May Festival

You may notice it's a Sunday. Sunday is part of the Weekend. Usually on weekends wayway is not in lab, but this Sunday is special as it's May Festival and wayway has to go in and run shake table tests so that people may watch and go 'OOooooooooh'; which would be easier if wayway actually knew what she were doing 1.) with the experiment, 2.) with the shake table.

Apparently every May the University of Tokyo holds a open festival; to celebrate how amazing they are. In honour of this the departments open up to the public to show them what people do in each department and lab. It's all terribly exciting. And I was just allowed to pop outside to scavange some lunch and the campus is positively bustling with people there is a real party atmosphere going on. There are food stalls lining the campus pavements all the way to the tokeidai (the big symbolic clock of Todai) and infront of the tokeidai itself there is some monsterous stage with a full-on light show going on behind and band rocking their hearts out. Over near the pond there is pop music blasting out an aload of people perched on a rather steep grass verge watching a bunch of dancers mill about before their next show, there are queues of people to see the University Choir do a special May Festival Performance. Families with young children, groups of school kids are all mingling about; and i'm not sure why but i've seen several people in fancy dress:
1) humungus transvetite (looked about 40) in a sailor-type school uniform and
2) a guy in a suit with his hair dyed and styled, and makeup to look like a manga character.

It's all very strange.

Definitely not like any open day I've ever been to in the UK. When they say festival, they really mean a festival.