Sports Festival, now you can live it! (part 1 of 2)

Yes, now you too can enjoy Sports Festival day, without the 10 hours sitting under a tent, 4 of which are spent watching kids run relays. Here are the highlights from the 4 sports festivals I attended, my last ones ever (sob). My smallest school (Ochidani) was the least exciting, but they did do a nice traditional dance. You can watch them practicing it. I've seen this dance, or slight variations of it every year. Practice practice practice means they learn next to nothing in the month of September. But boy does sports day make mom and dad proud! My Junior High was largely relays and repeats of last year. They changed it up a bit by doing the all-class skipping contest which I thought to be very cool, the winning team jumped 20 times before stepping on the rope!

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The day ended at Junior High, as it does every year, with each grade standing in a circle and doing 2 dances. The first one is very boy-girl centred, and I was thrown into it on the practice day (I think this made the boy I was paired with cool) and the 2nd one feels like the macarana gone askew. or something.



The Ohyama day was pretty good, they had some new events and they pushed the cute factor. This was by far the cutest thing I witnessed. The kindergarten kids were paired up with a 1st grader and they did this Indiana Jones themed relay. (Awwww).

Stay tuned for more! I promise ode's to Queen and a marching band!