Like brightly colored butterflies, women in kimonos flitted around the Reitz Union North Lawn, teaching participants how to play traditional Japanese games at the Japanese Spring Festival held Saturday.
The spring festival is usually held to celebrate the blooming of the cherry tree in Japan.
The UF Japanese Club's version of the festival, which gathered a crowd of about 150, aimed to expose students to the culture and to attract new members, said Mana Watanabe, vice president of the Japanese Club.
While last year's festival was largely run by UF faculty, this year students took the helm, she said.
"My goal was to show a lot of various aspects of Japan," Watanabe said. "I tried to be interactive with the tables so that (the attendees) wouldn't just bypass and so that they would look at the tables and learn something new."
Ten interactive booths featuring exhibits ranging from basic Japanese facts to traditional toys offered a little something for everyone.
Brittany Carl, a second-year environmental engineering student, was impressed by the interactive displays.
Carl held up a piece of parchment marked with Japanese characters written in bold, black ink strokes. The characters read "love" and "believe."
"I like how they're doing all these fun things for free," Carl said.
While the festival centered on Japanese culture, it attracted people of other ethnicities.
Allison Pyle, president of the Japanese Club, is not of Japanese descent but fell in love with the culture after seeing the pictographic characters used in writing.
Pyle was pleased to see people of different ethnicities embrace a culture that she shares a love for.
"It's not for Japanese people, it's for everyone interested in Japanese culture," Pyle said.
At the toy booth, blindfolded participants stumbled around trying to pin facial features on a picture of a head as onlookers shouted directions in a game called Fukuwarai, a cross between "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" and "Mr. Potato Head."
After trying his hand at Fukuwarai, Andrew Hix, a third-year English student, raced from booth to booth gathering answers to a Japanese trivia challenge, which included questions involving each display.
Trivia participants learned that 21 folds are required to make an origami crane, that there are three speaking systems in Japan, and that the name of video game pioneer Atari means "go."
Hix smiled as he was called on stage to receive a Lollicup Coffee & Tea gift certificate for his success in the trivia challenge.
"They put a lot of effort in the trivia," he said. "You had to go and learn a lot to be a winner."
Hix said he really enjoyed himself at the festival.
"It was really awesome," Hix said. "Everything was new, different, exciting and really high energy."
