Sports Day!

Okay! I think that I have managed to scrape together some pictures of sports day that do not violate student privacy.

I should probably talk a little bit about what sports day is.
Sports day is an event that Japanese schools have in late spring or early summer. The entire student body is divided into two teams ( the red team and the white team). There are a variety of competitions held throughout the day. At the end, one team is awarded first place and the other is awarded second place.
I'm unable to provide pictures of all of the events. In fact most of the more interesting events show too much of a single kid's face.

There was one event in particular that I wish we had a picture of. It was listed on the days schedule as the pan, pan, pan race. The pan, pan, pan was a delightfully wacky race with three parts. First, the child had to blow up a balloon and sit on it hard enough to burst it. This sounds exceedingly simple until one remembers that the child in question is a Japanese elementary school student.( Let me tell you, a swift breeze could blow some of the smaller ones clean away. )

So after each kid had bounced unsuccessfully on their balloon three or four times, they finally manage to pop it. Next, they have to run while holding a ball in a cooking pan without letting the ball roll out. The third and final challenge was easily the most entertaining. There were individually wrapped bread snacks hanging suspended from string. The children had to grab the bread without using their hands.
They. were. adorable.
They looked like little goldfish trying to catch the bread in their mouths. Some kids had the perfect strategy, while others were tragically inept, but all of them were adorable.
After I had seen the race in action I finally figured out the name pan, pan, pan
Pan!- The sound effect of the balloon popping
Pan- the cooking pan
Pan- for whatever reason the Japanese word for bread is Pan. I don't know of any other Spanish loan words.

I felt really smart for figuring this out. I'm pretty sure that's a little sad.


Anyway, on to the Pictures!



Note: there are two different sportsdays being represented here. One middle school and one elementary school. If the kids are about knee-high It's the elementary school.



Here we have an event at Chokai. The kids had to make a London Bridge style tunnel of steepled hands. The last link in the chain was allowed to run through and become the first link. The constant movement reminded me of a caterpillar.
These were the coats that the kids wore for a special dance.


After lunch, the kids got themselves ready for the cheering competition. This invovled most of the boys painting themselves from head to toe.

Regrettably, most of the cheer competition didn't make the great photo cut because of kid's faces being visible. This is part of the Red team's performance. The white team did a really funny lip sync of a popular boy band. Caleb and I, getting ready to perform in the traditional dance. Caleb had seen it performed once. I had never even a single step of it. Oh well, I'm sure we just blended in with the other dancers....
Oh yeah, I never blend in anywhere... crud.

This was an event for the PTA. They had to carry these little horse carts. The horses had bells on them.
This was a strange event that I'm still not entirely sure I understand. Both teams stood at opposite sides of the field. There were bamboo poles, tires and a huge rope in the middle.
When the shot fired, both teams raced for items in the middle and dragged them back to their own side. While it was immensely entertaining to watch 10 elementary school students dragging a tire in 10 different directions, the end scoring made very little sense.

I'm afraid that's all for now.

Tune in next week when one of us will blog about the sheep shearing at Okunakayama.
Here's a teaser: