Tsukuba International Festival and Philippine Fiestas

Last weekend, the annual May International Festival was held in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan. The concern for the 3/11 victims was palpable with a floral art display offered for them. Hundreds of flowers of varied colors were arranged to form a bird, “One that will soar high as our message and hope and prayer for the earthquake and tsunami victims to rise beyond their present challenges,” a teary-eyed lady volunteer explained. Fund-raising campaigns were also observed in various booths. A message wall also posted messages of support, care and love from all over the world for the 3/11 victims.

One notable aspect of the annual Tsukuba Festival is the use of festivals for public information and education. In the past, there were organizations and groups that focused on teaching the festival visitors about first-aid techniques or about the geological history of Tsukuba City, including the exact spot where the festival was being held.

This year, two booths caught our attention. One had high school students of a technical school busily teaching and supporting their guests who are putting on designs on an empty drinking glass. After the design-making was finished, a student and a teacher completed the process by putting the designed glass through a special machine so that the design would permanently stick. One could see the happy guests proudly holding on to their self-designed drinking glasses! The booth was filled with children and adults who were busily, seriously absorbed in their glass-designing activity! The drinking glasses must have been available for a certain fee, with the funds raised in the activity intended for the 3/11 victims.

In another booth, children and adults alike were busily hammering and shattering rocks, which were prepared by another group from Tsukuba. When a rock had been split, the participants intently looked at their rocks, compared the design or image shown inside the rock with those displayed in glass boxes across the booth. Inside the glass display boxes were rows of labeled fossilized and other rocks, intended to educate the visitors about rocks. To learn, however, the visitors had to actively participate by hammering at and splitting the sample rocks prepared by the organizers.  To complete their brief but meaningful rock education session, the visitors had to bring their split rocks and compare these with those rocks lined up in the glass boxes. Or if they were not very sure about their own observations, a rock specialist was around, together with other co-volunteers who stayed at the side of the guests as they hammered and split the rocks provided to them. The rock specialist patiently showed the interested visitor, many of whom were children, the image in their split rock and explained what the image was about, what possible historical period it represented, among other information relayed.

Adding the learning/educational dimension within festivals is a very valuable lesson we can pick up especially now that it is May, the merry month of Mama Mary and fiestas all throughout our country!

While fiestas are originally centered on religious celebrations, with the Holy Mass an integral part of the festivity, fiestas in our country connote food, food and more food!

It is said that if you go to Bohol in May, you can be assured of daily meals, from morning till night, each and every day of that month in this province, which has a fiesta per day in May!

Philippine fiestas, of course, are also happy occasions for family reunions and visitations to homes of friends and neighbors. What fiesta is not complete without any beauty queen or princess crowned in the evening to cap the occasion?

The Tsukuba International Festival had its bountiful share of food from various parts of the world as well. There were various versions of Indian, Japanese and Chinese food. The Filipinos, Brazilians, and African groups shared their countries’ food as well plus their music and culture! The international festival not only promoted cultural and global exchanges, they also allowed for new friendships to be forged and more importantly, more learning and more understanding and sensitivity about the recent events in Japan as well as in other parts of the world.

Is it possible for our Philippine fiestas to include, from here on, some conscious educational/learning component so that our people and visitors bring home not only memories of reunions and food but of new knowledge learned and better cultural understanding as well?

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