At this particular school there were three classes (A, B, C) within each of the three grade levels (1, 2, 3) (those mean 7th, 8th, and 9th graders) and the competition was between classes A, B, and C. For example, one team consisted of 1A, 2A, and 3A. Anyways, the parents were invited to come and only mothers showed up. Sadly they rarely cheered unless it was their kid competing, and even then they didn’t shout or scream. I was pretty shocked. I perceived the parents to be very apathetic because of this lack of enthusiasm, but I’m sure that’s not the case. It was a pretty hot day, yet some of the teachers were wearing sweatshirts and pants.
After everyone was gathered around the track, the opening ceremony began. The school’s brass band (all girls) played the school’s song while each class marched in. There were specific spaces on the track where the students were allowed to enter through and a separate one to exit from the track (the red poles in the pictures below). Once marching in place in front of the principal, the music stopped and the principal and one of the club coaches made a little speech. Then they orderly marched out of the track through the designated space for exiting. Then the races started. They had about 16 events, but absolutely none of them were competitions among individuals. All the races were relays. There was a running relay, an obstacle course relay, trash-sorting-while-running relay, a three-legged relay race with teachers such as myself, and a four-legged relay race (3 people). This was one of the obstacles in the obstacle course:
There were a few games too. There was the classic tug of war of course. One game was a tire hoarding game where all the kids were standing in a circle within their team’s designated area (each team had 1/3 of the circle) around a big pile of tires. When the whistle was blown, all the kids ran to grab a tire and take them back to the circle line within their team area. The team with the most tires won.
Another particularly interesting game was a game among the boys. Each team of boys had to line up, bent over so their backs were flat. Then the smallest team member walked across all of their backs. After he had walked off of someone’s back, that person had to go to the end of the line to replenish the walkway. The small boy had to walk on backs to a far cone and back. It looked painful and the small boy fell a few times despite the teacher standing next to him trying to support him.
At lunch time all the teachers had a catered obento (box lunch). This was mine:
This was the only meat that was included:
After lunch, the brass band played while all the clubs marched around the track in their uniforms. There were the were many teams/clubs: boys baseball team, girls volleyball team, art club, table tennis team, boys basketball team, girls basketball team, judo club, kendo club, soccer, girls soft tennis team, boys soft tennis team, and kyudo (Japanese archery) club.
After the parade and words of wisdom from the principal, there were a few more races and events. The final event was folk dancing/square dancing, which was translated to me as "barn dancing." Everyone assumed that I already knew how to barn dance, so they signed me up for this event. One of the classes was short of boys, so I was in the boys' line. All the kids had clearly learned the dance in gym class already, so I was the only one going the wrong way most of the time. It was pretty amusing. It was also funny for me because the boys and girls had the same attitude towards dancing as the kids at my school in Germantown did during the dance unit.... kind of avoiding eye contact and trying very hard not to display any sort of enjoyment.
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