The Kyoto Student Festival

Sunday was the Kyoto Student Festival at Heian Jingu shrine, and it was seriously a blast. The previous day’s events had been at Kyoto Station, but I don’t think that the sheer size of Sunday could have been accommodated in such a small space. Essentially, dance groups from all over Kyoto and, I believe, Osaka competed in three or more locations set up in the blocked-off street behind the shrine’s Torii arch. The dance styles ranged from modern renditions of Japanese folk dances to hula to flamenco, cheerleading, modern and even break dancing. Each group had its own choreography, costumes and some had even made their own mixes to dance to. While they were seriously talented on the whole, the main impression that I got was that they were having a lot of fun with what they were doing, from the little middle-school cheerleaders to the older women doing Okinawan folk dances. Besides the dancing, there was also a kids’ game area, a couple stands for buying souvenirs and student-run booths selling food. I was also seriously impressed with the salesmanship skills of the booth people. Every booth was over-staffed and run with efficiency by students who, again, looked like they were having a great time. They would try to grab attention with sales pitches, signs, pamphlets, all matter of things. I think that this would be the best place ever to recruit the next generation of salesmen for anything. I have never been so tempted to buy amateur-made foods of unknown origin. After the festival I began a long and tortuous search for a bus stop that would provide me with a means to get home. I finally found one (with some help from a couple of nice people) and when the bus I needed finally came it was so crowded that I went for several stops before I was no longer packed in like a sardine, and several more before I could sit down. Unfortunately, the bus I was on got me only a certain portion of the way home before bedding down for the night, at which point I had to wait for another bus. It wasn’t until I got home rather later than I had intended that I learned that I’d taken a bus going the wrong direction, adding at least 30 minutes to my travel time on a good day. I have to say though, it was still a good day.
-Make sure that you get on a bus going the correct direction.
-There are surprisingly few bus stops in the wrong part of Higashiyama.
-Nice people will do their best to help you, but they can’t really save you from your own bad sense of direction.
-Japanese students seem able to muster up a considerable amount of enthusiasm doing a school activity on a Sunday.
-Matcha (green tea) ice cream parfaits are amazing. The one I had today was matcha ice cream, cornflakes, red bean paste and sweet rice dumplings (dango).