A Grand Production

ND JHS, being my biggest school with around 360 students, put on a good show for the visiting families and community representatives (who fell asleep in their chairs after tea and snacks and on awakening skipped out early) on Sports Day.


Every event was perfectly timed down to the second, and after hours of practice ran smoothly.

Here's some of the artwork supplied by each of the 12 classes.

Unbelievably, the crowds were huge, which warranted a tako-yaki stand, a kakigori stand, and a hot chip stand to show up as well.The school has an all female band, and also the first marching band I've ever seen in Japan.After the raising of the flag and band performances, the students marched onto the sports ground to listen to and make a variety of speeches before the commencement of "rajio taiso", a calisthenic warm up that has been performed in the same manner to the same plonking piano since WWII.Finally, the races. They started with a few relay races...

And then moved on to the "mukade" race. I was hoping for a little carnage...

But got none. Luckily there was another weird tied-together race...

To finish off the racing, there was an obstacle course race. I had the job of holding the net.

During of this, the teachers ran about in costume cheering on their teams, and the students yelled out the chants they had practiced all week.

After the racing, it was time for some dancing. First up were two uninspired and unenergetic traditional dances from the first graders.

Followed by a couple of dances involving flags and the inevitable "Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne by the third grade girls.

Then the boys showed off their military maneuvers with an awesome marching display - the highlight of my day.

Finally, a tug of war and a walk-across-backs-wearing-a-hat race.

Naturally the day went off without a hitch seeing as the students had been practicing every day for two months.