"Back to School" Fever

  In Japan, both academic year and fiscal year start in April. Classes at our university start this week, and today, the student population in our university campus dramatically increased overnight - literally overnight! - and I haven't seen our campus so crowded for a few months.

  The craze with so many students today was not due to cherry-blossom watching. Rather, it was because today our university hosts "Student Society Day", where sports lovers societies and cultural societies run by students all "show off" how great and fun to be part of their groups is. Students dress up with their sport uniforms, ethnic dance costumes, and so on, with the sport/music gears. These students approach freshmen of our university, and recruit them to expand their societies. There were so many music and dance performance on campus, producing their lively atmosphere. Well, for many academics including me, the dance music was so noisy that it was often very difficult to focus on work, but it is OK: this is the once-a-year lively event for students -- rather, it is the Students Fest.

  We had a visiting scholar from the UK, and on our way to a restaurant during the lunch break, we walked through these students showing off their talents with costumes, sports/music gears, and gadgets, and best of all, their dance performance. This scholar, Alex, was so impressed that we have a wide variety of student societies on campus, and students are so passionate about their societies. It was nice to hear that from him.

Shuji

Posted on Tuesday 10 April 2012