Probably the only anime reference I’m putting in this post.

So yesterday was Osaka University’s Minoh Campus’ Natsu Matsuri, thanks to which I have been internet-less for the past 2 days thanks to the festivities going around about campus. So NO, I HAVE NOT WATCHED THE LAST EPISODE OF TOSHOKAN SENSOU AND NEITHER HAVE I READ ANY POSTS PERTAINING TO IT (sorry usagijen, biankita, and I think psgels and RIUVA had one) AND IF YOU SPOIL IT FOR ME REST ASSURED YOUR BALLS WILL FALL OFF AND BE FED TO SOME UNSUSPECTING ANIMAL (or if you’re a girl, well something similarly bad…) *ahem*

Despite that last point and that it’s not actually summer yet (this rainy season that’s supposed to transition us into summer doesn’t seem to be ending any time soon. It was raining for the most part of yesterday, yet it didn’t realy dampen the festivities as much as the bad pun would suggest), it was a decidedly fun way to spend the day on campus for once during the weekend =P

I think I’ve been asked a couple of times online by different people how I find life here since “they heard that the Japanese are pretty xenophobic”. Err, I guess it helps not having blond hair and blue eyes then? In all seriousness, I’m probably in the worst position to answer that question (which I’d like to think the answer to that is “That’s utter BS“) since our area has one of the highest concentrations of foreigners (mostly students) in the general vicinity of the city, this campus being originally the Osaka Univeristy for Foreign Studies before they merged with plain old Osaka University recently. The students here are either like me, from some far off land that’s not Japan here to learn the moonspeak, or are Japanese majoring in one of the many foreign languages from Hindi to Swahili offered here (Bahasa Malaysia is not strangely absent). So if anything, the locals around here are incredibly tolerant to our gaijin ways.

(Speaking of our gaijin ways, a lot of us took the chance to wear yukatas that day -wasn’t one of them because I was broke the last time I stopped at Uniqlo- though as commented from a friend, it seems everyone got theirs from Uniqlo since you could see the same patterns repeating soon enough.)

This Natsu Matsuri turned out to be more about celebrating the various cultures represented here on campus, which was pretty cool since we got to try food from all around the world besides the traditional Matsuri-fare of yakisoba/takoyaki/etc., run by the students studying the associated foreign language. So you got your fair share of people in sarees, qipaos, idon’tknowwhattheycallthatnationaloutfit, etc along with all the yukata-wearing crowd.

Random stage performance I wasn’t really watching.

Also a bunch of cool performances held both indoors and out.

The taiko drum performance was… bone-rattling to say the least. A good watch/listen, really strong performance. Though I felt horrible for the two kids whose job was to crouch down and hold the table the main drummer was standing on in place so that it didn’t collapse.

Later in the same place – the belly dancing performance. To state the obvious, the hall was 10 times more crowded than it was during the drummers’ session -_-”. Which made things ridiculously hot, and that has nothing to do with the 20 odd dancers streaming around (like seriously, who would’ve thought a dance club on the fine art of hip movement would attract so many members? *sarcasm*) Seriously though, props to the dancers for actually being able to execute the harder than they look movements (not that I’ve tried or anything *coughs*).

They darkened the hall and my flashless camera phone is grainy enough in daylight, so there.

The university cheerleading squad, the Rebels, had one too. Not too into the American-style cheerleading thing. Call me a weeaboo for liking the male-uniform wearing ouendans if you must.

Harems VS Lolis. Choose your poison.

The main highlight of the day would have to be the bon odori at the end (even if the rain poured down the hardest then) where everyone was urged to do mroe than just walk around the centre stage and clap :P

This troupe of young dancers aged 8 to 12 (if I remember correctly) came and totally livened the place up with their incredibly woah moves and well, just about everyone around was prompted to follow along even if they didn’t have a single dancing bone in the body *coughscoughs* Let’s jsut say everyone dancing spinning about and flailing their arms wildly in the air like and with a bunch of young kids was never so much fun XD

The dancing carried on till the end of the festival, and seemed to get crazier as time went on. Instead of the usual traditional bon odori tunes, they played a bunch of modernized upbeat versions, as well as songs I thought I’d never hear ever again (Cartoon Heroes???), and so did the dance moves they were doing for us to follow. Lots of jumping back and forth, seemingly random hand waving and twirling ensued (there was one song that went “migi migi hidari (right right left…)” or something over and over again that confused me a lot XD), and though it was impossible for someone as klutzy as myself to do them in any sort of ‘correct’ order, it wasn’t like anyone cared :P Mindless physical acivites 4tw XD

Trust me, there’d be more undecipherable pictures if I wasn’t too busy being lodged in the crowd for the msot part. Finally got tired and hungry and started going through the stalls again since most of them were closing and selling off food at huge discounts :P

Okay, the day was definitely huge fun and beat the hell out of being cooped indoors studying kanji or blogging. Now if you excuse me I’ve got that final episode to watch before someone spoils it for me…