Waseda Shibuya Senior High School Singapore 21st Seiransai

Also known as Seiransai, the Open House is a yearly tradition for most Japanese schools for the public to visit and enjoy the festivities specially done by its students. It’s the 21st Seiransai of the Waseda Shibuya Senior High School in Singapore and my first time to the event. I nearly did not make it because I was ill the night before, and it was so far from my home it’s not even funny.

Taking bus 189 from Clementi MRT, Rafdi and I made it to the school. Upon (free) entry, I was attracted by music (not sure I could call it that) coming from the cafeteria. Ignoring the student band playing, I was focused on getting something to eat, but gave up on first sight of the snaking queue. Walking a short distance down the main sheltered walkway, we were met by a group of English club instructors who invited us to participate in a tour of the school by some of their students as a means for them to practice their English. One station in, and it seemed that they really needed the practice and since there were enough people in the group for them to practice on, we decided to head on to the other festivities. I was quite shocked at the amount of English these students knew considering the fact they are living here.

An artist created an artwork to raise awareness on quake relief efforts for Japan

Heading towards where all action is at, we were be greeted by an artwork of a Merlion regurgitating clown puke on which people slide on. But it really didn’t matter how good it looks, because it’s for a good cause, and that makes it awesome. There were so many rooms that we didn’t know where to start, but one thing that we did know was that the queues were long. So we went into the first room we saw without much of a queue, without actually knowing what the room was about.

We ended up in the Tea Ceremony demonstration room where we were asked to sit in a circle by very cute girls in pretty yukatas. They were going to serve us tea. They first gave us a card with how to properly behave in a tea ceremony. The first thing on the list was to sit in a Seiza pose, which is a formal way of sitting. Rafdi managed to endure the position throughout the ceremony, but I’m pretty sure not being able to feel your feet is a sign that I should sit normally. They first served us a sweet each and told us not to eat it until they said to do so. And then they made the tea and served us after asking us to eat the sweets. It wasn’t the explanatory kind of demonstration but more of an experience.

There were many other really interesting rooms but I’ll just caption my way through the rest of the post as we didn’t really spend too much time in each of those rooms.

Friendly basketball matches happening.

The bands weren't great, but the support from their friends were just tear-jerking.

The basketball club showcased themselves as AKB48. It's a boys team.

No way I could queue with teenagers to be scared by other teenagers.

Class 3-B created a film screening acted by their very own students. Entitled "Blooming For You".

Their version of a thrift store.

Wac Cafe, a cosplay cafe where the male students dress up to look like fugly females. Not sure I'm down with that.

Some hosted games.

Student's dance performances were mostly backed up by their peers wild support.

You could contribute to the relief effort by drawing for the artwork.

Apart from those there were mini game rooms, a science club teaching you how to make slime and even a cooking club teaching you how to cook. The energy in the place was just amazing and you could see the drastic difference in efforts Japanese put into their school activities as compared to Singaporeans. More photos here.