Japanese Culture Festival – Spreading our Love and Passion for Japanese Culture
Every year on February, JAC organizes a Japanese Cultural Festival (JCF) within the NTU Campus. Its purpose is to draw the members closer and to introduce a little bit about Japanese culture to the rest of the school. 2015’s JCF was themed “Festivals of Japan” and saw three days of fun from 4th to 6th February, outside Nanyang Auditorium. Let us take a look at some of the games we had!
First up, we have Wanage which literally translates to “hoop-toss”. The Daruma Festival theme was incorporated into this game where players try to land hoops around the cute little Daruma dolls. It might look easy, but these mischievous dolls tend to bobble about as if trying to dodge your hoops.
Catch us if you can!
Then we have Scoop Scoop. The goal of this game is to successfully “scoop” up water balloons in a certain order with delicate paper hooks. It teases your ability to memorize the colour sequence and also your steadiness in picking up the balloons. If you win, you get to take home a coloured balloon of your choice! The artwork, hand-drawn by one of our JAC members Zi Xin, added a delicate and beautiful touch to the aesthetics of the game booth.
Next up is Shoot Shoot. As the name suggests, the objective is shoot down as many boogies as possible. For the weapons, you get to choose from an arsenal of wooden guns that range from pistols and rifles to machine guns.
Simple as it may seem, the game actually requires more than just accuracy for a good score. With the limited ammunition, players have to plan how they can bag more points by causing a “domino effect” when the boogie falls.
Pachinko is a popular pinball-gambling game for salary men in Japan. For us students, we have a milder, Snow Festival themed version. The game operates on a system whereby point-blocks will be assigned to each of the seven possible slots. The player will get to launch seven balls into the slots upon which points will be calculated based on the point-block and number of balls in that slot.
Also Snow Festival themed, we have Snowball Fight. Well, not so much of a fight, but rather a one-way attack on Olaf. To bag points, the player has to throw “snowballs” at Olaf’s soft and fluffy spots such that Olaf does not make any noise when hit. The smaller spot awards greater points while the bigger spot awards less, but is definitely easier to target.
We also had a Tanabata-Tanzaku booth! Tanabata translates to “Evening of the Seventh” and is celebrated as the Star Festival in July. To celebrate the festival, wishes are written on paper strips known as Tanzaku and hung up on a bamboo tree. We had a bamboo tree set up to allow for wishes. The tanzaku were specially hand-drawn by JAC members and you can make it personal by asking them to draw what you want, a nice personal touch indeed! There were practical ones from “GPA 5.0” to visionary ones like “I wish I had a hot boyfriend this year”.
There was also a Photo Taking booth where you could dress up in a Yukata, decorate yourself with Japanese fashioned accessories and take a Polaroid photo to commemorate the event. The backdrop was inspired by the “Doll Festival” where dolls would be arranged on a red flight of steps.
Of course, no game or festival is half as fun without prizes! This year, there were a variety of prizes given out in exchange for winning the games and collecting the stamps. We had T-shirts, mouse pads, and lots of other attractive stuff to be redeemed. The biggest prizes were the lucky draw prizes; a Hello Kitty Cushion and a Dyson bladeless fan. Here are the happy winners: Kaiyeat and HelloKittyGirl (who is that).
I look forward to participating in 2016’s JCF and hope that everyone enjoyed this year’s JCF as much as I did. JCF was only possible thanks to the time and effort the main committee and every other member contributed. Here is a short video of the preparation phase which in itself was, enjoyable!
Do join us for next year too!
Written by Alvin
Edited by Jessel
Photos by Bliondi, Wen Yi, Xue Ming and Li Xu