Friday 12th June – Sports Day
Ok where to start? JAPANESE SPORTS DAYS ARE INSANE!!!
I’ll run through the day and explain as I go or at least try to.
Get to school and we carry our chairs down to the “oval” and set them up in front of our class banners. (my whole class and teachers in front of ours at the end of the day)

Class banners/themes: about 2x5 meters painting of a scene of our class them. My classes theme was Aladdin. We had to do a dance to do with our theme. My class danced to a song that is apparently sung but Koreans… In Japanese when we were doing Aladdin. Go figure! These backdrops were part of a competition to see who could make the best decorations. We also had to have flags. Which lead our classes around the track during the march.

(getting jasmine ready for dancing... no japanese dress up thing is complete with out cross dressing!)
We then marched around the track in our home classes (also our teams) watched while the flags were raised. The flags being: the Japanese Flag and the school flag. We then spread out and did a sort of stretching dance thing very strange! And then back to our lines while listening to our headmaster’s speech and a few other things.
There were standard races yes, but that isn’t very interesting to write about. Um ok fun stuff: the first years played a tire grab game. Two teams lined up with a row of tires in between them they have to get as many tires are possible to their side.
Us 2nd years, each of our teams got given about 100 hacky sacks to try and through under armed into a laundry basket that was attached to the top of a pole held up on the desk by the unfortunate student teachers. Much fun.
The 3rd years did among other things a multi legged race. Like a 3 legged race but with about 10 people not 2. Somehow this didn’t end badly they actually did very well. Marching across the field very well.
The boys did a few weird things which we would never be allowed to do back in Australia for Safety reasons. There were poles with flags on top held up by some of the boys trying to stop the other team from getting up it while the rest of the team tried to get up the other pole to steal the flag. Again I don’t see how this didn’t end badly
They also did this thing where they had another guy on their shoulders with a flag and ran at the other team also the same again trying to steal each other’s flags.
Relays! There were standard relays but there was insane relays as well. First person runs about 50m to a table with to bowls about 30 cm apart one filled with beans. And a set of chopsticks in-between them you job is to shift all the beans from one bowl to the other with the chopsticks before being allowed to run on and tag the second member, they had to go pop a balloon with a piece of paper in it and do something according the what the paper said. The 3rd person has a bit of an obstacle course to deal with. The 4th had to down a bottle of coke. The last person had to run the rest of the way with the class flag to the finish line. 22H all the way! We won this one!
After all the events were done and dusted it was back into our class lines in the middle of the oval as the certificates were given out for best decorations, best sports team ect of each grade, and then packing up.(first second and third years best decoration ) All the legs of the chairs had to be washed before we could take them inside and then all wiped down with a damp cloth ect. Not hard just time consuming stuff. We then had a short home class where our final goodbyes were said to our student teacher before heading home. He gave our class a really cool present, though odd a little money box thing where you put the money into the mouth of the face and it moves as if eating it, very cool, it is now sitting on top of the blackboard on display.

unlike grace where we were yelled at for going anywhere near the buildings on sports day here we used the hight advantage to watch from the windows.

also unlike at grace we dont wear hats.... we put towels on our heads instead, i actually did have a hat which i wore briefly befor being told i shouldnt and being given a towel instead. go figure?

and hopefully this works for you a video of the boys on the poles.