Ok, this is the event I saw going up on Friday, that was abandoned on Saturday because it was just a one-day thing for Sunday. After catching bits of the Tax Fest, Gonza City and the Art Exhibit by the Disabled, I got down here at about 2:30 PM. Initially I was just expecting an arts and crafts show.
The outdoor space had a couple food tables, this presentation stage (used for different slide shows and a demo for making a small bookcase), and over 10 activities booths (see below).
My understanding is that some of these booths were run by construction companies or related technical schools. A lot of the visitors were active making tiles, learning how to pound nails into wood, trying their hands at copper and tin plate embossing, and stencil spray painting. Here, we've got tiled table tops.
Some of these items were available for sale.
Make your own appliques.
Stencil art.
Japanese-style wood joint work. The main feature is that it doesn't use nails, screws or glue.
When I arrived, two craftsmen were in the process of demoing the creation of two different types of joints. I was so busy going back and forth, watching as they worked, that I didn't want to bother with recording them. Maybe next time.
As this one guy was trying to pound the one piece into place in the second piece of wood, the piece he was sitting on kept sliding under him. Eventually, one of the older men told him to pop up a peg in the bench behind him.
I'd thought the pegs were just there for ornamentation, but they're actually stops specifically for the task of keeping planks from sliding around when you're working on them.
Very practical.
The piece at the left has that little dovetail that fits into the larger rectangular part of the hole in the other piece. The hole is also dovetailed, so when the first piece is slotted into place, it slides so the dovetail locks. The cuts are so precise that the joint is completely solid, and there's no wiggle at all.
Inside the center, there were more activities, like drone flights.
Dancing with, or playing rock-papper-scissors with Pepper the robot. It has face recognition, and its eyes will follow you as you walk around the room.
And remote-programming modular robot systems. Bic Camera sells these kits for $150 to $450 (I think). The more expensive ones have stereo vision cameras. I've thought about buying one for myself, but I still need to do more with the robot kit I already have.
They're so cute when they're small.
Make your own tiles and plastic art sheets.
I'm not sure, but my impression is that these screens and sliding doors were made by tech school students. Very nice work.
(Shamisen and stand.)
At another table, you could make your own mail holder box.
Robot-man costume. Does not look comfortable.
I really, really like the detail work on this screen.
Then, in one of the auditorium rooms, there were yet more schools. A couple focused more on mechanical systems, like ventwork and tractor transmissions, and metalworking. The metalworking table had Rubik's cubes made out of solid aluminum, aluminum pianos, and a fully-working aluminum UFO Catcher (crane arm) machine. I really wish these kinds of schools were available when I was young.
The woodworking school in the back was selling all the items the students made, and had a table out for playing with some of their wood toys and puzzles. I would have considered buying one of the puzzles, if I had more room in the apartment.
In the far back, the Gegege Kitaro cast helped show off bird cages and small stools. Overall, this was the best event of the weekend.
Actually, when I took the escalator in the building up to the second floor to see the exhibition hall, one of the volunteer women immediately accosted me and gave me an anket sheet (survey form) and went into great detail about how I needed to get signatures from the three booths that impressed me the most, one from each region (outside, the exhibition hall and the auditorium) in order to get a present. So, I got the signatures and came back to the registration table, where another woman helped me fill out the other parts (age, how I learned about the event, what I liked best, etc.) Then I got to pick my color of canvas book bag, and a packet containing tissue, pencils, notepaper and an eraser with the characters from Dispicable Me Three on them. That was ok. I may use the bag for grocery shopping, and I can always use more pencils and erasers. After I was done here, I returned to the Tax Fest.
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