JUKEBOX: The Greatest Hits of AIU

This took place on October 7th and 8th of the year 2012. School festivals are a huge thing in Japan. When I imagine a school festival, I would imagine the school selling different types of food and have some type of entertainment. Thinking of UC's festivals, the clubs don't normally sell food or do anything. It's usually a group or an individual doing something - like drawing on the sidewalk with chalk. It's nothing big. I used to imagine having a school festival like the one in GREASE (the movie), where there were booths and a carnival house and singing and dancing with people knowing the choreography already. I always wanted to partake in a festival like that. And AIU allowed me a chance to do something similar to that. (There was no spinny house thingy or randomly breaking out into song where everyone knew the lyrics to, but whatevs)

in case you don't know what I am referencing... remix!
In most of my blogs, I try to have it in the order that it would appear in so it would be like, this happened then this happened follow by this. But this time, I think I will group it, because it was a long time ago and I should have had this done shortly afterwards~ Stupid midterms and whatnot:/ Also, I am not going to say much, I think. But that could change as I am uploading photos.

Group 1: Stalls and such

They slid noodles down that and you have to catch it with your chopsticks. I did not do it, but Mim gave me some of hers.

I actually don't know what they were selling here. Every time I walked past it, it was closed? Not a good marketing strategy if you ask me?

Christine and I representing the Taiwan food stand~!!! ^_^ (truth be told, I did no actual work except stand there for this picture and distract the lovely ladies from working~)


Group 2: Decorations
Each area had it's own special theme to it; each theme is based on a musical genre. In order of how I am uploading the pictures: JAZZ (common room between B and C building), HIP-HOP (the hallway going to C building), and COUNTRY (in front of the cafeteria). They did have POP and some other one, but I did not go into those areas~ ^^;;

The bartender and I are homies

I tried copying all the poses of the following pictures, but I did not get pictures of it~ I'm too gangsta for pictures (plus I failed at a few of them ^^;;

ONE-san~!! ♥

Hey, these kids look pretty cool~ oh, wait, that's the OUTSIDERZ~!!

I wanted to do this, but there was little kids around it each time I walked by it so I felt like they would think I was weird or too old~ :(

Group 3: FOODZ

Delicious crepes made by Marie~ ♥

Apple muffins from the Scandinavia Cafe~

Anpan fish pancake

Delicious doughnut pastries made by my Japanese Traditional Dance members~ ^0^ they also gave me green tea~

Banana and chocolate with whip cream from the Tennis Club~!
Group 4: THE OUTSIDERZ
In case you didn't know, the OUTSIDERZ is part of a dance crew that my friend Jessica had created. When we went to the first meeting of the dance club, they basically told us that they were not going to let people join immediately because all the groups were practicing for the (this) festival. Well, we wanted to dance and dance as soon as possible. So why not form our own group? :D The OUTSIDERZ are made up of 11 people representing 9 different countries and all with different backgrounds in dance. However, for the AIU festival, only 4 of us had performed to kind of spread the word about the OUTSIDERZ. The four people were Jessica, Kin, Marie, and myself. We did a routine to Janet Jackson's Feedback (song below). It was all choreographed by us with lots of freestyle in it. Sadly, I cannot find any video recordings of it. :/ I had a wonderful time with you guys~! Thank you for making this festival a great memory for me ♥

Kin (Hong Kong) introducing Marie (France), Jessica (USA), and myself (USA)

Always all smiles :D

One of our choreographed sections

Marie and I are kurmping it freestlye~! ;D
Group 5: IAC BOOTH
One of the clubs that I had joined, IAC (Intercultural Affairs Committee) promotes interaction between the international students and the Japanese students. For the festival, we set up a classroom"booth" dedicated to serving the children and younger generations. Because all of this was happening in October, we made our theme HALLOWEEN!!!!! Below are pictures of our booth/classrooms.

Yushi and Sara working the Ring Toss Booth

Naoki "working" the costume dress-up booth

Where the children got their photos taken

If you look in the back, there are two different games you could play: Pin the limb onto the corresponding body (either the Zombie or Frankenstein) or Pin the Face onto the Pumpkin

The booth I was working at... Musical Candy Walk! I would count to three then clap my hands, all the children would go around into a circle until I clapped my hands again. When they stopped, they would look down at the picture they were standing on and if that picture was called or the picture closest to them, they get to win a pize: a small bag of candy! :D
Group 6: Things to Do...
When you aren't working the booths or eating, that is. In the front lawn across from the Cafeteria area/Komachi and Multi-Purpose Hall was a stage that held many performances. There was dance performances from the Dance Club, a fashion show that my friends participated in, dance performances from the EAP (mandatory class for the freshies to learn/improve English), and a "famous" Japanese singer from Akita prefecture named Sugawara Suyuri. Besides the main stage on the front lawn, in the Multi-Purpose Hall, there was a kimono fashion show as well. A few of my friends participated in that and got to wear beautiful kimonos around for the festival. So jealous!! In one of the booths, they performed a Hawaiian dance which then followed them teaching us the choreography for the dance. It was so much fun!!! There was also bands playing and the A Capella group singing in Student Hall as well. They were really good!!

A Capella group

Fashion show that Ellen participated in using Danie as a model

EAP performance

EAP performance

EAP performance

EAP performances

EAP performances

Two guys singing... they were good! And teh one sounded a bit like Daesung form Big Bang

Hawaiian dance performance. My Japanese Traditional Dance sempai is the one with the side pony-tail

Me learning the Hawaiian dance~

Piraya participated in the kimono fashion show as well... and Mim is in casual wear~ :p

Sugawara Suyuri. I don't think she performed this song, but it was featured in Final Fantasy so maybe someone might know it?

I forgot to mention that there was also a Kanto demostration, didn't I? Oops~ Well, our Kanto team is pretty cool. This is basically what the Kanto thingy is (see video below) The video however is not from the same festival year however; if you looked at the date on the video, it's from two years ago.

Group 7: Night time
So, the festival started about 9~10 in the morning on both days, I think and ended late at night. We got to see a bonfire and get free hot cocoa (which was kind of gross tasting if you ask me), paper lanterns were let loose into the sky (but only a certain distance because they were still held down by a string and people holding said string), fireworks, a video presentation, and fun with friends. Oh, and there was the Kanto demostration, but since I put that in the one above, I thought it would be repetitive if I put it here...

Bonfire

Paper lanterns

AIU looked so beautiful at nighttime ♥

I would like to apologize for how long it took to actually post this. I would work on it on my freetime, but then I would get distracted with facebook, tumblr, youtube, and you know actual real life friends. I have a lot of posts in my queue waiting for me to post them. Soon, I will be caught up again. Just give me time. I promise there will be quite a few posts within a short time being posted one right after the other. I wanted to post things according to timeline, but that's not happening. I am going to post now until I catch up based on how close it is to being finished so please forgive me for my jumping from time to time.

Hope you all enjoyed reading and looking at all the pictures. If you want to see more, they are all available on my facebook page under the "JUKEBOX" folder in the pictures page. Thanks, guys! ^_^ Also, some of the pictures do not belong to me. I looked at/downloaded quite a bit of photos from others (like all the OUTSIDERZ ones plus 3 others). I am going to go through everyone's photos again and then figure out who each photo that I took belonged to. I will credit when I find yours. So I apologize now for posting without having everything credited properly like my other posts.