Last Friday it was time for 発表会, happyoukai – the kindergarten’s annual on-stage presentation. Every February the children sing and perform plays on a big stage in a cultural center, and parents and relatives come to see their children perform. For our son this was the third happyoukai, and we were so happy to see his joy on the stage. His class did a play based on the Japanese folktale さるかに合戦, The Crab and Monkey Battle. The story itself is quite violent but fortunately it was remade to fit the age of toddlers and our son played a bee and had the most adorable costume. The children also sang a song telling the story and everyone could see how hard the children have been practicing for this.
There are four classes at the kindergarten and and each class performed their own plays or dances. The performance then ended with everyone singing together, a Korean song, an English song and a Japanese one. The children seemed to have a lot of fun performing on stage and I was as always impressed by how the teachers managed to prepare and rehearse and put together such a compelling event. Both my wife and I are already looking forward to next year’s performance, when our son will be in his senior year and as such will get to try even more challenging performances together with his class mates.
