Ikata Culture Festivals

From IkataWiki

Ikata has three major Culture Festivals(文化祭|bunkasai) —one each in Old Ikata, Seto, and Misaki.

In 2007, the IIEA participated in the Old Ikata and Misaki festivals by putting up a booth with the following activities.

Contents 1 Face painting 2 Darts 2.1 Drawing 3 See also

Face painting

While face painting is common in Western countries, it's relatively unknown in Japan. We ordered paints online from the Japan Facepainting Association, in both standard brush paint and easy-to-use pencil type. With just a few more inexpensive items you can easily put together a face painting booth.

• Paints

• 5-color liquid paint kit: ¥1,575
• 6-color pencil kit: ¥1,785

• Extra makeup (paint) applicators: ¥100 at Daisō
• Watercolor (small, thin) brushes
• Paper bowls
• A mirror
• Utility knife for sharpening the pencils
• Some sample patterns and images

Pencils are easy to use, but dull quickly, and are available in limited colors. The paints can be harder to apply, but can be mixed to give a variety of colors.

Darts

We set up a darts game where participants' darts skill and knowledge of geography are challenged. The game goes as so:

1. Participant draws a slip of paper from a box without looking. The paper identifies a country by either
   • Japanese name (easy),
   • National flag (medium), or
   • English name (hard),

   The participant must hit this country with a dart

2. If the participant can identify the name of the country, he or she gets to throw from a shorter distance
3. If the participant doesn't know where the country is, point it out for him or her
4. The participant gets three throws

• If any throw hits the target country, the prize is three pieces of candy
• If no throw hits the target country, the prize is one piece of candy
• If the participant has already played before, no prize is given

The dartboard was a giant 4-color political map of the world, mounted on thick cardboard:

See also: Above map in printable PDF form

The Misaki Branch Office has a large-format color printer that we used to make a printout about 1 meter wide (the short side on the image, as it prints out sideways). This we then put on a cardboard backing.

Note: To make sure errant darts don't harm anyone or break anything, surround the dartboard with wood panels, and structure your booth so that people aren't encouraged to walk in front of dart throwers.

Drawing

Even with a large printout, there are only a few countries that are easy to hit. The top 10 countries/territories by area are

1. Russia
2. Canada
3. China
4. United States
5. Brazil
6. Australia
7. India
8. Argentina
9. Kazakhstan
10. Greenland (actually no. 13, but due to distortion of the map it appears much larger than it actually is)

The above 10 are the easiest to hit, but some may not be familiar to many people, and this list has nothing in Africa. Some additional easily recognized (but hard to hit) countries are:

• Japan
• South Korea
• Mongolia
• Indonesia
• United Kingdom
• Germany
• Spain
• Mexico
• Egypt
• South Africa
• Saudi Arabia

Younger children may need something even easier, like a "color card" that lets them aim for any area of that color on the map. Even easier is to add Antarctica, which covers the entire bottom of the map (in a standard rectangular map of the world).

See also: printable country drawing cards (PDF)

See also

• Culture Festival Fall 2007.pdf English writeup
• 文化祭 2007年秋.pdf Japanese writeup