Fall Break: Before and After

I just realized that I had forgotten to blog about some ultra-neat things that happened before break (!!) --

AKP gave us money to throw a Thanksgiving Party the Friday before break so that we could thank our host families for BEING SO AWESOME. So student council got together and planned the whole party, which took place in a large lecture hall on campus. We got there early to set up and shoved some tables together, hung some paper chains, and made Martin and Julia look Thanksgiving-festive :

Japanese Gothic (??)

Twins (!!)

Eventually our host families came and we started dinner. AKP bought us five or six Turkeys and the host families provided the rest of the food, since it was a potluck. It was a strange but tastey mix of Japanese food and American Thanksgiving foods.

After we finished eating, my song practica class went up to the front and we performed a stirring rendition of 'Popstar.' Youtube that song ! It was great and totally embarassing but for some reason I think the audience really loved us.

After the dinner party, I went bowling on Kawaramachi with Kate, Martin T, and Martin's neigbhor, Kohei. We played a couple of games normally and then got bored with that. Our next few games were all potty-shots and all left-handed. Kate and I teamed up and lost all the games against the boys except for the first one. What the guys don't know is that we were just letting them win.

The next day I went with Martin T to his hiking club meeting. We did a wimpy 10-minute run down by the Kamogawa and then went on a hike up 大文字, aka Daimonji. Daimonji is a mountain with a big 'dai' or 大 carved into its side. Every year there's a night when the city lights up the dai with fires. The image below is from google. Thanks google :

The day was nice and warm and it didn't take long to reach the top. When we were up there we were able to sit right in the middle of the 大. The parallel concrete lines in the picture below are the pits where the fires are lit. The kouyou (fall colors) were amazing :

The sunset was also pretty stellar:



The next night, Sunday, was 満月(mangetsu), aka a full moon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When we returned from break, Doshisha's Imadegawa campus (my campus) was in the middle of holding its annual school festival called 'Doshisha Eve.' The festival is three days long, but I went on the last day, Sunday.

I've never seen anything like this festival in the US. I wish our colleges had them. It was huge and there were so many people and performances. There were two stages set up where the music and dancing clubs, and individuals would perform. The hip-hop circle was amazing. There were also circle- and club-run food tents set up and indoors there were various kinds of themed cafes. There was even a cafe where all the guys dressed up like women. Since there was a HUGE line for that one, we didn't go, but I wish I had at least gotten a picture.

I went with Jessica and Faith and we bought food, watched the dancers and performances, saw a student-made movie in a classroom, and watched sweaty men wrestle with eachother in the outdoor wrestling ring.