School Festival!!

Thought from places:

The girls synchronized their hairstyles, so that such-and-such class wore pigtails with locks free at their temples, and such-and-such class wore side-parts with single front braids and so on. This must have been an even bigger deal considering the girls usually wore their same signature hairstyle everyday. 

Everyone was gathered in the auditorium: the students in their neat lines of chairs, the parents behind them, and the staff floating around the sides. Student announcers stately held their color construction paper-backed announcement sheets and speeches. They students all mustered to the front, and in clear, triumphant voices sang (in German) Beethoven’s 9th in the dimmed lights. 

Plays were managed and performed by students with heavy topics such as the importance of being born and living despite the trials you would face in the world—that you need to grasp your future with your own two hands; the same hands used to play games, work hard, and say goodbye. Lighter fare was provided by the individual class skit portion; a sort of pseudo-talent show. Slapstick “Super ball” jokes, skill set presentations (like this), re-making Gatsby commercials (like this), “watching Ghibli movies” as giant soot sprites dance and winged-chairs race around the stage with occupants yelling “SHEETA!” Dance numbers with boys dressing in girls’ uniforms and performing girl-pop groups’ numbers, such as AKB48; dragging her and another young teacher on stage to join in dancing; and of course what talent segment would be complete without a psy appearance? 

The walls outside displayed art works and compositions:

Oh, Hi there, Murasaki Shikibu. You're crying while writing The Tale of Genji? Don't worry, your readers cry, too...

Cats in Abstract Land~

 Not biased at all...<3

Classes rallied together to practice choir compositions. Band kids shining in each solo, especially the French horns and saxophones that left her feeling a wistfully nostalgia for favorite French horn and saxophone players…

Finally, the unveiling of the class banners and mosiac made by all of the students.

http://youtu.be/ElJN6caX2G4

How they must have felt, as they charged out of the school together. Their arms held out in the descending sun (you would have thought it was half past seven, not a quarter past four…) half in and half out of their uniforms; joking about the gaffs they made and the laughs they got out of them, anyway. It seemed as though it were Spring and graduation was just a few weeks away—and yet it was only the end of September and they still had many months until March. That didn’t stop some of them from crying, clutching each other and struggling to straighten their faces for the final photographs parents were taking of them and the festival. They had a two day break to look forward to, at least, to spend with each other going to karaoke, playing video games, anything impulsive while they didn’t have to worry about deadlines. The bike racks clear in a matter of minutes, even as the last rays escaping the clouds stacked upon the mountain recede, and take their warm glow with them.