Long Cold Weekend

Well the festival is over and fall is officially here now. The leaves have started to turn and it was cold, windy, and rainy for the weekend. Now, of course, the weather is rather sunny and pleasant, if a bit cool.I didn't take many good pictures from the festival, I just couldn't seem to get my camera on a good setting and there was always lots of people moving around making it harder. This is a shot of the food stalls set up in front of where they are building the new library. The school has many plans for new buildings, this summer they finished a new dormitory and I'm not sure what they're going to do after the library is done, but I've seen models in the Administration building.
This is a shot of my dormitory on the left and the cafeteria on the right, everyone is watching the stage on the other side of the lawn. They were have some sort of comedy competition, but I of course had no idea what was being said, so I don't get to find out what passes for local humor.

The festival was nice, there were some surprisingly good musical acts that I saw on the second day, since everything was stopped early on the first day because of rain and wind. My friend Rikako performed a number of songs with various instruments and even a duet by Jack Johnson, she sang it with one of the American guys and they sounded lovely. I had been told that she sings well, but this weekend was the first chance I've had to hear her sing. I made some videos of her singing, but most of the pictures I took came out badly because of low lighting and movement.
This would be the international student ikebana efforts, mine is the one in front. Each does look a little different from the others... a little. This was made by my suite-mate Yurina and she is very good at it, she gets to display her work at the airport.This one was done by Abe Sensei. Witness the three pointed shape of the arrangement, this is the fundamental aspect of ikebana forms which the rest of the flowers are arranged around.

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