On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I helped out in our club’s (Hi-C) Matsuri festival stand. Matsuri is different for everyone. About a week earlier the local shinto shrine had it’s matsuri. Basically matsuri is just a festival event when clubs sell all different goods and host games for people to play and have fun.

Hi-C’s plan was to make crepes, lots of crepes, and then sell them at their matsuri stand. Friday night they planned on making the crepe base and then all durring the next day they made them and sold them. In a weird series of events I got involved in making those crepes friday night. The atmosphere was pleasant and the people friendly. We make crepe bases till roughly 11:00pm that night in college apartments “Kirari.”

The next day (Saturday); The weather was bad with wind and rain howling and the temp around 11 degrees celcius (i.e. cold). The club made all different types from chocolate to banana to you name it. The price was set at 200 yen- 300 yen. In the beginning they sold pretty good, but as the day rolled on the sales dropped slowly. Even though the sales were slow, I learned about Japanese marketing/selling stuff proceedure. So here’s a crash course in selling to Japanese people.

To get people to come to your stand: You say, “Irashiemase.” (en: please come in)
To get people to look and buy your wares you say: “Iraga desu ka?” (en: would you look/buy)
When they buy you bow (jap style) and say “Arigatoo Gozaimasu.”

I did that all day until I decided to roll at around 4:30pm.

Now… from what I hear, the club didn’t clean up good enough when they left at 6:00pm so the school banned the selling of crepes the next day. So, when I came back to check the stand on Sunday no one was there exept for a few people standing around. The plan changed from hanging out selling crepes to going karaoking in a karaoke hall in Odori. Shortly after, we left to go shopping for a minute or two where I found a cool traditional Japanese store.

After shopping we headed towards an awesome hole in the wall restraunt that opened up below into a really happening place. Through out the night we were fed Japanese dish after Japanese dish. It was a real great time to end the weekend…. KOMPAI! (en: cheers!)

~J

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