One Bite at a Time: BANANA BREAD! and Student Festival

Doshisha Student Festival (gakusai)

So last week was the student festival at Doshisha University (the school where my Japanese program is at) and it was pretty fun, running from Wednesday to Friday. The Doshisha students had the whole week off to set up booths on campus and transform classrooms into workshops or exhibit spaces or tea rooms. There were throngs of people filling the campus and student performances all throughout the day so my classes were moved to another campus nearby, about a 7 minute walk away. Most of the booths outside had some kind of Japanese festival food, the usual takoyaki (octopus ball), fried potatoes, hot dogs, tacos, and just generally things that are really easy for college students to make. There were two stages outside where student bands performed rock, jazz, techno, and dancing. Here's a picture of the Tahitian dance group and I saw a few hula dancers walking around barefoot. It was odd, but comforting to see a bit of island culture so far away. I can definitely say that there is nothing like the student festival at any American college I've been to and for all the differences between the American college system and the Japanese one, I'd say that this is something I wish we had in America. A couple of weeks ago I went to the student festival at Kyoto University, which was also really fun and full of things like second hand clothing stands, more food booths, and dancers and bands spread all around the campus.


Tahitian dancers at Doshisha Student Festival

Yesterday I spent the afternoon downtown going to the Manga museum with my friend. The manga museum was alright. It was mostly just hallways filled with shelves of manga from all around the world, but mostly Japan. There was a little interesting history exhibit, but other than that, not much really Educational about the museum. I wish they had a bit more explaining the significant authors and different types of Manga, but I think the place is really geared towards those specialist people who are searching for old and rare manga. My favorite part was that the museum is built in an old public school, so from an architectural standpoint it was interesting to see how the old space was rehabilitated to a different program. I think it was done pretty successfully, but it is definitely not the first school made into a museum.


Two partially eaten halves of our banana loaf

As we were biking down the streets of Kyoto after the Manga museum, we smelled a delicious scent on the air. I thought it smelled like banana bread, but I was surely mistaken because I have never ever seen real banana bread anywhere in Japan. They have lots of banana cakes and banana creams and banana cakes filled with banana cream in banana shapes, but never a real loaf of banana bread like I used to make back home. So when I stopped by this table on the side of the road in front of what may have been an old car garage and saw freshly baked banana bread (and ovens baking banana bread) I was astounded to find what I had long been looking for in Japan. My friend and I bought a loaf of real banana bread fresh out of the oven for ¥800 (about $9.24) and after the woman running the stand put it in a nice paper bag, we walked across the street to a little park and each ate half a loaf. It was DELICIOUS! I hadn't eaten banana bread since my old roommate's girlfriend used to bake some and bring it when she came to visit. To say the least, it really hit the spot and I will definitely go back there again. If you're looking for banana bread in Kyoto, ask me and I can show you where to get it :D