Shortly after the below mentioned trip to Korea, the wonderful people of Ozu Junior High finally got around to doing Sports Day! They'd been practicing for weeks on it. We would take time during the day, or at the end of the day (sometimes leaking over to after-school territory, and the students would practice marching. Yes, marching. I would always joke, "Like good little military kids." They practiced for this just about every day. Arms rigidly out in front of them, knees up to a 90
degree angle, keeping up pace while everyone screamed, "ICHI!! NI!!" *step step* "ICHI!! NI!!" *step step* It was quite shocking to see the amount of discipline they had. 500 students in perfect unison (well, not ALWAYS, but you get the idea) stomping around is kind of... intimidating? I dunno, but it was something!Lemme back up and explain a bit of what Sports Day is. Every year, all of the schools in Japan set aside one day to celebrate athletics. It's kind of a glorified Field Day. There is a very precise opening ceremony (the marching practice is for the opening parade), followed by a morning of track competitions, and an afternoon of various group and team building games and activities. The entire school is involved, and everyone's parents are invited to watch, often times participating in a race or two.
The downside was that it was on a Sunday, so our "weekend" was shifted to Monday. The other thing was that we had to work on Saturday right before it, meaning THAT day off was shifted to the Friday the week before. So, right after Golden Week, I got back to a couple days of school, a 3 day weekend, and then Monday through Sunday of school everyday before finally having a day off on Monday right after Sports Day. Eesh...
It wasn't so bad. Kinda fun, since it kinda gave me a little extra time to "play" with the students. Anyway, the students divided up into 3 teams, red, yellow, and blue, and that was how they practiced and competed, tallying scores for the whole day. After every event, eyes kept shooting back to the score board put up behind home plate to see how they were doing.
When that Sunday rolled around, all eyes went to the sky, however. The weather was looking rather ominous, and we all arrived at school wondering if it would actually happen that day or not... but we went for it. We shifted the activities around and had to cut out one or two (The parent-participation ones, actually... the one I would have gotten to run in), but we set off to get as much done as we could before the weather hit us. It was pretty windy, but GAMBATTE!!
Among the activities, there were the 3rd year boys doing a series of balancing and endurance tasks (which proved difficult and maybe dangerous in the wind), the 3rd year girls did a dance to "Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne (swearing intact... haha), the second year classes all d
id a group jump-rope competition (imagine 40 kids all jumping in unison over two incredibly long jump ropes), and the first years played an awesome class game called Typhoon. Typhoon is played by having the class sit in rows. The first row grabs a long pole and runs as a line around a weaving pathway. when they turn and come back to the class, they lower the bar and the rest of the class must jump the bar as it passes under them. Then, they pass the bar back to the next row and continue on until the whole class has gone. This was AWESOME and I totally want to steal it for some future school event!!About the time we finished all of that, though, the weather finally gave out and it started pouring rain. We canceled the afternoon and decided that we would pick up on Tuesday morning. The students went home, and the teachers just sort of... hung out... for the rest of the afternoon.
On Tuesday, we started up again, but this time with the track activities. Each class and grade competed in various types of races: 50 yard dashes, 4x4 relays, and even relays involving the entire classes. It was really neat to watch them all band together. (And on a self-centered note, it was really neat to hear a group of first years cheering their team on with a cheer I taught them, "Let's go yel-low! *clap, clap, clap-clap-clap*)
Once all of this was finished, it was on to the cheering competition. Each of the three teams had practiced the same cheer, but then added in a couple of their own. This was more or less a spirit competition. The Red team was freaking AWESOME!!! Yet again, about 150 students all doing the same thing in perfect unison looked great, and they were by far the sharpest. (My team, the Yellow team, was... uh... *ahem* "less" enthusiastic...)
Anyway, overall, it was a fantastic day/s. Certainly something I'll never forget. And I have tons of pictures and video, so maybe someday soon, I'll put it all together and put it up here.
That's all for now!
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