もちろん、今年の学園祭と去年とでは本当に違いました。今年の学園祭はオンラインで行わられましたので、ビデオとかウェブサイトでのことだけできました。それで私のグループは映画を見せました。楽しかったですが、他の学生からとても遠隔の気持ちを感じました。今年、グループとビスケットを売る出店を行って、人にたくさん話さなければいけませんでした。難しかったですけど、もっと携わったことを感じて、もっと楽しんだと思います。

Being able take part in physical activities and games, as well as tasting a variety of foods and see different aspects of Japanese culture made the in-person experience far more immersive. With everyone being there and taking turns trying all the activities and talking to each other, it had far more an atmosphere of a festival or party than the previous year. In manning a stall and having to sell to people, in both English and Japanese, I had to take a far more active role than in the previous year. In terms of organisation the two years were more similar; most still took place online or in group chats, and due to distance there were sometimes difficulties (though these were overcome). Overall, this year’s Gakuen-sai seemed to me to be far nearer to the sort of things the Japanese senpai spoke about in their interviews. Next year hopefully I will experience what a Japanese Gakuen-sai is like.

Gakuen-sai 2nd year blog post / Japanese Studies Gakuen-sai by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0