Sports Festival

One of the biggest events of the year at a Japanese primary school is the annual "undoukai," or roughly translated, "Athletic Meet." It's basically the equivalent of "field day" that I had in elementary school, but the undoukai is much bigger in scope and importance for the students. I attended the Arakawa Junior School undoukai a couple of weeks ago, and here are some pictures:

Maybe the essential aspect for a teacher at the undoukai is the track suit. Heck, a lot of teachers even wear it to a normal day of school. I never understood the appeal until I bought one and tried it on, and wow: these duds beat dress shirts and khakis any day.
I don't have a lot of pics, but you can get a small sense of the atmosphere from this one. Students are divided into 4 blocks, or teams, and they compete at various events. It's difficult to describe the games in English because there's no translation of the names of the games. For example, there was a crazy relay race that I participated in where I first had to grab a paper cup and catch a ping pong ball, then run to a suspended rope with a senbei (rice cracker) hanging from that rope; grab that senbei with my teeth and jerk it from the clip which attached it to the rope; run again; pull a rope out of a hole in a box (some ropes were extremely long, some were short, so it was kind of a game of luck); then run again past the finish line. That's the best way I can explain it.

The two biggest events were an organized dance that the students had been practicing for a few weeks, and a giant tug-of-war tournament. After the tug-of-war, there was the trophy presentation for the winning block. After that, I went to a big dinner party with all the teachers, followed by drunken karaoke (classes were cancelled for Arakawa the next day, but there was no drinking for me since I had to go to my other school the next day). All in all, it was a fun but tiring day.

It was a lot fun watching the kids compete and have fun, and I felt like it was a bonding experience for me and the teachers. Until then, I hadn't really spent much time with the Arakawa teachers outside of regular school hours, so I got to talk to them about things other than English. I was surprised to hear most of them apologize to me for making me spend my Sunday with them, but I had to keep saying that, no, I was happy to be there and I was having a great time. I think this was mostly because Japanese people seem to apologize for everything, but I think some it had to do with my mostly unathletic image; teachers and students alike gasp in horror when they hear my weight which is way, way too low. They seem shocked when they see me shooting basketball with kids after school or talking about baseball. Maybe I can get in better shape while I'm here and raise their expectations...