学園祭 (School Festival!)

my second year students perform traditional Okinawan Eisa dancing


This past weekend was the biggest deal of the school year at Ginowan High. SCHOOL FESTIVAL! The kids prepared for months: dance routines, huge art projects, etc. For a long time I thought that Moulin Rouge/MC Hammer were just played on loop near our school pool for no good reason, but with the dawn of the School Festival, I realized that everything at Ginowan High School occurs with rhyme and reason. Rhyme and Reason.

my first year boys won first prize with their para-para dance routine

I know I talk about my 3-4 boys a lot, so I hope that you are all beginning to feel like you know them vicariously. So, if there were one thing in the world that you thought my 3-4 boys would NOT be famous for, what would it be?
hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
How about synchronized swimming?



Well, you've struck gold. In America, I think male synch-swimming is simply not something that could ever be considered cool. Which is why I found the whole business very amusing. The 18 year old sports boys are famous around this place for their synchronized swimming team, known as the Water Boys. The Water Boys are nation-wide in Japan: all boys' synchronized swimming in high schools are Water Boys. There's a movie that you should watch if you want to understand the psychology behind this Water Boys business. It's called "Water Boys." Ginowan high is one of few Water Boys teams in Okinawa, which makes us SPECIAL!

Yeah. This school festival blew me out of the water in general. I've been assured by fellow JETs (after having viewed my video footage, thank you Yvonne) that it was not an entirely typical school festival. Most festivals are apparently more sedate. There are a number of things that I never expect to see in my life. Among those:

two boys in a drag-show making out on the runway

-Boys break-dancing through a double jump-rope IN DRAG. Talk about high level of motor skills.
-Forty 17 year old Japanese girls with no pants on doing the Hammer (as in MC Hammer)
-Boys in geese costumes doing traditional Japanese dances

I could go on. There were some things that were definitely too obscene for school by my standards, but I think we have, generally speaking, a loosish grip on authority at my school. The only thing the administration did was turn the spot-light off the going-ons on stage when they got too bad. Mostly kids weren't misbehaving, it's only some of the senior boys and girls that really try to do things that aren't allowed. But some of the approved performances seemed awfully risky to me. The whole 2 day affair ended in a mad rush to the sports field at 8pm and crazed dancing round a huge bonfire.





I'll tell ya, my kids sure know how to dance. Some of the worse behaved kids had miraculous performances at this thing. The bad girls did a dumbfounding hip hop dance war. And I've been convinced that a few of my male students have inner-body structures of snakes instead of humans.