Sports Festival

Yesterday was Sports Festival at YJHS. This year's theme: Never give up. In the morning, I packed up my lunch, sunscreen, hat, sunglasses and water bottles, and caught the bus to school. When I arrived, they had mostly finished setting up. It was a while before I saw any of the English teachers and I don't really know the other teachers. One of the teachers offered me a seat under a canopy with some of the students and staff, but then another teacher moved me to the guest area. I ended up sitting next to a bunch of elementary school principals, and felt a little out of place. I can't complain, though, because I got a chair and a spot in the shade.

The day started with the teams (red, white and blue) marching in and listening to a few speeches. After that there were all kinds of races and games. There were so many foot races. I was glad that they spaced them out with the other events. It seemed to me that the guys got to play the most fun games, like the chariot battle and the ski race. In the chariot battle, a group of four boys would carry one boy in sort of a pyramid formation. The boy on top wore a hat, and the goal was to steal everyone else's hats without losing your own. It makes sense to separate the boys and girls for the rowdier events, but there was never a round for the girls to play that game. In the ski race, one kid would crouch down on a pair of wooden skis and be pulled by two other kids. It looked a bit dangerous, but pretty fun. All of the riders had helmets, elbow pads and knee pads, though, and there didn't seem to be any injuries. There were a few spills, though.

The girls got to play one game that was fairly aggressive. It was basically a battle over a pile of tires. At the whistle, all the teams ran in and started grabbing tires. Since there were obviously fewer tires than girls, there were quite a few tug o' wars over the tires. The girls were pretty tenacious, too; even when one girl was outnumbered by members of another team competing for the same tire, she usually would hang on and force them to drag her quite a ways before letting go. At the bottom of the pile was one larger, golden tire. I don't know what was special about that one, but the game ended with everyone fighting for it. None of the teams got it back to their bases, though.

There were also events that required cooperation and coordination between team members. There was a four-legged race (a three-legged race with three people rather than two) and a caterpillar race. For the caterpillar race (I'm not sure what it's actually called), the team members stood in line one behind the other. All of their right legs were connected by a stretchy rope and all of their left legs were connected by another one. It amazed me how fast some of the teams could go once they established a rhythm; they were running more or less at full speed.

My favorite event was a team relay race with several steps to it. Four team members carried a pole as they ran. When they got to a cone, they had to run a circle around it with the pole acting like the hand on a clock. Next they had to drop the pole and jump rope together. After five jumps, they ran back to the pole and circled the cone again on the way back. Before they could hand off the pole, all the team members waiting at the end had to jump over it. What this meant was that the team coming in would keep running at full speed and lower the bar to about ankle height. The rest of the team was in several rows and I was surprised that they all could time their jump so well when the ones in the back probably couldn't see the bar. Then they all ducked down and the runners lifted the bar back over their heads and put it in the hands of the next set of runners. It looked like a lot of fun.

Another event I enjoyed was cheerleading. I talked about it some in my post about Sports Festival practice, and it was basically the same this time. I couldn't entirely tell since I can't understand most of the words, but it seemed like the white team had cleverer cheers than the other teams. I'm not entirely sure how I got that impression. In any case, it was fun to watch all the students cheering together. There was a lot of enthusiasm.

The one foot race that I thought was fairly entertaining was a relay competition between after school clubs. The basketball team, baseball team, kendo club, music club, swimming club, and various other clubs competed against each other. Most of the teams chose to wear their club uniforms, which put the kendo club at a disadvantage since they wear giant chest plates. Some of the clubs used equipment as their baton; the tennis club used a tennis racket, and the music club used a tambourine.

Around 2:30, the events ended and it was time for more speeches. I think the people who gave speeches were the principal and the student body leader, although I'm not quite sure. Points were tallied, and it turned out that the white team won, followed by blue and then red. The students got pretty excited about it. There was a closing speech, and then the students had to do a round of stretches to a piano soundtrack. It looked like a formal routine; I'm quite certain they do this on a regular basis.

After the speeches ended, I left to catch a bus back into town. Finding the correct bus was a little iffy since there are fewer on Sundays, particularly in the middle of the afternoon. I got on the first bus that came, and it turned out that it took me where I wanted to go. I didn't hear anything about an enkai but it's fairly certain that there was one afterward. Part of the reason I wasn't invited may have been that no one expected me to be there in the first place. In any case, I wasn't disappointed to have the evening free.

Today is Respect for the Aged Day, so there is no work. I've got some chores and possibly some shopping to do. Japan has a lot of random holidays scattered throughout the year. We get Autumnal Equinox Day off, but we don't get Christmas unless we ask for it. The senior ALTs warned us all to ask for it in advance because it is entirely possible to get scheduled for work on Christmas. This year it's on a Saturday, so it's not really an issue. But it certainly would feel strange to be at school on Christmas Day.