Halloween Weekend, Part 1 - Kansai Gaidai festival

(Austin) The weekend of Halloween was quite eventful. Kansai Gaidai had its annual School Festival on the Friday and Saturday of Halloween weekend (30th and 31st). This is an event that all the Japanese students have been preparing for for months. We often see large groups of kids dancing in front of the huge windows on campus practicing.

That being said, there were many food stands setup by students. professional bands came, and it was in general a very active energetic event. We went to the festival on the Friday the 30th.

I grabbed a few photos as we walked around.  Sorry, these aren't the best of quality and don't really show the full festival. I took these as we were leaving. Again, sorry :o

The best part, for me, was the A-Capella singing. The skill of these students was truly amazing.  And it wasn't just Japanese songs either, they also did songs from Disney movies like Under The Sea from The Little Mermaid.  The Japanese school curriculum has classes and instruction for music and vocals, starting from elementary school. And it shows. These kids were great.

As I mentioned earlier, in the months leading up to this students had been practicing dancing so I captured some videos for you to see.  They're pretty good in my opinion.

After a few hours we were invited by our friends Yusaku and his girlfriend, Georgia, to go to Umeda, Osaka to go to a bookstore (Bookstore: 本屋, pronounced: Hon-ya). So, we left the festival, took a bus and 2 trains, and arrived in Umeda. After a brief walk, we got to the the bookstore.  Sorry, I didn't take any more pictures of the building.  The bookstore was 7 floors high with an additional floor below ground. While Georgia and Yusaku went upstairs (Yusaku really wanted to look at the English Grammar books), Elijah and I went downstairs to the Manga (Japanese Comics) section.

After looking around for a long time, we decided to buy 4 different series. I bought 3 books, Log Horizon Vol.1, ReLIFE Vol.1, and No Game, No Life Vol.1.  Elijah bought Nisekoi Vol.1 and No Game, No Life Vol.1.  They are in Japanese, so we are going to try and translate them by hand :)

I did take a few pictures of stuff I recognized inside.

Great manga called Boku no Hero Academia

Translates to My Hero Academia. Poster is announcing its new Anime adaptation.

One-Punch Man. Also another great manga. 

Poster is, once again, announcing its anime adaptation (it is great btw, go watch it if you like anime!)

This is a manga series that I've yet to read called A Certain Scientific Accelerator.

It is a spin-off from A Certain Magical Index and A Certain Scientific Railgun.

No idea what this is from, but it is great.  Yes, that is a dry-erase board.

MR. SKELETON MAN WILL RULE THE WORLD.

This is a -huge- book, from what little I could see of the inside it seems to have maps and descriptions of the world that OVERLORD takes place in.

After we bought out books, we went and ate dinner.  We went to a bar where all food items cost 300 yen (CHEAP) and you can continually order. Food was great. A picture of it is shown below.

Afterwards we went home.  Thus ends our escapades on Friday. Saturday's adventures will be posted in Part 2.

Aki Matsuri Videos

(Austin) I want to preface this by saying sorry for the lack of updates lately.  School has been pretty busy and I recently started a few new personal programming projects, so when I -did- have free time from school, my time was consumed by that.  The posts over the next few days will be playing catch up on these 2-3 weeks of no posts.

With that said, here are some videos of the Aki Matsuri (fall festival) that Elijah posted about already here.

As a note, something went wrong when recording these videos, so there is no audio. I am sorry :/

This features the festival's Danjiri, a special Box, pushed by the locals that contains the local "Kami", or God.

Another video about the Danjiri, this time focused on the dancing.

Okinawan Festival (Osaka Trip, part 1)

-Austin

Last weekend on Sunday (9/15/2015) Elijah and I went to Osaka.

The purpose of this trip was to attend a festival that celebrated Okinawan culture. It was INCREDIBLY hot that day, partly due to the lack of shade.  That being said, the food was good and there were performers near the stage. Sorry, not many captions. If you have questions feel free to leave a comment question :)

Chicken and a Bratwurst. The chicken was amazing. 

I did record a bit of their dancing along with the music they were playing but.. my phone's mic isn't super great, so the audio quality is LOUD and not great quality.  Turn down your speakers before watching the video.

We only stayed for a few hours due to the heat. Part 2 of our trip coming soon™.

Opening Ceremony Visual Aid

I meant to upload this the day of the Opening Ceremony.. but then I got lazy. Specifically because there are videos involved and I didn't know how I wanted to deal with them.

That being said, the opening ceremony was really interesting to see. The food was also really good. The banquet was a combination of foods from around the world. There were the typical Japanese foods likes Curry Rice but there was also Italian Pizza and American Cheese Burgers. 

The pictures are of the Street Performance preformed at the Opening Ceremony. It is called Nankin Tamasudare, a traditional Japanese performance using lightly woven bamboo sticks to make shapes.

Torii Gates

Suspension Bridge

Arch

So many arches you'd think you were in ancient Rome!

A School of fish

Up close and Fishy

Fishing rods, gotta catch that school of fish!

Mount Fuji

Just look at that mount range!

The performers after the ceremony was over.

I also took a short video of the actual performance.

NOTE: The audio is loud and... not very good. So I would turn down your speakers before playing.

A small example of what went on to make each shape.

This was them leaving after the performance was over.

Also, I got a single picture of the food before all the hungry college students decimated the table. It was a brutal fight for food, only the strongest survived.

Not pictured here were the other 3 tables exactly like this one plus the other food stands.

It was delicious.