Nan Piece Matsuri!

My school festival, Minami Matsuri, was great. And it was One Piece themed! Well, technically Nan Piece (a pun on Minami) and had to do with something involving a puzzle piece, but the principal gave a speech about the theme and I could hear him explaining the plot to One Piece during the speech.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The festival was back in June. Preparation for it started weeks before the festival. The English club couldn't do anything that involved me because of the preparation. We were supposed to ask for donations to some charity. The teacher asked me to find a charity so I set out to find a charity that helped people help themselves. I found one and I was excited that the students would be able to learn about another country and its problems and learn how to truly help people.

However, none of that mattered because the teacher at some point apparently ditched my idea and instead found not one, but five charities that they would be donating to. Thus ruining any chance to learn anything. I talked them into making trees with hearts of different colors for each of the five charities, and I was in charge of making a video for them to show at the festival while they wrote a speech. Well, the third years wrote speeches, while the second years made donation boxes and hearts, and the new first years did a survey of all the new teachers and staff for some reason.

Since the focus of the video changed from one organization to five, it became a bit difficult to make a video. I was originally going to take the five organization's videos and combine them, but the students apparently didn't like it and I eventually just ripped a video of starving kids off of YouTube and called it a day. I let the students add animations and subtitles and we were good to go.

Meanwhile all the other clubs and classes were preparing, too. They had to collect a lot of cardboard, so I often saw them outside when I went to get lunch, lugging around tons of boxes. They were all building weird things from the cardboard and taking up space in the halls. Most were practicing a dance. All the third years were selling something, so I took the chance to preorder and bought one of everything. So I ended up with a stack of coupons for food. They had also constructed costumes and things from the cardboard. The noise of them trying to sell coupons (presumably to each other) was absurd. In Japan, it seems they believe people won't buy things unless you're yelling at them, so everyone was yelling as loud as they could, making it a quite painful experience.

During the actual festival, ESS gave their speech. One girl stumbled a little, not even noticeably, but she cried afterwards for some reason, which was unfortunate.

I spent most of the festival walking around and eating. I technically had to work for a bit, handing out slippers and fliers or something, but it was only for a short time and very easy. My coworker didn't like how I was handling things, apparently I need to be polite when dishing out shoes.

One of my other school's boys came over and helped out for some reason, probably he was dating one of the girls. I looked at all the rooms with decorations and stuff, bought some manga and magazines from the manga club, and stuff.

Apparently almost no one gave money to ESS, which was disappointing. We did end up making some money, which we divided into five and donated (presumably).

I was invited to see some of the third years rock out, but it wasn't anything that great. It was interesting to see them try though.

All the money they earned went to buying a new student printer/copier apparently.

It was a pretty fun festival, but now my wallet hurts...

And now pictures! I had to blur out some faces; many of the pictures were blurry to begin with.Hopefully I didn't miss anyone important.

I made the sombrero for an ESS pinata party that never happened. I guess it's decoration now.

The conductor called on me, who was sitting in one of the front rows in the aisle, to tell everyone if I enjoyed the song they had played. I was caught off guard and my simple answer didn't seem to satisfy him, but he moved on to quick for much else.

Also, tear down was fun. The kids began jumping on the boxes and smashing them.

My first and last Minami Matsuri was awesome (and One Piece themed).

Oh, also the class that built the 3D model of the town took over our ESS board. Oh well, at least it looked cool.