AIU Festival Day 2

So the best thing about the second day of the AIU festival was my performance, and the next best thing was the Namahage Taiko Drum performance.


So, my performance was a dance to a really old song (maybe 7-10 years old) that almost EVERY Japanese person knows: 慎吾ママ おはロック (Shingo Mama's Oha Rock)



However, here is my performance:


It was super fun to participate in the festival (even if I only embarrassed myself). But we had a couple people dance/sing along with us, including one super cute older woman. Also! My Host Mother and Sisters came and saw my performance, so the first time the daughters met me I was in a Pikachu Costume, and that was only the second time my Mother met me. モジモジ (。_。*))) [embarrassed]

After my performance (about 1pm ish) I wandered around the campus looking at all the decorations and attractions with my host family, we then talked and decided on our next meeting. After they left I took pictures of everything and saw my friends at their booths. I didn't really go to any specific events except for the dancing event (which was pretty cool), but I mostly dabbled here and there. Day 2 pictures start around #129 At the end of the day there was the closing ceremony and the Namahage Taiko drummers.

The closing ceremony featured all the awesome dances that everyone did (the best of the best) and the senior girls and boys performances. The girls had a movie, which was pretty cool, it was all about them passing/throwing stuff to each other without looking. It must have taken hours to shoot. The boys had a really fun dance performance- they did a huge pyramid with all the graduating seniors as well as some fun dance tricks.

Namahage are only found in Akita, and are kind of famous.Read more about Namahage here, and these Taiko drummers dressed up as Namahage and were AWESOME! At one point they came through the crowd and scared all the little kids- it was cute and scary at the same time! But they were such great drummers- it was so worth seeing them!

After the festival was over, there were fireworks. It was really a fun weekend and I was super sad to see it over.