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Gakuensai

Gakuensai, also called bunkasai or gakusai is a Japanese School Festival that is held annually in the fall at most schools in Japan from junior high to university.

At this festival, the whole school comes together to transform the campus into festival grounds with food and entertainment in the classrooms and other school facilities.

Various school clubs and volunteers put on performances such as concerts, plays, talk shows, lectures, film screenings, games and other events based on a yearly theme welcoming not only current students and their parents but past graduates and also students interested in seeing what the atmosphere is like for the school they are applying for.

Unlike junior high and high school festivals which are much smaller in scale, university school festivals can be very large with currently popular celebrities and public figures (who are sometimes past graduates) as guests as part of the main program for the gakuensai. As for food served at the festival, you will see a lot of dishes that you would normally see at an outdoor festival in Japan such as noodles, fried foods, drinks, and more.