One Thing I Learned from a Sports Festival

1. Sports festivals are serious business.

Sports festivals are sports competitions held in schools all over the nation around this time of year. The school is divided into teams, and on a Saturday in September these teams battle it out during sports events to rack up points and hopefully win a trophy and bragging rights. The events include relay races, 100m dashes, tug-of-war, and some uniquely Japanese games. But sports festival is not like the Field Day you remember from elementary school. Oh no, sports festivals in Japan are Serious Business.

Here are a few pictures and videos from the opening ceremony. Yes, the opening ceremony. Like the Olympics.

A few select students carry the school flag and the Japanese flag to raise over the field. 

The students process in and circle the field, team by team, marching like little soldiers while Fanfare plays.They are lead by the piercing whistles of one of the teachers straight into a microphone...ow.

 

Next, each of the teams, Red, Blue, and Yellow, approach the stands, where the teachers and spectators are waiting. They stand through endless speeches by various students and faculty, and then sing the national anthem and the school song. Don't worry--I won't make you listen to 325 kids singing.

Notice that each team has their own flag--a student from each team designed it.

After the speeches are finally over, all of the students stretched.

It was like watching a movie, everything was so perfectly executed. What happened to the rowdy kids from English class, or the one who fell asleep in the third row??

The coveted prizes are three trophies: one for the team that scores the most points (the huge one that's half my height), one for the team with the best group cheer and general supportive spirit (the plaque), and one for...well, I'm not really sure what that last one is for. 

 

 The games included a few that I had never seen before, like bohiki. This game is kind of like tug-of-war. Two teams rush at a bunch of poles on the ground, and attempt to drag it back across the line of their boundary.

 They have to out-pull the members of the other team who are going after the same pole. When they realized they were losing a stick, the girls often gave up and ran to another stick to try and help their teammates pull that one back. 

The most interesting game by far was called kibasen. The boys made groups of three who hoist a fourth on their shoulders. It looks like this:

 Then, with the fourth hoisted up in the air, the three boys on bottom run around trying to position the top guy to snatch the cap off a guy from the opposite team. 

One boy on each team wears a jersey, like this:

 He is the king, and when his cap is pulled off, the game is over.

During the practice round the day before the actual Sports Festival, the red team was crushed every time. They clearly did some thinking overnight, because when they got to the real game, all of their players crowded around the king and refused to move. The other team had to try and rush them, and the reds could just pick off the other team one by one. 

After each game, representatives of each team thank the crowd. 

 

 The whole time, the score was kept like this:

Finally, the prizes were awarded. The red team, which incidentally had the coolest flag, won the overall, and the yellow team won the cheering and mystery prize.

 

Apparently I didn't appreciate just how big a deal this festival was, because I was surprised when the representatives of each team CRIED when receiving their prizes. Even the boys, who are in the throes of middle school insecurity, were bawling like babies!

I guess I'm lucky to have witnessed such an important event, even if it was unknowingly!