Hokudai school festival 2015

Two typical students at the festival

In the first or second week of June there is the university festival here at our university. This means the Japanese students dress up in strange costumes and make strange food, and the foreign students make food from their own country and sometimes dress up in national clothes.

The agriculture students make pizzas with things grown at the university.

Egyptian falafel

I usually have my lunch at the school festival tents during the four days of the festival. One day I met up with some other people who also work at our university and we walked around together. On Saturday I met up with some magic bar friends of mine and we ate lots of foreign food together.

A very good omelet from Taiwan

Japanese tacos

Japanese tacos

This year, the most unexpected but very good food was 削りイチゴ, kezuri ichigo, strawberry shavings. They took frozen strawberries and tore them up with some appliance. This was like fruity ice cream except probably healthier. I also liked the Egyptian shawarma, the Guatemalan food, and much more.

"Potato and bacon"

"Grilled marshmallows"

The magic club at our university makes a small cafe during the festival. There you can see stage magic once per hour (about 20 minutes, featuring four different magicians) and table magic whenever they have time. I went to see the new students and they were pretty good considering most of them have only done magic for 4 weeks.

"Long nikuman"

Sapporo soup curry, small serving

Egyptian shawarma being made

I ran into quite a lot of people at the festival that I know from other places. I also ran into lots of people that I know from our university, but that is not surprising.

Student dressed as the 映画泥棒 ("move thief") character that tells you not to record movies at the cinema

Back stage at the magician club cafe

This thing was called "cheese fondue" on the menu, but should probably be called "cheese fondue flavored croquette".

Gyoza (dumplings) with weird fillings: cheese and pepper, strawberry jam (!), and chocolate

The veterinarian students always sell uncommon meats, this year horse and deer (not that rare, but not common in Japan).

Deer pizza and horse pizza

Person dressed as a character from a Ghibli movie and waving at you with cucumbers (that his club sold).

Me and two other university staff members

Japanese waffles with sweet beans

Lots of people even when the weather was bad

People dressed strangely

Really tiny ice cream balls (very good!)

The "Milk lovers club" (our university has a milk lovers club!) sold warm milk from different parts of Hokkaido.

Strawberry shavings

"Yogurt-peccino", turned out to be a smoothie.

Students selling plants

"Thai tea" made by cute Thai exchange students. Very good!

Taiwanese exchange students dancing because a TV crew was nearby.

"Banana spring rolls" from the Filipino students.

Cookies from the magic cafe

Lots of people everywhere when the weather finally cleared up (on the third day).

One of my magician club fellow former members, trying to get customers by juggling in the street.

I asked these three girls if it was OK to take a photo and they said yes. I asked what tent at the festival they were from and they said they were not from our university, they just showed up in these costumes because they like to wear clothes like this. Just another day in Japan...

German curry wurst

Friends of mine becoming friends with the African staff in the Guatemalan tent.

Guatemalan chicken fajitas. 

Something was advertised as a Danish pastry

This tasted like it could be available in Denmark, but also like something you could find in Japan.

Costume very popular with kids

These three girls were actually students working at the festival.

This guy was advertising "deep fried ice cream", and in Japan they do deep fry ice cream.

What his tent sold was more like fried bread with ice cream, though.

The Thai exchange student tent had their own "Thai lady boy" who was pretty funny.

Thai food.