楽しかった文化祭です！！！ An Awesome School Festival!

EDIT EDIT: Fixed it! Turns out it wasn't an HTML prob after all, for those who wanted to know... EDIT: For some reason while playing with the HTML of my blog, I deleted comments! I'm working on it! Ok! So, another exciting week for Dakota!

Let's start on Wednesday. Tuesday was The Autumnal Equinox, so we had it off. Tuesday was I can't remember what I did... Anyways, Tuesday was the start of preparation for the school festival, also known as 文化祭(ぶんかさい -bunkasai). I had a little hand in it – making pizza! But first, we had to get our homeroom decorated. Our homeroom was going to be the "えんにち", ennichi, or snack bar. For the next three days, we decorated, talked, messed around, and had a lot of fun. I made a lot of new friends, and I'm beginning to understand most of what they say to me; I can even give a sensible response.

Through this somewhat out of the classroom experience with people my age, I have learned that they are not so different from American teenagers. However, there are no cliques, I think, in my class of 54 second-years. Everyone seems to get along, however the separation between boys and girls is much larger than at home. The boys tend to group together on one side of the room, and the girls on the other. There is still lot of interaction, But it is just different.

On Friday, the festival began with the Opening Ceremony. There was a quiz contest, and a battle of the bands, which, to say the least, was awesome. I would have to say it was much better than the one we have back home. Saturday was the day I made pizza! Unfortunately, we had not the adequate tools, nor manpower to make the dough, so it wasn't really making pizza, but topping and cooking bread, however! never fear, dear reader, for the best is yet to come!

We sold all forty pizzas, at 800¥ each. Pretty good, I think. We then watched the school dance, which was awesome. I have tried to learn a little bit of it, but alas, it is chotto muzukashi... Maybe by the end of the year, maybe.

The final day was clean up day, where we tore down all that we had spent so much caring time placing for families to see. It was a day of rejoicing, for despite the rain, the festival was a success, and I had a lot of fun. At the end of the day, as the clouds receded, to prove that what we had done was good, we were shown this message from the sky:

And so that was my school festival. And I know, Dave, if you are reading this, I realize that I didn't make a real pizza, but like I said, never fear. One of okaasan's friends (recall Yumi #1) loved the idea that I can make pizza so much, that she took me to the store to make a REAL one! So on Monday, (which I have off because it is between-semester break this week - jeez, i sure do have lot of days off... But they make up for it by having only a three week summer vacation) I made six true, doughy, delicious, pepperoni-bacon-peppers-onions-and-basil pizzas. Did I mention they were delicious? Ume is a Rokkasho slang word, which probably no other Japanese will understand. It means, "Holy crap this is amazing". Yeah. Thanks Dave, for showing me how to bake a good pie.

Well, that's all for now, dear readers, a little tidbit of my life here across the world. By the way, you may have noticed the new colors. Tell me if you like it. Also, I realize I told some of you that I was going to talk about school life, and I really was, but I realized halfway through that it was not appropriate for this post. Don't worry, I will explain soon, probably within the next few weeks. It is very exciting. Well, さようなら！Sayonara! ダコタ　ベンジャミン