sports day

For the last two weeks the students and teachers have been abuzz about sports day - making posters, rehearsing all kinds of dancing, cleaning the school. Last saturday the day finally arrived, the typhoon had passed, and sports was on!

The field (which is just sand really: an athletics track cum baseball pitch) was surrounded by tenting for the crowd (parents, teachers and honourable board members). At one end the tents gave way to a make-shift archway, decked in paper flowers where students would come through for races and events. the sports coach stood at the gate with a clipboard making sure everything was in order and throwing a handful of salt after each set of participants passed through. I have heard of salt throwing before. It is apparently a big part of Sumo ritual too but of its exact significance im not sure.

Events began with speeches from the principal, en masse radio exercises (kind of like a warmup done to music that is done country wide to a radio broadcast) and much bowing. It was blisteringly hot, I was so thankful to be in the shade of the first aid tent (where my seat had been placed) but the students standing in neat rows in the middle of the pitch doing exercises didnt wilt at all. They were precise as soldiers.

The events were a combination of your usual relays, hurdles and hundred meters and then more inventive and downright peculiar displays. I say the regular relays, nonthing was regular in fact because at the start of every race, with the pistol, music would start, like chariots of fire but played on a casio keyboard and ten times faster. at first I couldnt stop giggling, it was just so silly but I must admit, by the end I quite enjoyed the exitement it added to each event. The more peculiar events included a jump rope competition where an entire class of twenty five would stand in line and try to simultaneously jump a very very long rope being weilded on either side by, what I imagine were the longest limbed in the class. There were also obstacle courses which included bicycle wheels under nets, four legged races, crawling and sacks, all rather treacherous - and seemingly more tracherous due to the danger music. At my school, which like most in Japan is co-ed, the pupils, I think from shyness, kind of naturally divide by gender. In class they never sit together, talk to eachother or work in intergender pairs. At sports day however, some of the events forced mixing (like the four legged race where a gangly boy is tied to a little girl on either side of him and forced to hold on for dear life). There seemed to be a natural joy and relief in all of them, to finally be able to play with those other people that they see all day, every day but never have any interaction with.

My favourite favourite race was one where students had to run 50m to a baseball bat, lean over and balance their forhead on the unturned bat and spin around ten times. they then had to run another 50m to the finishline but were so gaga that they ran into eachother, fell down or went screaming into the side netting. It was bloody hilarious, like watching drunk babies. Another favourite was a bizarre team event where one boy had to be dressed in drag in two minutes flat by four tittering girls, then the boys got together and did an elaborate and extremely well rehearsed back street boys dance routine complete with the splits and breakdancing...Old boys rugby at Parktown is certainly was not!

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new photos

hi lovely friends and relations

finally added new photos to flickr. they are of my school sports day, miyajima, and things that i eat.

look at them here!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/meinmihara