Traditional Japanese games, food and drinks, clothing and performances filled the Gregory Gymnasium Plaza yesterday for the annual Golden Week Festival.
Golden Week is a historic week in Japan filled with national holidays. The week celebrates several national holidays in late April and early May. The festival, held by the Japanese Association, worked to share this week-long festival in just three hours filled with nine performance groups and traditional celebrations. Tomoya Tanaka, a civil engineering junior and president of the Japanese Association, said Golden Week is most comparable to Thanksgiving break.
“It’s called Golden Week just because you get a week off, and we here don’t celebrate (the week),” Tanaka said. “We celebrate it in a day where we just celebrate Japanese culture and in honor of this holiday weekend.”
The main part of the Golden Week Festival is the performances. Not only UT organizations but also professional performers come to celebrate the culture, even if they’re not Japanese.
“This year, we provided some songs that are in Japanese that could fix (the performances),” said Hanna Yamada, an international relations and global studies junior and external vice president of the Japanese Association. “A lot of orgs last year just did Japanese songs, but they would do one of the most popular songs, so it would be a bunch of the same.”
As a result of supplying songs for the orgs, the performances ranged from traditional dances in kimonos to the Chinese Student Association’s dance team, Crimson, dancing to J-pop. Jeffrey Chen, a biochemistry and Plan II freshman and CSA Crimson performer, said he was excited to perform one of his favorite J-pop songs and also enjoy the festival as a whole
“As a performer, you arrive early (and) you get to look at all the booths,” Chen said. “I went to that station where you’re throwing hoops onto water bottles, I did a drawing game where you draw a number for stamps, then (I did a game) where you fist a balloon out of a pool with a hook.”
Along with the newer games, they also had Kendama, a more established and well-known game of throwing a ball onto a wooden stick. Tanaka said the festival is a great way to learn about these games and other aspects of the culture.
“Austin doesn’t have as great of a Japanese population compared to a lot of other Asian groups,” Tanaka said. “I think (how) we represent Japanese culture here on campus can be a good way to spread more awareness about it. Through Golden Week festival, a lot of people get to engage in Japanese culture in ways they probably might not be able to outside of UT.”
The festival brought out a diverse crowd, with some students running around to try all the food and others sitting calmly to watch all three hours of performances. Yamada said the Japanese Association hopes attendees learned more about their culture.
“Japanese media these days, especially with the rise of anime, has been very popular. … I think it’s cool that it’s more accepting,” Yamada said.
Tanaka also shared a similar sentiment about wanting to share Japanese culture through the festival and the organization in general.
“If there’s a certain element about Japanese culture that you’re really passionate about, Japanese Association is a great place to show and spread that passion,” Tanaka said.
