< We left the festival not long after, and on the way back to the station, a couple of Keio University students were handing out flyers about -their- school festival! Waseda and Keio are huge rivals so it was kind of fun to see Keio students trying to fetch more people to their side. They couldn't keep themselves from laughing while they handed their flyers out either, so I don't think they were taking it very seriously.

Most of the others went to the Sunshine City shopping mall in Ikebukuro to check out the Ice Cream City after that. I was tired so I went home, but I regret not going now! Some of you might've heard about all the strange flavours of ice cream they have in Japan, Ice Cream City is where you find all those! Curry ice cream, squid ice cream, sunflower ice cream... You name it! I think they had curry flavoured tea as well. Oooh, I should've gone!

6/11
So I finally caught up! Nothing out of the ordinary has happened the last couple of days, but hopefully I'll have new material to post soon. :D お待たせしました！