This weekend is Soka Universities annual cultural festival. SoDaiSai. It is a pretty big event, and I'm pretty sure someone said it was the biggest festival in Hachioji. Therefore we all had Friday off to prepare. I didn't join any of the groups participating in the festival so I didn't have anything to do today. I wanted to join some groups, but since I spent most of my time going back and forth to the Kyudo club trying to figure out if/how I can join, by the time I found out I couldn't it was to late to join any of the other groups. Plus even if I had been allowed to join the Kyudo club it turns out they don't do any sort of booth or showing for the festival, so I would have been in the same situation I am in now. So I took today to sleep in till about 12:00. I then went into town and explored some parts of the city I have never been to. Turns out there wasn't much. Only place I found of interest was a Kendo shop selling all the different types of armour, swords, etc. going to go there later with another of the International Students taking a Kendo class to help him buy his uniform.
After that I went shopping a bit. I bought two different model kits to build, both about 600yen ($8). One was an SD version of Wing Gundam Ka
It was a fairly easy build since the SD line of Gundam models is meant for children, but it was enjoyable.
The other one is from a series I had never heard of before called Danball Senki.
This one is called Jester, which is pretty on the nose for what it is, its a robot that looks like a Jester but carrying a giant scythe. That thing at its feet is some kind of weird dice thing for a game you can play if you have two different models from the series. This one was more fun to build because I've never built this type of model kit before, and I've been building Gundam models since I was like 9.
I didn't bother with painting the models like I normally would since I am only here for another 4 months I wouldn't be able to transport them back with out them getting damaged in the process. That's also why I didn't want to buy a full size model kit around the 8000yen ($100) range because it would be to big to bring back safely.
Then as I walked around the city I saw a large festival going on called 八王子古本まつり. Basically a large 2nd hand book selling festival. Of course everything was in Japanese, but I did find a very large manga section. The prices were very good. Whole manga series consisting of 30 volumes like Inyuasha, or Ramna 1/2 going for like 4000yen ($55). Considering we in America pay about $10-$15 per manga Volume this was an extremely good deal. I ended up buying a set of 11.
The series is called サイコ(MPD Psycho in America) According to research I did after I got back the MPD part is Multiple Personality Detective. It is apparently a series about a detective with multiple personalities hunting down psychos. I'm gonna try and read it the best I can hopefully there isn't to much Kanji. I may go back tomorrow depending on what time they start. They had another complete series I really wanted that was also 1000yen (Death Note), but I wouldn't have been able to bring it home due to lack of space in my Bicycles basket. hopefully the festival stuff doesn't start to early so I'll have time to go get it before the opening concert starts.
Other than all of that today was pretty much a lazy day. Tomorrow is Keyfest which is basically a smaller festival to kick start the larger festival, SoDaiSai. It a huge music concert/dance/ opening ceremony thing where formal dress is required. I am very glad I actually decided to bring my nice suit here with me because none of my other cloths I have here are even close to formal wear. Sunday and Monday are the SoDaiSai festival days. I will probably go all day Sunday, according to other people who went last year, there will be enough going on to keep me busy seeing all the different things from about 9:00 to 19:00. They didn't mention much about going 2 days in a row, so I will have to find something to do on Monday. I may either go somewhere, or offer my help to one of the International Student run booths, who knows. Then Tuesday is the clean up day, and I've been told only the organizers need to clean, everyone else its optional and can rest if they want. Depending on what I end up doing I may end up volunteering to help clean. Then classes start up again on Wednesday.
I will be taking a bunch of pictures and videos of the two festivals and will post them here and my thoughts on the whole Japanese Festival experience.
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