The biggest event in the schools recently has been sports day. When you think of sports day you most likely think of the egg and spoon race and sack races. In Japan it is a little different. Here sports day is not to be taken lightly. In the run-up to this prestigious event, after lunch every day is dedicated to sports day practice. The timetable has been completely rearranged to allow for all the preparation and training for this grand event.
At the junior high school the boys and the girls are then separated to their separate practice areas. The girls learn various dance routines. One of these routines is with flags but the other, rather disturbingly, is with black gloves. It looks like some kind of Michael Jackson tribute number.
My contribution to training involved donning my white polo shirt and jogging bottoms (it’s nice to get out of my suit) and helping to supervise the boys. The boy’s routine is several types of human pyramid and other kinds of clambering on each other. This is called “Kumitaiso” and is very traditional. I should make it clear at this point that the school does not have soft green grass like England; it has hard earth and sand. This means that a good deal of the time is spent putting children back together and wincing at potentially horrendous neck injuries. The routine builds up from pair work to a full group pyramid. By the end of the training the ground looks a lot like the beach scene from “Saving Private Ryan”.
Soon enough it was September 18th and time for the event itself. The week before training had reached fever pitch and I managed to stay past 7pm one night helping with preparations. I had to go into school a little early on the morning of sports day so I was a little tired. I was placed with the baseball team and we formed the squad incharge of putting out cones and various other elements between events. The opening ceremony consisted of the entire school marching around the grounds in their individual classes with their class flag (that they made themselves) held out in front. This was all to the sound of the schools brass band in full American fanfare mode. Once the school had formed ranks in front of the tents full of parents, most toting HD camcorders and giant DSLR cameras, opening speeches were made and the Japanese and school flags were raised.
Standard sprints and relays where spread through the schedule but there were plenty of interesting competitions too. The superman (and woman) competition involved holding a sandbag above your head for as long as you can without dropping it for as long as 5mins. There was also a 3 legged race with progressed up to 8 legged race. There was typhoon, which involves teams of students lined up in ranks of 4. The first rank stand holding a long pole and must run abreast with the pole round a cone (turning takes some skill) and then backwards their team. They must then move to the edges of the pole and pass it under their team (about 6 rows) as their team jumps. The effect created resembles a wave and it looks very fun. Finally there is the “knights” game (I forget the Japanese name so that is the rough translation) four students create a horse and a 5th student stands in the “styrups” made by their hands. The “knights” wear red or white hats and the objective is to charge full pelt at the other team and knock of their hat. The chaos and excitement of this game is truly something to behold. I do not know how there were no serious injuries!
There were two events I took part in; the teachers relay and the PTA tug of war. The PTA tug of war involved a rope that spanned the entire training ground with most of the parents spread out along its length. Each side was a team representing either the Kocho Sensai (principle) or the Kyoto Sensai (vice-principle). Sadly the team I was on lost the first round, despite me weighing about as much as ten Japanese mothers. Other teachers were called upon to join in to ensure that the end result was a draw. The other event was the teachers relay. I only had 50m to run but I feel I did okay, seeing as even the aging members of staff are built like Olympic runners.
After the great event concluded there was just enough time to get back to the flat to have a shower and get changed for the sports day enkai (drinking party). The entirety of the staff met up at a German beer hall themed restaurant. It was an all-you-can-drink affair serving great German lager and black beer. Most people were drinking “half and half” which is half black beer and half lager. The food was a mixture of Japanese and German style dishes with about 6 different platters coming out through the course of the evening. Everyone gave a speech, including me – although I fear the teacher translating for me wasn’t doing too great a job as the speech caused uproar from the English speaking staff and confusion from the non-English speaking staff. Afterwards there was time for a quick karaoke and I murdered some Oasis and YMCA.
It was great seeing all the staff unwind, as sports day preparation had been hellishly stressful for them to prepare in addition to their other duties. I don’t know if I have mentioned this previously but Japanese teachers play a much greater role in parenting the children than their UK equivalents. A lot of teachers have a “homeroom”. This is class that they are in charge of and each child in the “homeroom” becomes almost a surrogate. Should a child be picked up by the police, it will be the home room teacher who is contacted. The homeroom teacher must also visit the homes of all the pupils they are mentoring. This creates a huge extra workload and lots of stress.
As I am only at elementary school for one day I did not had any active role in its preparation. Elementary sports day was held on October 3rd so the weather was much cooler and sadly it got rained off at lunchtime. Despite this, the first half of the day was a huge success. The children all did various dances with hula hoops and balls and tassels. Generally these were cute beyond words, especially the dancing with tassels to a Japanese rendition of The Little Mermaid’s “under the sea”. The opening warm-up exercises were done to the theme tune of Totoro (possibly the best children’s animation in existence) and I nearly had to steal all of the children, it was too adorable. The Elementary school also did kumitaiso but there were no deaths, despite the 7 tier pyramid!
So now all the sports days are over it is time to prepare for the junior high school cultural festival, singing completion and the elementary schools music concert. Alas, I am not very musical so my involvement will only be helping to judge the contest.
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