Sports Festival

Just about every school in Japan runs a few festivals. The big ones are the Sports Festival and the Culture Festival. The Culture Festival revolves around arts and speeches and things, plays, exhibits, etc.

The Sports Festival...well it revolves around sports all right, but not in the "baseball and volleyball and soccer" way you might imagine. Here`s a rundown of the events that occured in our junior high sports festival here:

-Opening Ceremony in which all students and teachers must stand for ungodly amounts of time doing basically nothing and listening to nonsense Japanese. (ok, so only nonsense to me)
-Rajio Taisou, calisthenics performed en masse to catchy piano music. I participated with the rest of the students and teachers in looking like a total dork.
-100 meter race
-"Mountains and Valleys" a game where students must balance a ping-pong ball on a fan and walk over to a pylon, circle the pylon twice, and return.
-"Olympics" a strange collection of events that do not resemble the olympics at all, i.e. spinning with you head on a baseball bat, and then participating in a 4 legged race (3-legged race with an extra person)
-Tug-of-war
-"Friend park" a unique er...game where two person teams compete. First one person drags the other on a dolly to station A. At station A they both put on helmets and mount a bicycle (one person sits on the cargo seat and balances two large but lightweight boxes), then they travel to station B while balancing the boxes. At station B one person gets in a wheelbarrow and the other pushes her to the finish line. Yes.
-Relay race, one for each grade level (all students) and then one with all the grade levels (some students chosen from within the class)
-長谷川Japan vs 太田Japan, girls from each 3rd year class compete for who can grab the most tires and bring them back across the line.
-Tama-ire (Balls-in) the 1st years throw balls into baskets lofted in the sky. Whoever gets the most in wins.
-"Boy Fight" Two teams of boys each have a pole. Half the boys hold up the pole, the other half go try to knock the other team`s pole down. Winner is first to make the other team`s pole hit the ground.
-Mukade Race (centipede race) groups of 5 students have their legs connected together and must hobble around the track. This was done relay style. The last place team was um...4 minutes behind everyone else. Quite sad.
-"Folk" dance in which all the students dance halfheartedly to some weirdo dance the 3rd years created to a catchy Japanese pop song. Well the 3rd years were at least pretty excited..
-Closing Ceremony, which is the same as the opening ceremony except after it`s over I have to help clean everything up and take down tents.

Note about the relay race: the teachers had to join in with the 1st year students. We ended up getting 3rd place. I was the first teacher to run and I was in 3rd place after the baton pass. But I felt ok about this because a lot of people were slower than I, and at the end of the day all the teachers kept saying "Jessie-sensei hayai! hayai!" (fast! fast!) but man...I`m not fast. Those little 12 year olds are fast. I will try to do better next year...gotta get in shape.

Note about the Japanese school system: Elementary is 1st to 6th grade, Junior High is 7th to 9th grade, and Senior High is 10th to 12th grade. I`m having a lot of trouble explaining and getting the people I work with to understand the fact that they have 7th, 8th, and 9th graders at their school in English instead of 1st grade, 2nd grade, and 3rd grade(which of course makes them sound like 7 year olds). So I have more or less compromised and I`m trying to make them say "1st year, 2nd year, 3rd year" Do you think this is for the best?

I`m not always sure what to write about, so if you ever have any questions about my life in Japan or anything about Japan, let me know.