Sports Day

Hey all. I think I’m going to give up trying to write about all my new experiences, there are just too many to recount. I’ll try to post the most interesting ones, but if you want to know more, you’ll have to get Skype. :)

About one week ago, the schools in my area held their Sports Day’s. Sports Day is a major event for most schools in Japan and is when the school is split into teams which compete against each other in a wide range of sports….and I mean wide. The sports kids compete in include jump rope competitions (where roughly 20 students jump a single long rope), 3-legged races (which should actually be called 15-legged race since ENTIRE CLASSES get linked together), a tug-of-war match (where multiple classes compete using one massive rope), and almost anything else that can be made competitive.

The games I like the best were the knight fights and tug-of-war. I’ll readily admit that I was completely jealous of my students that day and wanted to play, but – considering I’m at least twice their size – it’s probably better that I didn’t.

I snapped a lot of pics during Uchiko-chu’s practice day, but was expecting to take better photos with my D40 during the actual event. Well, long-story-short: I ended up missing the Sports Day’s of all my schools thanks to the tail end of a typhoon and a communication mix-up. I’m bummed about that, but glad I took so many pictures during their practice now. Speaking of which…

* A quick note: to help protect against child pornography and other such nastiness, all relatively close-up photos I take of my students (or any children for that matter) will be restricted on my Flickr account to “friends/family only.” A Flickr account is entirely free, so if you want to see the awesome pics of my students, you should get one. I will count you as a contact and you will be able to see them, no problem.

I also took some short videos of the tug of war game and the teams practicing their cheers. Cheers in Japan trump cheers in America, in my opinion. Keep in mind that this was their first time practicing as an entire group and most did not have their uniforms….