Local TV station FBS came over to Genki JACS this afternoon to film for their popular show Mentai Wide.

They came into our growing cosplay room and some of our students showed off our outfits!
Here they are getting ready for the cameras...


Now getting interviewed!


They also conducted some other pretty "interesting" interviews-




Genki JACS students are famous :)
Hopefully, we'll have a video of the actual broadcast up later! (sooner or later)

GenkiJACS students took part in the Daijayama Dragon Festival in Omuta City this weekend. This festival has two parts: first, a dance parade/competition, where teams of dancers dance around the city, and winners are chosen; then, after dark, dragon floats roam the streets with fireworks. GenkiJACS students joined the international dance troupe. They spent about a half hour learning the basics of the dances, before taking to the streets.





After the dancing come the dragons!





Full photo gallery is here!

Student Sabrina was kind enough to donate a couple of cosplay costumes to us today - from the manga Onepiece and Hetalia. Thank you Sabrina-chan! I don't think we'll find many other students as devoted to cosplay as you, but future students will all benefit from your kindness. We're up to 10 costumes now - almost enough for our own convention!

Due to unprecedented demand this summer, we ran out of availability in most of our accommodation options. But there's a happy ending, as we were able to find a new dormitory provider that offers some great options for our students, and who was also kind enough to offer a special price for GenkiJACS students!
We're working with a total of 5 new dorms: one mixed sex, two male-only, and two female-only. Two in particular are worth introducing:

Nishijin dorm: This dorm is one of the more expensive ones we offer, at 14,000 yen per week, but is distinguished by being located very centrally. It's in the student town area of Nishijin, just 3 minutes' walk from the nearest subway station, and from there only 5 minutes by subway from GenkiJACS. The Nishijin area is a lovely one, with a great traditional shopping street, lots of amenities, and a nice atmosphere. It's also within walking distance of the beach, and the whole Momochi resort area, making it probably the best-located dorm we offer! Finally, perhaps the best thing about it is the rooms themselves, which are the same size as a lot of the private apartments we offer, at 21 square meters! For a Japanese dorm room, this is very spacious indeed. Rooms have separate bath and toilet, and also their own kitchen area. North-facing rooms also have a great view!

Hirao dorm: This male-only dorm takes the crown of being the cheapest dorm we offer, by far. Rent is only 9,500 yen per week, and it also costs only 200 yen to school, so for those on a budget, this is a great option! Rooms are very small, and don't have en-suite bathroom or toilet, but this can be part of the charm too - the dorm has a large communal onsen-style bath as well as separate showers.

Both of these dorms are mostly used by Japanese university students, so they both offer lots of opportunities to mix with Japanese people. We'll be adding more info about these dorms to our site as we get it ready, but for now, there is a gallery of the Nishijin dorm here, and details of the dorms here.

If you walk up to the Genki JACS building, you'll see a new face smiling down upon you.
Can you guess who it is??

Here we are putting him together...


And then from the outside...



It's Domokun!
NHK's mascot monster!

He brings all Genki JACS students luck.

Last Thursday was Yamakasa, probably Fukuoka's most fun festival. Held early in the morning of the 15th of July, it's a series of races by teams of almost-naked men carrying giant floats through the streets of the city. This year, TV cameras followed a group of GenkiJACS students attending the festival, to record their impressions, for the national TV show ズームインスーパー (Zoom In Super). Students were also lucky enough to receive pieces of the floats after the race was finished! A great experience for all involved.

A photo gallery is available here.

We're a little late with this blog post, but students made a wish tree for 七夕 ("tanabata", star festival), on the 7th of July. Some beautiful wishes on this tree!

We realized today that we're probably the premier tourist organization for foreigners in Fukuoka! Just today we arranged all of these activities:

1) Visit to manga animation school
2) Visit to local high school
3) Japanese cookery class
4) Watching Japanese horror movies
5) Fukuoka city tour
6) Attending local Yamakasa festival

One of the big advantages of coming in summer is that because we have so many students, we can arrange so many activities for them all. So there's lots to do!

A TV crew followed our students as they attended the Yamakasa festival, to capture their reactions to the festival itself, and the edited film will be broadcast tomorrow night. Tanoshimi ni!

We seem to be going overboard with cosplay these days, but we took students to a cosplay event last weekend. This was run by the company 楽装 (Rakushou) - a Japanese pun name! The word 楽勝 (also rakushou) means "easy victory", used to signify that something will be easy to do. But they changed the second kanji from 勝 ("shou", win) to 装 ("shou", clothes) - quite clever!


Yesterday's event was held at the international ferry terminal - a strange place for cosplay, but most likely chosen for its big outdoor balcony, with great views of the bay. They hold events at a variety of places, including a traditional Japanese town nearby, and even in Central Park, on the 18th of July!

There's also one other company doing cosplay events around Fukuoka, with a slightly different theme - コスプレピックニック (Cosplay Picnic) runs outdoor cosplay events at parks and other outdoor areas. We stumbled onto one of their events last month at Uminonakamichi park - it was amazing to see so many cosplayers spread out around the massive park, and really felt like we had stumbled into a different world!

As part of our preparations for summer, we've cleared out the "Japanese room" at Genki Japanese, and filled it with cosplay costumes! We don't have a lot yet, but students dug into them straight away.


Well, students and Mai-san, that is. The buffs among you may notice that Mai-san is dressed as Ragna the Bloodedge, from the game Blazblue.



Sabu-chan is of course a very fetching Roy Mustang from Full Metal Alchemist:



And a ninja rounds out today's trio:


We still have more costumes in storage, and we have a cosplay event planned for this Sunday. Lots of fun!

Edit: Forgot to add photos of the room itself!