Observations about Sports Day

• A family outing - the whole family turns up with an elaborate picnic lunch, table and chairs or rug and the video camera!
• There's not much room on the oval for spectators sitting down so people were all standing watching. Their picnic rugs are tables were all around the school - in any available area, walkways, everywhere!
• There is one individual race (100m sprint) all other races are relays and team events.
• All students participate in all events (even students with special needs).
• Maintaining the team is more important than winning!
• Doing your best is more important than finishing the race unscathed. The most useful phrase I learnt this week was "daijyobu desuka?" Are you okay?
  
• Races and competitors do not have to be equal. Often there would be relays were girls and guys would be racing against each other or one of the students with special needs would be running (quite a bit slower than the others) but I never heard "It's not fair" or got the impression that the students even thought that. It was a very strong team mentality and you didn't question/complain but always support your team - no matter what.
  
• Music accompanies everything! I'm discovering a new appreciation for silence!
  
• How you enter and leave the oval is more important that what you do on the oval. (Ok, I'm not really sure about this one, but we did spend hours practising and I know that it was very important).
  
• The day is not complete without a folk dance and of course is more interesting with the principal, Aussie ALT and any other teachers close by joining in - even if they don't know the dance!
• All that time practising marching and most families (80% or so) didn't arrive until it was over! They also all left once the last race was finished - they didn't wait for any of the formalities afterwards.
• Students brought out their chairs from their classroom to sit on during the day. When they took them back inside they had to dunk the chair legs into buckets of water and then dry them before taking them back inside!
  
• We used the toilets which were inside, so a tarp had been laid down from the door to the toilets so that people didn't have to take off their shoes and inside didn't get dirt inside.

Some interesting races:

• Every race was a relay!
• There was no high jump, long jump, shot put, etc....
• There were some running relays and some obstacle relays.
  
• 3-legged races (relays) - they were the fastest 3 legged races I have ever seen - they were sprinting! It was pretty impressive.
• 3 legged relay that every time they got back the next group had an extra person until there became 10 people!
• Mukade: this means "dangerous worm" or centipede (in Japan, centipedes are venomous and quite dangerous). The students of each class would form a line, tie their legs up together and then race! Very cool, very dangerous, very impressive!
• Cowboy: 3 students have another students on their shoulders. Student on shoulders has a ball (like a volleyball) tied to some rope. They run then student on shoulders has to knock over a big tin can with the ball while on their shoulders. When they get it they run back (students still on shoulders) and the next group goes. The teams have 5 or 6 groups that have to do this.
• Teachers relay: Yes I was in this. While I was told that I was in it, I was given no idea of the format or time or anything, but apart from that it went fine. (My supervisor suggested that I would know what was going on if I knew Japanese!). Although I'm still a bit confused, because it seems that we weren't actually competing against anyone.

It was a very interesting day and lots of fun! A lot of time went into it (especially for marching and mukade) but I believe it was a success and it was certainly an experience for me.