体育祭

Yesterday was the school sports festival. Ever since the 2nd semester started classes have only run for half the day. After lunch is dedicated to sports festival practice. Even though most of the day is taken up by various athletic events the majority of practice is spent working on the roughly 5 minute dance routine each team is required to perform. The school is divided in two teams, red and yellow, with each team being made up of one of one of the two classes from each grade. All of the teachers were part of a certain team mostly based on their homeroom classes, but not having a homeroom myself was teamless. I quickly affiliated myself with the yellow team since my supervising teacher was part of the yellow team.

We managed to do pretty good in the races. We swept most of the first place spots in the running events and the 3 legged race on both the boys and girls side, but we lost a lot of the higher point events like the individual grade competitions and the handball throw. We also lost the all important dance competition which has a huge point value attached to it. Just how high, I'm not quite sure, but it's gotta be big if we spent 2 weeks trying to get it perfect. The red team had a high energy dance to the tune of Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" and, disregarding the song choice, they really did have the better dance. This isn't to say that the yellow team didn't give it their all, but in the end it wasn't enough.

I competed in two events myself: the PTA vs. students tug of war, and the mixed relay which was a red team vs. yellow team vs teachers team 1400 m relay. I ran 100 m in the 4th and 14th positions. The first time was a fairly decent run and I was able to maintain our lead, but in the middle we had some weak runners so when it came back around to me again we were in last place and my shoe came undone so I was only able to gain minimal ground on the students in front of me.

I also managed to get a wicked sunburn even though it was overcast with patches of rain yesterday. It's mid-September, but you wouldn't know it with the weather here. The temperatures are still pushing the 30 C mark. It got cool for a bit last week, but the heat and humidity picked right back up. People say it's autumn already because in Japan when the first school semester ends at the end of July "summer" begins. When school starts again "summer" ends even though only a month has passed. You can say it's autumn all you want, but you aren't fooling me. Summer is sticking around.

Anyway, after the sports festival all the teachers headed out for a party to celebrate the job well done, but that is a different story for a different time, so for now enjoy the pictures and taiko performance while I enjoy being off until Wednesday. Tomorrow is a national holiday and because the sports festival was on the weekend we get the following school day (Tuesday) off as well. How sweet it is.