Waseda Sports: Pep Rally, Sports Festival, and Baseball Game

Every year, Waseda hosts the largest sports festival in Japan. It is such a big deal, that classes are cancelled on the three days prior to give students time to prepare. The campus was filled with student-run food vendors such as bubble tea, yakitori, waffles, soba noodles, meat buns, chocolate coated bananas, and much much more. It was so crowded, you had to link arms with your friend, jump into the flow of traffic, and hope your wouldn't be pushed apart.

Yakitori booth

The classrooms were filled with different activities hosted by different clubs. I went to the manga (Japanese comic) club and had a caricature drawn of me and I went to the lolita club (fashion) and watched girls getting dressed up in lolita fashion and makeup.

Girl who drew my caricature. They all dressed as their favorite manga (comic) character.

Cosplay club (they dress as anime characters). They dressed as the most popular anime right now called Attack on Titan. It's actually a really well done anime and I watched it in 3 days!

Which they did a pretty good job!

There were also five different stages (at least) set around campus were clubs such as the ballet club, hip hop club, musical club, cheerleading club, juggling club, and other dance and performance based clubs could perform for the crowds.

Check out my video below for short clips of a few of the performances I saw!    

The weekend of the sports festival was also when Waseda played its biggest rival in baseball, Keio University. A couple of days before the game, there was an hour long pep rally/cheer off were the Waseda and Keio cheerleaders alternated cheering for their own team and talking badly about the other. It was very different from a pep rally in America. Check out my video below to see what it was like.

Finally, the Waseda University vs. Keio University baseball game. This is where you can clearly see Japan's militaristic qualities. Although there was no sense of nationalism at the stadium (no national anthem sung or ceremony of raising the Japanese flag), pride for ones school and respect for the other's was evident. During the opening ceremony which lasted about 20 mins, fans were not allowed to use the restroom, eat, or drink anything. They were to remain quiet and cheer when it was appropriate. For the Waseda song, during the whole 3 minutes you have to raise your fist in the air in a similar fashion to the nazi's and bring it down to your chest repeatedly. It becomes very tiring and my friend Martha, a Japanese-American who goes to Cornell University, refused to participate because it seemed too militaristic and she found it to be frightening.

Cheerleaders held up lyrics for all the different cheers and chants.

The game was also very respectful between opposing teams and between players and fans. The teams would always be dead silent when the other team would sing their school's anthem. Also, at the end of the game, the baseball players all took off their hats and bowed to the fans, thanking them for coming and supporting. In return the Japanese were screaming "thank you" to the team and individual players for doing their best.

In the end, Waseda beat Keio 9-2! This put Waseda University as 3rd in their league.

Check out my video! It is a compilation of the pep rally, sports festival, and baseball game! Watch it on youtube for the best quality!