Sports Festival

Every fall, all the schools in Japan have Sports Festivals. The sports are mainly track and field events, with some funny variations. For instance, 3 legged races, obstacle courses, gymnastics, and dance routines. While the older grades participate in these events, the elementary students get to do even sillier things like toss around gigantic balls over a huge crowd. It's like going to an outdoor concert for Barney.

The kids practice for the Festival weeks and weeks in advance. Come rain or shine they are outside practicing leap frog, or running relay. You hear music blaring all day long because yes, they do all of these events to MUSIC! They use hits like "Open Arms" (Christie!!!), the Star Wars and Pulp Fiction Themes, and even some Ricky Martin!!! LOL!

This past weekend was my Junior High School's Festival, which ended up lasting 2 days due to rain. It began to pour during the 3rd event on Saturday, so everything else had to be postponed until Sunday. But this was okay because now I get TWO days off because we considered this event to be part of our work week... So that means I get TWO long weekends in a row! YAY!

After the Festival all of the teachers went to Toyohashi for dinner, and we had a REALLY great time. Teachers really let loose at these events... and there is usually a lot of cheering and shouting as the beer begins to flow. Drinking is a very popular thing to do in Japan because normally the Japanese are very reserved, so alcohol helps them loosen up, and express themselves freely for once. It's like one big cathartic confessional. These are the events where the teachers that are usually afraid to speak to me because they worry about their English come up and start conversations! It's really great because I get to know the staff a lot better.

I look forward to more staff parties... especially the one that will involve karaoke!!!

-- Enjoy the new installment.