Sports Day!
So, today was Chiyoda High's Sports Day, where all the students get together to do different games (not really sports in the American sense) and the classes compete against each other. I had been invited to go a couple weeks ago, so I woke up early with softlykarou and headed down to the school. I sat around with her the teacher's room for a bit, while the teachers held their morning meeting and said a bunch of stuff I didn't understand, and then at 9:30 we went out to the field for the Sports Day.
Sports Day was all kinds of fun, and filled with the sort of activities that would cause a massive lawsuit in America. For example, one of the events involved the boys forming a human bridge that another boy climbed on top of. As he walked on his classmates' backs, the people at the end ran around to the front to extend the bridge. One kid even did fall off and crack something pretty hard such that they had to stop the event, but no one freaked out or threatened to sue anyone--kind of a welcome change. Another one, called Caterpillar, had people climb into a roll of taped-together cardboard boxes and move across the field.
softlykarou and I, as well as a bunch of parents from the audience, got to participate in one event--tennis ball bouncing. Against the ground on the way out to the cone, then up and down on the racquet on the way back. I did okay--it's a bit hard to tell how people think you're doing when you could stumble around like a drunken elephant and they'd still yell "[name]-san ganbare!" and "Fighto!"
Then afterwards, I got invited to an enkai (school-sponsored party for teachers). That was a lot of fun--I'm just sad that our ride dropped us off at home while our car is still at the bus station (3 or so miles away), but they did have our best interests at heart. Japanese drunk driving laws basically come down to, "If you have a BAC above 0 when the cops pull you over, you're fucked and so is everyone who let you drive."
Sports Day was all kinds of fun, and filled with the sort of activities that would cause a massive lawsuit in America. For example, one of the events involved the boys forming a human bridge that another boy climbed on top of. As he walked on his classmates' backs, the people at the end ran around to the front to extend the bridge. One kid even did fall off and crack something pretty hard such that they had to stop the event, but no one freaked out or threatened to sue anyone--kind of a welcome change. Another one, called Caterpillar, had people climb into a roll of taped-together cardboard boxes and move across the field.
softlykarou and I, as well as a bunch of parents from the audience, got to participate in one event--tennis ball bouncing. Against the ground on the way out to the cone, then up and down on the racquet on the way back. I did okay--it's a bit hard to tell how people think you're doing when you could stumble around like a drunken elephant and they'd still yell "[name]-san ganbare!" and "Fighto!"
Then afterwards, I got invited to an enkai (school-sponsored party for teachers). That was a lot of fun--I'm just sad that our ride dropped us off at home while our car is still at the bus station (3 or so miles away), but they did have our best interests at heart. Japanese drunk driving laws basically come down to, "If you have a BAC above 0 when the cops pull you over, you're fucked and so is everyone who let you drive."