Sports Festivals

Eek! It's been quite some time since I've written. Many apologies; I've had a busy spate of things, but I hope to get back into a fairly regular schedule of reporting!

The afore-mentioned Sports Festival was held on 9/20, at least for the junior high schools. I went to two of my three schools: Mishima Higashi and Kawanoe Kita. The elementary schools held their sports festivals on 9/26, and though I didn't actively participate, I went around to four of the elementary schools I visit during the course of the year with my supervisor and another representative of the Board of Education. I just learned this past weekend that nursery schools also have sports festivals. Nursery schools! Group exercise is certainly taken seriously here.

Though I had spent the previous week at Kita-chu and had seen them practicing a multitude of times for the Sports Festival, I change schools each week, and since Sunday technically begins the week, off I went to Higashi-chu for the actual event. Soon after I arrived, the principal asked if I wanted to join the teacher's team for PTA tug-of-war, and of course I said yes. He also mentioned that, since I had just been at Kita-chu and had probably gotten friendly with the students there, I was welcome to go to Kita-chu as well rather than spend the whole day at Higashi-chu. I gratefully took him up on this kind offer.

The Sports Festival starts out with a grand Opening Ceremony. A few select students carry the flags of Japan, Shikokuchuo and the school to the flagpoles, and one student bears the sign for the festival itself, which reads "43rd Annual Sports Festival" or something similar. The rest of the students, who are seated according to their class and homerooms and wearing colored bandanas to show which team they're on, march in single file lines into a grid in the middle of the field facing the principal. The principal makes a bit of a speech, and then the stretching song begins and everyone streches accordingly. Then, as they say, the games begin.


The activities ranged from 50, 100-meter races and relay races to three-legged races and obstacle courses, to the afore-mentioned mukase kyoso (caterpillar race, aka chain gang) to tug of war and beyond. I participated in the PTA tug of war at Higashi-chu, where the team of teachers dominated and won all four competitions! Yes, we did!

They also had a special tug of war with long bamboo sticks for one grade of girls, in which two girls of differing bandana colors fought over said bamboo sticks, and after the winner dragged the stick over to her respective side, would help others on her team until at last, over 20 girls would be centered on one meter-long bamboo stick. There was also a bamboo pole climbing challenge for the boys, where groups of 5 would dash over to a bamboo pole and hold it up as one boy climbed and either added or removed a flag from the top of the pole, depending on the turn, until they had gotten through their whole class year.

Even for the individual races, points are earned for the team and not the individual, which I think is a nice way of encouraging cooperation and avoiding too much embarassment for those students not particularly stellar at sports. In fact, my favorite part of the whole thing was watching and listening to people cheering on the last person in a given race. This person had the misfortune to be the only person being watched by a vast audience of fellow students, parents and teachers, but s/he also received the most cheering of anyone else. Repeated shouts of "ganbare!" and clapping accompanied the last struggling person in any race. During one of the races in the morning, one boy fell and hurt himself, and as he tried to limp and finish the race, two teachers ran over to grab his shoulders and walk him the rest of the way. When it became evident that he was really in a lot of pain, one teacher took the boy on his back and they finished the race to postive din of cheering, and then the boy was swiftly carried off to be examined. You see that the sports day is not without its casualities.


Though I make fun of the mukade kyoso/caterpiller race/chain gang, it's probably my favorite thing to watch, and having given it a few tries, I can attest to how difficult it is to walk, let alone run, when you're tied at the legs with 20 other people. As such, the joy of watching a happy line of caterpillar boys of girls pass you by, chanting the mundane "ichi, ni!" (1,2!) or a more creative "yoshie tomato, yoshie happy"?, is only surpassed by the dismayed cries and hilarious spectacle of 20 boys or girls falling down like dominoes. Seeing 5 groups in action at the same time in the actual race was quite something compared to the several practices I had seen, and some teams really excelled at it.

My favorite memory of the entire day, perhaps, is that of one boys team really struggling, falling down, squaring their shoulders and restarting several times and thus falling behind by a lot. Though they were doing there best, what really touched me was that the four other boys teams, as they crossed the finish lines, immediately untied themselves and ran over to the struggling team and ran next to them, chanting "ichi, ni!" and encouraging them all the way. By the last 50 meters there was a swarm of at least 60 boys surrounding the last team, shouting their hearts out and cheering them on. These were 15-year-old boys, who I have trouble getting more than a few words out of during class sometimes, but seeing my students help each other out and cheer each other on...I admit, I fought back some tears!

That night, the teachers had a well-deserved drinking party, followed by some rather roudy karaoke. The next weekend I watched the elementary school sports festivals, which were absolutely adorable, but I admit I enjoyed the junior high ones more, if only because I was really a part of them, and they're my students. I have so many kids that I'm really having trouble remembering their names, but they're my students, and most of them are excited to see me, and I think they were glad to have me there, cheering them on as well.