Whether Rain or Snow the 2006 Seika Town Festival Proceeds

Despite the rain, wind and cold many people still showed up for the Seika Town Festival on Sunday November 19th. With all the hard work and preparation that so many people put into the festival nobody was going to let a little rain stop the fun. But while all the booths were able to endure the rain, unfortunately the parade and most of the concerts had to be canceled due to the heavy rain that began to fall right around noon.

As volunteers with Seika Global Network my workmate Chris and I helped out at the children’s face painting booth. At first the kids were hesitant to have us paint their faces but once a few brave souls took the plunge it snowballed into dozens of children lined up to get their faces painted. The majority of kids wanted Pikachu, Anpan-man, flowers, stars and mushrooms painted on their cheeks, but there were also a few other random requests that we tried our best to accommodate with our limited artistic skills.

Of course Chris, I and the other volunteers did our best to show the kids how much fun it was so I had a big yellow Pikachu on my cheek and Chris had an American flag on top of his head and a Japanese flag on his cheek to symbolize the importance of international exchange. Once the line started getting pretty long we were really painting a lot of faces and having a lot of fun. It was nice to have a chance to chat with each child for a couple minutes while we painted their faces and then send them off with a heart shaped balloon. The kids seemed to really enjoy it as well as they would often come running back later with a new friend to have them get their face painted too. So despite the rain on the day of the festival I think that the TV spot and the face painting were successes for our grassroots internationalization project in Seika Town.