Came and went. First up, a little synopsis: It occurs in the fall usually coinciding with cultural day, therefore the previous week (or two in the case of my school) there are no afternoon classes and everybody's schedule gets fiddled around with.
Throughout the whole day (there was one last year, although it started late and was cut short because it occured during a typhoon), there are various races and events from tug-of-war, relays, sprints, three-legged races, etc. The school is split up into "blocks" which are labeled by color: yellow, red, green, blue, and purple. In my school's case, each block contains a class from each grade (i.e. blue block has 1-A, 2-C, and 3-E). All events can either be split by block or class: i.e. 3rd year relays, the winning third year class, let's say 3-B, wins points for themselves and whatever block they are a part of.
Therefore, in the end, there are (as usual in Japan) TONS of prizes, these being given out to the best class in each grade, best in each event, and finally, the most coveted, best block.
Teacher's usually join in the relays, but of course, we never win. Who could against kids that play or practice some form of sport 3 hours a day, 6 days a week (sometimes 7).
The funniest and best relay was the club sports relay. What made this really funny was that each sport dressed in their gear, so the baseball guys wore their uniforms, judo players wore the white robe, tennis players passed a tennis racquet instead of a baton... The judo team, despite wearing robes and being the more bulky of the men's club sports participating, almost won. Of course, as would be expected, the track team won. Baseball did okay, soft tennis blew it.
Amongst the women, it was the judo team that kicked ass. Now you want a surprising 2nd place finish...!!!??? Try the dance team!!! Yeah, no kidn. They wore their "noise control" t-shirts, and beat out the volleyball team, the softball team, and the soft tennis team to take second. Wow. Dance machine!
I participated in the teacher's relay, and was "hayai!" or very fast. I also snuck onto the 3rd year class relay (not part of the teacher's group that joined onto this) because I wanted to be a part of the first lap where everybody's clipping each other's heels, and, as I was hoping, several kids wiped out and hit the dirt on the tight turn.
Lastly, they have each block split up, and the 3rd year's all give farewell thankyou's and inevitably cry (the girls at least). The most interesting thing I saw here was one of the teacher's who was in charge of the winning block (which was purple), was during his speech constantly hammering home how this was a team effort and it only worked because everybody worked hard, just how the classroom and school should work, that everybody should work to learn, to study, and to come to school. You all pushed and cheered each other out here, and you should cheer and push each other in the classroom as well. Wow. Rudi...Rudi...Rudi...Rudi...Rudi.......
Coming up will be the block banners...
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