Day 39 - Yataimura Festival, Competetive Cooking and Karaoke!

Hey everyone, are you withstanding the cold?

It's becoming pretty nippy here too! I may have to buy some trousers!

October 20th was Waseda's Yataimura (屋台村) festival. At this festival there are lots of stalls - mostly food stalls - where the circles (clubs) try to sell things!

Apart from the food stalls there were some other things to do such as face painting and some games.
However, as I was taking part I did not get to check out the festival much!

Every year one of the circles I have joined takes part in the Yataimura by splitting into 4 groups or so and selling food. Each team has a theme or a country and has to make costumes, an advertisement board and some food to sell!

This year the teams were:
Peter Pan
Heidi
Arabian Nights
and... Journey to the West

Amy and I chose to join the Journey to the West group!

Over the few weeks prior to the festival we did lots of preparation. Our groups designed and made all the costumes, advertisement board and chose the menu and made the food!

Amy and I went to a few sessions to help make the costumes and we went to both the cooking practice session and the food making session the day before the event.

It was really fun making the food with all the circle members, and we got to eat what we made on the practice run! During the practice cooking session we got to make pancakes too (just for fun). We added lots of random things to the mix to make different flavours. The banana flavour was the most popular, however the wasabi-smeared sweet chili pancakes didn't go down too well for some reason!

Unfortunately, the day of the Yataimura had horrendous weather! It may not look so bad in this photo but it was pouring with rain!

My shoes were soaking wet before I had even arrived to Waseda! On top of that because we had to show off our costumes we weren't wearing so much so it was really freezing!

The Arabian nights team posing after getting changed!

After we arrived we waited around for a bit in one of building 11's rooms and then started to get changed into our costumes!

The Arabian Nights costumes were so cute! If not a little politically incorrect!

Shereen (Arabian nights) , me, Amy (Journey to the West) and Cami (Heidi)  in our costumes

Our stall and sign!

Shortly after my shoes had finally dried out it was time to go outside to help with the stall. However they weren't ready yet so we went back inside to wait a bit longer, but it was already too late, my shoes were soaking again!

While we were waiting inside we saw the Waseda mascot so we got a photo with him!

Amy and I with the Waseda Mascot!

After some more waiting we went back out to help try to sell some of our food!

Amy enduring the rain!

As our group was Journey to the West (a Chinese tale) our costumes and food were Chinese themed!

The food we made was Banbanji (a Japanese-Chinese dish) and Chinese style dumplings (Gyoza). 

~Gyoza~

I split off with some of the circle members to try selling the food person to person! We were glad because we managed to sell all of the food we took with us!
It was really tough because the weather was so bad but we all did our best and from what we had heard we were selling the most food!

Trying our luck in one of Waseda's many buildings!

When we had finished, we all collected in the room in building 11 again to hear the results!

Anticipating the results!

Everyone had worked hard!

The awards were given out in categories and then the overall winner was announced:

Best costumes went to Heidi
Best food went to Arabian Nights
Best board went to Peter Pan

And....

Celebratory photo!

 We won overall!!

One thing that surprised me was how emotional some of the the circle members became over their results. This was something I found to be very different to English University clubs! But it was nice to see the results how hard everyone had worked!

After the Yataimura had ended we had a Nomikai (drinking party) of course!
Actually... not one Nomikai, but two!
It is quite normal to have an initial party and then a second party and sometimes even more!

The circle is quite old, and with that comes tradition! There was a drinking ceremony where the Leader would drink and pass the HUGE bottle down to other senior members that were lined up while the rest of us (or at least those who could) chanted songs!

Presents were given out to group leaders for their hard work and people in my group were each given a copy of the group photo to take home!

At the nomikai lots of nice food was served! From snacks such as crisps to more filling dishes like udon!

Monja croquette!

After the second party some of us went on to Karaoke - the trains stop at around 12 am so for some people it is necessary to stay on the the later parties until the trains start again!

The parties were only in Takadanobaba so it was within walking distance to my house but we decided to stay on to enjoy Karaoke with everyone!

I love Karaoke so it was lots of fun! It was also my first time going with Japanese students so it was a different experience!

As usual we had unlimited soft-drinks!

One of the Karaoke rooms we rented was being used as a little sleeping room for the more tired party-goers!

I ended up going home at around 4 am! I was pretty knackered and I had classes the next day!

Overall it was really fun. It was lots of work for everyone but it was great getting involved in the festival with the circle like this and everyone did their best!

Thank you everyone!

Well, see you later!