Komabasai, banzai!

Komabasai was fantastic. There's really nothing like it in the US, and that makes me really sad. There are some things I certainly don't envy the regular TouDai students about, but Komabasai did make me wish a little that I were a regular TouDai student, just to be able to be a part of it at least twice. Besides being enormously fun, it just felt so very positive - everyone coming together for a few days to have fun. There's something really moving about the way people give it their all until they're all exhausted at the end of the last day (but still go out for nomikai afterward). And I could hardly believe how all-out it was. Walking around the campus or inside the buildings, the space and people were completely transformed. I'm so glad I could be a part of it. It'd have been great fun to just be an observer and patron, but I felt so connected to Toudai and everyone there... Ahh, another thing I never want to forget.

The festival doesn't really have much to do with recruiting people for clubs, but in some ways it is all about clubs (and bands, and other groups of students). All kinds of clubs perform (there are lots of stages going all the time, big and small, as well as many rooms indoors where bands are playing), and everywhere outside are tented booths lining the walkways (much like the Ann Arbor Art Fair, for those to whom that means something), run by clubs, mostly selling food and drink.
I spent a good deal of time walking around enjoying the festival, but even more time at and around the Chabashira booth, selling (in my case, mostly hawking) New England style (sort of - it wasn't exactly the same) clam chowder (kuramu chaudaa).
On Saturday I helped a little with preparations to get the soup made, then went off with a guy I'd just met who is an occasional part of Chabashira, whose name I can't remember (d'oh) and, I'm proud to say, I talked with him all in Japanese for a couple hours as we walked around the festival and watched some shows (juggling, Taiko, and a band that included an acquaintance of his). After that I want back to the Chabashira booth and stood in front of it with a sign, hawking for a few hours.

Hawking in Japan is pretty different from in the US, I think. When walking on the street in front of stores people often shout out to you, trying to get your attention. It's noisy, but generally fairly unobtrusive. The methods used to get you to take fliers and things are a little different - they don't shout, but they trust the flier directly in front of you, into your path, and say something to you. They'll swivel and finally withdraw so that if you keep walking you'll never actually touch them, but it's pretty hard to ignore. More obtrusive, but still quite impersonal.
Komabasai was, in many ways, these normal Japanese approaches stepped up a few notches. People constantly shouting from their booths (I must have said "Honba no kuramu chaudaa ikaga desu kaaaaaa?" [~"How about some authentic clam chowder?"] a thousand times), and even people running up to you, trying to engage you personally, talking to you individually, with such great energy. Being a visually-obvious foreigner, I even had a few people come up and try to talk me in broken English when I was walking around. XD
In our case there was also some costume-wearing (no relation to clam chowder in particular - just to get attention - they were costumed as Snow White and and such), call-and-response chants ("Kuramu chaudaa!" "Banzai!" "Kuramu chaudaa!" "Banzai!" "Oishii kuramu chaudaa!" "Banzaaaaaiiiiii!") and even some low-level acrobatics, mostly (me) jumping in the air, which caught a lot of attention (hence my soreness today). I think in the afternoon yesterday we were definitely the most energetic ones in our area. XD Since I wasn't actually right at the tent, but a little ways away, directing people toward it at a big intersection, I don't really know if it worked to sell more clam chowder, but I think we really stood out. In fact, a guy from the Frankfurter stand across the way eventually starting copying our tactics. But, we eventually befriended each other and did some "kokusai kyouryoku" - international cooperation (though there's already plenty of it within Chabashira)- with him occasionally shouting not for his own booth, but rather things like "Korin no kuramu chaudaa ikaga desu ka?" and I, in return, shouting "Takeda no furankufuruto ikaga desu ka?" Pretty awesome. One other thing that comes to mind was that, for awhile, Yo and I were hawking side by side in front of the booth. He speaks English with a really good American accent, because he lived in the US for a couple years in his early teens. So there was me, the American (clam chowder being an American soup) shouting "Kuramu chaudaa!" and he, a Japanese guy, was shouting sometimes the same thing, and sometimes, quite clearly, "Clam chowder!" Oh, Yo. XD