Sports Day!
"The 32nd Health and Sports Rally"
Friday was Sports Day at O. Junior High. I guess you could say it's similar to field day (personally ours was called Color Day). Thankfully it was a gorgeous day. The kind of day where you're only hot if you're in the sun. Like everything official in Japan, it started with an opening ceremony before moving onto the games. It was cute to see the kids fired up for something (b/c they sure as hell aren't fired up for class). Since I wasn't really involved in the planning and b/c I don't have a homeroom or whatev I didn't have an assigned team. O-teacher was nice enough to like kind of direct me through what was going on (they don't ever really tell you anything here) and gave me her hachimaki since she wanted to wear a hat. So I was psuedo-adopted into white team, which was ok with me since O-teacher and G-teacher were on white team. Although the other English teachers (Ok-teacher, K-teacher and M-teacher) def. took the time to comment on my not joining their teams (blue and purple, respectively).
The games were mostly running games; various forms of relays. Sadly there was no kibasen. I did kibasen in 2002 as the person being carried who's supposed to "fight" and got my ass kicked, but it was hilariously fun and terrifying. They also played another game that I'd played at that same 2002 study abroad that's kind of like tug of war with bamboo poles. Although these kids actually know how to play it and some of them were getting like dragged across the ground clinging to the poles. There was also tug of war as we know it. And performances. Actually it kind of reminded me of Greek Night with more pom poms, lol.
Sadly, if I had wanted to win I should have taken K-teacher and M-teacher's advice and joined purple team; they dominated the day. I'm assuming since the day was stacked in running events they had the most kids from the track team.
But huzzah for the unintentional hilarity. I don't think there's a sense of camp in Japanese culture. During the events they play classical music (the names of which I don't know), but it's the type of music that in the US is only played in cartoons for comic effect. They also played the rocky theme and a jazzy 80s instrumental version of Cutie Honey (for why that's amusing see the lyrics).
And the Engrish:
I didn't bother explaining to white team why their slogan was horribly horribly wrong since it's not a social issue they have here and b/c I didn't wanna kill team morale. But zomg hilarious. One of their banners had it as well.
All in all it was a good day. The students still don't know me very well, so I think it was good to see them in a not-class setting. Oh and now I know who all the popular boys are, b/c the girls were asking me, "Isn't so-and-so cool/cute/kakkoii?" To which I just answered, "Sure." I like how they don't think it's weird to ask to a 23 year old her opinion of a 14 year old boy on things like that, lol.