The Ricefield-Diary: Celebrating Creativity

There it came and there it went: Soukisai, Takaoka Campus' school festival. And with it the visit of three friends from Finland, who are at the moment as exchange students in Tokyo. With it also my last dance. The thing that maybe shocks me most is that it seems just such a short time ago that I saw TNC dancing on the school yard in my second week here and decided to join. Now it's been almost seven months and only three left. I catch myself at counting 'last times'

and find I don't like it. Last training, last time walking on stage with TNC, last time feeling the energy of the music connect me into the rest of the team, while we bow to it, rise to it and give our best to serve it.

Be it the last then. It hasn't been easy, but it has been worth it. And now that finally somebody from home could see me dance, it feels like a work completed.

Yes, somebody from home, somebody from Finland, came to be at Soukisai, and while at it, to see me dance.

Tia, Sini and Annika arrived here from Tokyo on Thursday morning. Through several problems with wrong busses and drivers not knowing their own route, it in the end was one of my teachers who drove with me to pick the girls up from somewhere near the coast where they had gotten off a bus that should have brought them to the campus. Well, if I had been clever I would have directed them to Takaoka's street car line, the Manyou-sen. I didn't and they ended up on the wrong bus and were about to walk the six kilometres back to campus when Hayashi-sensei jumped in. All four of us were extremely thankful and unbelievably embarrassed when he just left his lesson that morning to Ogawa-sensei and a senior student, Yama-chan, and drove off together with me to pick my Finns up from a convenient store along in the next town. Not only that, he also took the scenic route back, along the coast and still showed us a nearby temple.

I didn't know what to say then and I still don't know what to say now. I'd need at least around fifty more words for 'thank you' to be able to express my gratitude sufficiently, and I know the girls feel the same. THANK YOU, Hayashi-sensei!

After the trip back from the coast I showed them the campus. They saw my classmates, rooms, teachers, ate at the cantine, and were generally considered with great wonder from all Japanese around. A lot of fun!

The evening we spend in the Japanese style rooms of Senshinen, with beer and cocktails.

Unfortunately with beer and cocktails. I really didn't drink much, but hadn't considered the fact that at some times in the month acohol tends to have almost no effect on me while on others I drink one beer and feel wretched. Unfortunately, this time was the latter. Which meant that on Saturday I had a hangover. That day only TNC was dancing, all the dances from 2009, 2010 and 2011 as well as one more general yosakoi dance as filler while some needed to change costumes in between. I danced only 2011 of course. It didn't go very well. I tended to be off my mark pretty often, generally felt as if my body just didn't move right... argh.

But apart from that, the festival that presented itself to us was great. After I was through with dancing we started going round all the booths where students were selling self-made stuff. There was pretty much anything from a flea market over tons of stickers and postcards up until high end stuff like Shintani-senpai's urushi wares. Students had also set up small cafés in different parts of the school, while the 'real food', meaning lunch time hot stuff was covered in the stalls outside, lining the space in front of the stage on both sides. On the stage there was a programm on from 10:00 to 17:00 o'clock each day. But just when we got round to eat Takahashi-sensei's famous ramen, I felt nauseous enough that I couldn't finish it. Such a shame, because it was really so yummy...

In the afternoon my Finns and me made off for Takaoka station and from there went by train back to the seashore some kilometres north of Takaoka to pick seashells. Tia was in heaven. A wonder she didn't just bring a spade and shovel them into her bag in heaps. But it really was a lot of fun. And the cool wind and sea air made me feel very much better. So we picked seashells and watched the sun go down and listened to the ocean.

I was clever enough to not drink anything alcoholic that night.

Which resulted in a much better dance. At least it felt like it, I'm still waiting to see the video though. Anyway, on Sunday generally yosakoi was fantastic. There were four guest teams dancing and then TNC finished with this years dance. A great show, I think, and judging from the overall reaction of the audience.

Oh, by the way, did I mention they put me in first row for the dance?! Not because of skill, I think, but because they put everybody who was dancing with TNC for the last time in the first row, which, logically, included me. Still, because the stage was extremely small I was more like in first and a half row which was very fine by me. I wouldn't have minded being even further back, especially because I was also dancing not to the left as I had been used to all the time until now, but to the right which was, with my left-right inability, pretty tricky. But it was great, especially without hangover. And however perfect or not it might have looked in the end, it felt absolutely amazing.

After Yosakoi there were many other really cool events on stage. There was a Dance Show that was seriously awesome. It started out with a huge team for the entrance and then they split up into smaller teams for several individual performances. And damn they were good. They were amazing. The team I liked most were just two, a girl and boy, which were acting like puppet and puppet master, the master being the one with the hat. At the start and for the most part of the performance that was the guy, but toward the end he lost his hat and then the girl took it and took over. Absolutely, breathtakingly amazing.

Then there was Shaqler, four guys who had won the world championship in yoyo last year. Many years back I got that kind of trick-yoyo myself, but have never been able to do anything else with it apart from making it stay down at the end of it's string, turning there by itself for a few seconds. But what those guys did with their yoyos... if I hadn't seen them, I'd call it impossible. Unfortunately it started to rain a bit around then and we became hungry as well and it was harder to follow their performance from under the awning of the french fry booth.

Later there was another special yosakoi performance which we unfortunately watched only from inside the school building through the windows on the second floor. A shame really, I should have still tried to run down when I saw them start, because it looked really good, but through the glass it was impossible to hear much of the music except the basic rhythm.

They were dressed simply in black, dancing with, as well as without naruko, the team including most of the seniors of TNC and some people from other teams.

We still watched two of several bands before we went back to Senshinen to sort through our seashells from the previous day and Tia & Co. needed to pack their things again for their return.

In the evening we still went to the big Soukisai party which my friends were allowed to attend too. The more drunk the Japanese got the more they came and wanted to talk to the girls which was really fun. Around 22:30 I took the last street car home and the girls returned to Tokyo the night.

And today there's a normal day again at Takaoka Campus.

The school feels strange. All seems empty now that all the booths are gone again, now that the stage is cleared away, now that lolita dresses and halloween costumes and animal suits have disappeared, leaving behind people back to 'normal' as if nothing ever happened. It feels sad, to tell the truth. And I am happy to get out of it for a little time for I am off to Nara tomorrow, together with the master course people and 4^th grade students of urushi. I'm looking forward to another change of scenery, a holiday to mentally digest the time that has once again passed without ever turning back to see if I'm even able to keep pace.

Three days Nara, afterwards I'll stay in Kyoto once more until next Sunday.

But for now, some memories of 創己祭, Soukisai, ”Festival of the Creative Self” (hopefully I translated that right...)

All pictures taken by Sini Kyllönen! Thanks so much, Sini-chan!