工大祭 - Koudai Matsuri

It's definetly summer now in Kitami and this weekend, the univerity in my city, Kitami Institute of Technology, held a festival. My coworker and I went down on the second day of the event.

Like most school and university festivals, this was a good opportunity to see some of the research done at the uni and many clubs put on perfomances or had stalls out. There were also some performances and stalls from outside groups. Some of the groups of international students also had some stalls selling food from their countries.

Taiko drums. Damn they're loud.

This is what happens when you get your specatators to join in your performance. XD

I got my first taste of yosakoi dancing, a highly energetic dance style that originated in Kochi prefecture in the 1950s. The dancing is a combination of modern and traditional dance forms. For the second dance, the yosakoi team asked for people from the audience to join in, at which point about half the crowd tried to run away! The team eventually got enough volounteers. You can see the result above.

Since it was a matsuri, I decided to wear my yukata. It may seem a bit strange for a guy to wear a yukata, but it tends to go down very well with the Japanese when they see you wearing one. I was happy to learn that I wasn't the only one wearing a yukata, or a kimono for that matter. As well as some Japanese girls wearing yukata, some Chinese students were wearing furisode kimonos. I'm not the only one who was saying that they looked fantastic.

 

Summer has really begun here now. There wil be many more matsuri to come.