Sports Day

This is a day when students display their athletic prowess. Well, not exactly but something to this effect. The day started out with some ceremonial greetings from both the principal and vice-principal of the school. The students stood quietly in straight, organized lines listening to them. They were dressed identically, in white t-shirts and dark blue shorts, white socks and sneakers. The only difference was the colour of the headband they were made to wear. It indicated what group each student was in. They were organized according to grade and then by gender.

A short warm-up followed which all the students and teachers seemed to know from long practice. Then the students dispersed, chatting at the sides until their group was due to practice/perform. The first event that I watched involved girls and car tires (I can't recall what grade they were in). Basically what happened is that the girls were divided into two groups, ran to the tires and struggled against their opponents to drag them to their respective sides. What was most amusing was when they came down to the last tire, at this point ALL the girls piled around it, pulling and pulling but to no avail. The thing wouldn't budge what with all the pressure around it.

Events that followed were equally mesmerizing. There was an odd kind of obstacle race which involved: throwing balls into a basket, ducking under hurdles, somersaulting onto a mat, rolling an enormous number cube, getting your face sprayed and then dunking your face into flour, finally the students ran past the finish line. There was also a folk dance that I had to stand in for since there weren't enough girls in the San-nen (third grade middle school) class. That was fun, though I had no idea what I was doing for the first few repetitions.

Keep in mind that all this is being done with inspirational music being played in the background. On the sides vendors sold sno-cones (my favourite! the cola flavour was especially good) and takoyaki which are hard to explain. They are bits of octopus mixed in batter and then baked/fried into little balls. It might sound disgusting to the average foreigner but they're actually pretty good.

All in all it was a good day. Thanks for reading.