Kannari Junior High School, Cultural Festival - 金成中学校文化祭

I actually planned on writing about this weeks before, when we had the actual school festival, but unfortunately, I didn't have time. I'm actually quite sick right now. Caught my first real cold of the year. Fortunately, today's a holiday for me, because I had to go on a business trip two friday's ago, which included me having to "work" on a saturday. So today, I'm just gonna try and relax at home, and write about as much as I can, before my memory becomes blurred.



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On October 20 and 21, we had the annual school festival. Pretty much all Japanese schools have these cultural festivals, called 文化祭, where the parents get to come into the school and watch their kids perform, and also hear about what they've been doing at school for the past half year. The Bunkasai's usually happen on weekends, so that the parents have a better chance of attending. Sure, coming to school on a weekend certainly feels strange, but since the teachers and students almost always come to school on the weekends anyways, it probably doesn't make a difference at all to them.



The days and weeks leading up to the festival were pretty hectic. I didn't have any designated role, being the ALT, so I was basically able to to continue doing whatever I was doing (which was basically studying kanji and Japanese all day). I could see the teachers around me running around, frantically getting posters and other presentations set up with the students' help. It seemed like a pretty big thing, but unfortunately, my JTE and the other teachers didn't really tell me much about it, other than "there's gonna be a festival next week". Being an ALT in Japan, a foreigner working in a foreign country, does sometimes feel alienating. The teachers were crazy busy, and they don't really have time to tell the ALT what's happening, but at the same time, I think I would feel a lot better if I was better informed about what was going on at the school.



Anyhow, all of that really doesn't matter at this point, since the festival's already over. Fortunately enough for me, one of the assistant teachers at my school, has a deep interest in English - he likes watching horror and b movies, and he loves american and british rock and roll, and heavy metal music. It's really funny though, because he's such a nice guy, with a shaved head, but extremely polite, and always helping the students and talking to the other teachers. I would never have been able to guess he likes to rock it with guns and roses, and the sex pistols, while watching zombies getting blown to pieces by machine gun fire.



The really cool thing, is that when I first came to Kannari Junior High School, I took a walk around the school, and bumped into him as well as the female gym teacher, at the pool area. At first they had no idea who I was (again, the gaijin in disguise factor at play here). When I walked up to them, and started speaking English, he was like "whoaaaaa your the new ALT?? nice to meet you!" that was the beginning of a great friendship here at Kannari Junior High~ We started talking about music, and then about movies, particularly the newest big movie at the time "Transfomers". (I'm a big-time Transformers fan, so I think I'll save that topic for another post.) The next few days and weeks at the end of August and beginning of September, I found at that he also liked playing the guitar. Afterschool, while the 1st and 2nd graders would be doing their bukatsu activities, he would be jamming around a group of sannensei. Then, for some reason or another, he found out that I also play the guitar, and he started talking to me about an upcoming "school festival". Apparently, he would be playing electric guitar with some of the sannensei - they would be performing a song called "大切なもの". Then he asked me I wanted to play at the festival as well? At first, I wasn't too sure. I had self-taught myself how to play the guitar back when I was in the 6th grade, but I hadn't played for the last 4 years since entering university. And at the same time, at my high point, I wouldn't really say I was the greatest. I could play songs that I liked, because I had practised a lot, but the chances of him knowing the same songs that I do were slim.



Or so I thought. It turns out that he was a big Oasis fan. not as big as me, but pretty big anyways. He suggestted we play an Oasis song on acoustic guitar. Fortunately, before I came to japan, I bought an acoustic guitar off my predecessor, so when I arrived at my new home for the first time, the guitar was already sitting on the little guitar stand in my room. For the next few weeks, I'd bring my guitar to school, and we'd practise between classes and after school. i also visited his home several times. He lives in a huge house, that his sister had designed! Apparently, she's at a design school in Tokyo right now. The house is amazing, and his mom's food is amazingly delicious. They make their own rice and vegetables in the fields around their house. His father used to be a principal, now retired, and his mother works at an elementary school. A family of teachers - amazing. When I walked into his room for the first time, my jaw litterally dropped. Spread our across shelves built into the walls of his room were piles upon piles of CDs DVDs, and music/movie booklets. This guy was a collector. He had every Oasis album, and that was nothing at all compared to the other stuff he had. he had limited edition pirates of the caribbean memorobilia. Japan really gets it good, when it comes to consumer culture. They always have special limited editions items that you can get if you're the first few people to buy a movie ticket for an upcoming movie, and so on. I can't remember the last time I got anything for lining up for an hour to see the newest movie on opening day. Japan is really the country of collector's items. Unfortunately, (or fortunately), I've lost basically any collector's spirit I may have once had, so I don't really feel anything, but it was quite amazing seeing all the stuff in his room.



He also took out some more precious stuff out of his desk. A few weeks before, at school, he had brought a stub of tickets, and handed them to me, telling me, those were his "most cherished items". I took a look, and holy moly, they were concert tickets for American, and British rock and heavy metal bands. There were at least 50 or so tickets. Frickin crazy! The stuff he took out of his desk, blew my mind as well. Apparently, he had been to sex pistols, rancid, and various other concerts. What he took out of his desk, were guitar picks and even a drum stick! You guessed it, he had gotten these at the concerts! You know, when the guitarist or drummer throws his picks and what not into the crowd of rabid, screaming fans? Almost impossible right? You'd never be that lucky right? Well this guy was, and he didn't get lucky just one time, he had gotten lucky 3-4-5-6 times. Amazing. What else can I possibly say?



Getting back to the actual point of this post - we started practising at his home. At first, we wanted to do "Wonderwall" by Oasis, by his was having trouble with the strumming. Wonderall if actually one of the easiest songs to play (it was the first song I taught myself), I would have to say, but the strumming is sometimes a bit tricky. Apparently, when he was a high school student, etc, and had played guitar like a maniac, that was all using an electric guitar. Playing an electric guitar is a lot different than playing an acoustic. I've used both before, but I'd have to say an electric is a lot easier to cover up mistakes, because anything you play on an electric just sounds cool and sexy. but, at the same time, if you just play chords (like i usually do on an acoustic) it sounds a bit boring after a while. solos, and guitar picking is much better with an electric, because the sound is amplified so much and you can make crazy effects using pedals, and all sorts of other machines. He had his friend come over with an electric guitar (his electric had broken somehow, probably out of exreme usage), and I heard him play a few parts of a few songs, and it sounded pretty impressive. I'm sure I wouldn't be able to play like him on an electric.

However, when it comes to the acoustic guitar, he had only started picking it up this year, and so although he was good at picking, he wasn't very good at basic strumming. Eventually, it looked like wonderwall would be too difficult for him. One day at school, he brought in sheet music for the Beatles's song "Let it Be". I had liked this song for a long time, and so we tried it out. We were able to get it down without many mistakes (it's a pretty simple song). Now we had to figure out who was going to sing. At first, I recommended both of us singing, but he said he was not good at singing, and a bit embarassed about singing in front of the whole school, so he recommended that I be the singer. I didn't mind, since I do enjoy singing songs that I can sing (with notes that I can actually hit). My voice usually starts breaking mid way through a song though, and it starts sounding raspy, kind of like how Liam Gallagher's voice now sounds after his billionth beer and cigarette. He liked the raspiness a lot, and said it sounded like cool like real rock. Maybe he was just flattering me, but it worked as I agreed to be the singer.

As the days leading up the festival passed by, we decided that maybe we would have time for two songs. Now, since Wonderwall was too difficult. We decided to go with "Stand By Me". This was one of his favourite oasis songs, and a song that I like as well. Also, it's not ridiculously difficult to sing, and pretty managable for me. So we decided to open with Let it Be and then do Stand by Me as an encore.

On October 4th, everyone had to audtion in front of the school council so that the teachers and some of the students could see what we had planned. The minutes leading up to the audition was probably the first time I actually felt a sense of nervousness since I came to Japan. For some reason, since coming to Japan, I've lost basically all sense of nervousness or apprehension. It's strange, but I feel a lot more confident here. (Maybe it's because the people aren't towering over me in height and body mass. Or maybe it's because everything looks and feels so familiar, even though I've never actually been here before, who knows?) Anyways, I found my throat drying up, so I drank some water from the water taps. Then it was time for the show. We performed Let it Be only. As we started the performance the room fell into dead silence. It seemed like everyone was really paying attention (although I couldn't tell for sure, since my eyes were glued to the sheet of paper in front of my with the lyrics). Unlike Stand By Me, I can't remember all the lyrics to Let It Be. And actually, Let it Be has a few high notes that are hard for me to hit. But all in all, it was a success, and the students seemed to really enjoy it. The teachers on the council on the other hand, didn't really give much of an impression. I guess they're not really into rock. They probably like classical music much better, and were wondering why they were gonna allow these renegades of rock perform at the school festival haha. The other teachers in the staff room however were excited and kept talking about the Beatles, and that they wanted to hear more songs from us at the festival. It gave us a lot more energy and confidence to go all out.

The day before the performance (the first day of the festival, October 20), we were supposed to have a trial run, where we could play on the stage for the first time, and check the position of the speakers and mics, etc. Finally, when it was our turn to go on the stage, the teacher in charge told us that we didn't have time to play the songs. Instead, she just asked us check the position of the chairs mics, etc, so we did that. The teachers on the council also told us, we wouldn't have time for 2 songs, so they told us to just play one. The funny thing is that the other teachers in the staff office were encouraging us to play more and more songs. What gives? Anyways, we decided it would be best not to offend the school council, so we went with just one song. But we decided to change it to Stand By Me by Oasis, cuz it just rocks so much better.

On the day of the performance, we shocked everyone by telling everyone we had changed the song to "Stand By Me" by Oasis. This was real drama at work here. The funniest part was, for our opening speeches, we decided to have it so that I would speak in Japanese, and that he would speak in English. It was hilarious, eveyrone got a kick out of watching the ALT speak Japanese, and watching the Japanese assistant teacher speak English. We also, had a lot of parents and towns people in the stands. It was an awesome feeling to be out there performing a kick ass song by Oasis. during the performance, I foudn that the mic really was positioned a little too far from my mouth, so I had to move closer to the mic while performing the song. It was a bit difficult and straning, and I couldn't help but smile and laugh. The kids and teachers were impressed with my singing so that was definitely cool. When the song was over, we gave our bows and thank yous, and walked off the stage. Again, another rock star feeling. Awesomeness.

The coolest thing was that in my subsequent visits to the various Elementary schools around my town, a few of the kids told me they had seen me before. I asked them "where??" and they told me "we saw you at the Kannari Junior High Festival, you were playing guitar and singing!", damn. I felt like a rock star again! Because the town is so small, the festival is not just for the school, but for the townspeople, and anyone is actually welcome to attend. These elementary school students also had brothers and sisters at the Junior High, or they would be attending the Junior High when they graduated from elementary (since there's only one junior high in the town). It definitely felt good to have that rock star feeling again! Also, a few of the elementary school parents were in the stands as well, watching my performance. It was definitely cool being able to do that.

As for "Let It Be", I think we'll save that for the next festival. And maybe, we'll even add a few more songs. Nirvana, anyone?