EDITORIAL

SHUKAKUSAI (The Harvest Festival)
Beyond the celebration.

Every year in November, we as students of Tokyo University of Agriculture, celebrate the Harvest Festival (収穫祭); clubs, sport teams, student associations, and Nodai’s general student community, prepare their own roles; some of them in a sports competition, others selling different products such as food, drinks, traditional things from foreign countries. Everybody tries to get the best from themselves.

And finally the day arrives, it is the Harvesting Festival day opening. Everyone is on their marks ready to enjoy this celebration. I am near the new foot ball field and I can see some girls from a dancing club being ready for today’s competition. Then I go to the stores area and there are a lot of people making an enormous line to buy something from stores. Also some kids from elementary school enjoying candies that they just have bought. Near the stage, in a classroom we can see young boys and girls shaking their heads, and believe it or not there is a rock concert inside.

But this is just a small image of what is exactly the Harvesting Festival. Really is the Shukakusai, does not start from November in fact starts some weeks before November. A question comes to my head. What is beyond this celebration called Harvesting Festival? Is there something else beyond this yearly celebration? The answer is, yes of course, there lots of things and effort beyond this Shukakusai. Let’s move through the time and see what was happening in spring vacation? The first image could be that there were not anybody at school, but there were lots of people dancing in front the Green Cafeteria, preparing a dance number for Shukakusai. There were some foreigners receiving their new Kohai’s as the junior are called in Japanese and these guys were began introduced to these new students, through these activities we found the Harvesting Festival. There were some Nodai’s workers asking a company to bring the necessary for this festival, such as tables, chopsticks, speakers, chairs, camping armable houses, and so on. Also there were some teachers organizing their schedules for this semester for the Shukakusai. There were some workers from a construction company designing and remodeling Nodai’s foot ball stadium.




This Shukakusai was ready to be the best Shukakusai in Nodai’s history, but something happened; even when everyone had the experience from the last year, even when everyone gave the best from themselves, even when everybody had in mind to be the best on their activity something happened, not everything could be perfect; the weather was the best at all, the last day was windy, and Shukakusai stopped early, some people did do what they were planning to do, some of them did not enjoy this festival. Some people were disappointed with themselves because not everything was a complete success.

Nevertheless it seems that the effort they gave was not enough, this festival was not a successful as it was though, and never it is enough, even when almost everybody was trying to do their best effort, some people was starting late, and some others were not doing their work as they must to. Things never go good when some lacy people are just losing their time. That was what made the difference in this Shukakusai. So please people, do not feel that everything is going okay when it is not. In my opinion there are three words to get a success:

Organization: have everything ready, everybody on their roles and everything in a schedule.
Responsibility: start on time, do responsibly your role, take it seriously.
Effort: organization and responsibility are enough to have a good job, but that will be only good, if you want a really great job, then add to this two characteristics effort as a plus.

You have one more opportunity for the next year, so please do not waste it.




Gomez Luevano Oscar Salatiel
Sakura Times Editor