The Shizuoka festival was last month, and I promised to show you my costume. I dressed up as カオナシ or "no face" from the movie 千と千尋の神隠し or "Spirited Away". The character is a well known cultural icon which meant two things: I was super popular with the ladies!! and children under the age of 6 would run away from me scared... He is a ghost spirit thingy after all...
See. Spoooookkkkyyyy!
Also the character doesn't speak beyond an "aah... aah...", which was great for me, because staying in character meant not talking, which meant that no one, except for BEST club members knew I was a foreigner! People could come up to me and ask me questions, or say something, and I would just stare at them and offer them soup! Hilarious! IN YOUR FACE, language barrier!!
Speaking of soup, that is what we were selling at the festival. Above is a picture of our booth. See the character on the left? Look familiar? Anyway, as you can see by reading the sign, we had 4 kinds of soups; onion, corn, minestrone, and chige (pronounced, chee-gay) which is a Korean soup. They all tasted really good, and they students put a lot of time and energy into making them.
The festival is a big event for all the students, and everyone works really hard to prepare and sell whatever it is they are selling. So to have a foreigner dress up and make a fool of himself for the sake of the group, apparently, is quite memorable. And I helped sell a lot of soup too! Probably, mostly due to the fact that everyone was too afraid to not take the soup that I was offering to them... (if you've seen the movie, you know what I mean)
See. Spoooookkkkyyyy!Also the character doesn't speak beyond an "aah... aah...", which was great for me, because staying in character meant not talking, which meant that no one, except for BEST club members knew I was a foreigner! People could come up to me and ask me questions, or say something, and I would just stare at them and offer them soup! Hilarious! IN YOUR FACE, language barrier!!
Speaking of soup, that is what we were selling at the festival. Above is a picture of our booth. See the character on the left? Look familiar? Anyway, as you can see by reading the sign, we had 4 kinds of soups; onion, corn, minestrone, and chige (pronounced, chee-gay) which is a Korean soup. They all tasted really good, and they students put a lot of time and energy into making them.
The festival is a big event for all the students, and everyone works really hard to prepare and sell whatever it is they are selling. So to have a foreigner dress up and make a fool of himself for the sake of the group, apparently, is quite memorable. And I helped sell a lot of soup too! Probably, mostly due to the fact that everyone was too afraid to not take the soup that I was offering to them... (if you've seen the movie, you know what I mean)
