Japanese Undokai > American Sports Day

Tuesday was the glorious day of Takaodai's "undokai", or Sports Day. It's a whole day devoted to races and games. Most of them aren't sports, per se, but I'll get to that later.

The first scheduled day for the undokai was Saturday, but we were rained out. Kanazawa gets three times as much precipitation as Seattle, so this one was almost rained out as well. It sprinkled for much of the morning but cleared up later on and still managed to get me sunburnt.

I had a largely ceremonial/observational role in the day, but it was still tons of fun. It began with kids actually running around the track with a torch and lighting a larger propane-fueled torch:

And then began the eternal ceremonies. Three teams ran up in formation to salute the principal: Red, Blue, and Yellow, each consisting of 200 students. They'd been practicing their marching and cheering for almost two weeks, and working on their banners since the first day of my arrival at school. This is serious business.

The speeches and saluting took quite a while, and they took even longer if you couldn't understand a word of what was being said....

The banners are unfurled to actual live fanfare.

After the ceremonies the games began in earnest, with long relay races starting the day off. It would get much much weirder than that.


Each team got points for where they finished in every activity and accumulated them over the entire day. This was a marathon, not a sprint. Seriously, even some of the sprinting relays involved so many handoffs that they took upwards of 20 minutes.

Four kids hold a pole, run around a cone, go to the other side, hand it off to four other kids who have to jump over it and pick it up again before heading back over. Repeat 16 times.

Each team has 2 or so minutes to get as many beanbags in the basket as possible. Seems simple and easy, right?

Then one kid stands on the podium for the counting. He calls out slowly "1...2...3..." as the teams throw up beanbags. The team who's left throwing them up at the end wins the round. Great, except there were usually more than 60 beanbags in each basket. And they did three rounds.

The teachers and many parents (even on a Tuesday!) watch from the "stands". Reminded me of an old-timey horse race.

This next game sparked a long conversation with one of the English teachers wherein I attempted to explain the concept of liability and everyone suing each others pants off in America. It started because I said this game would never happen in America.

The set up is two teams at a time, only boys from each team. Each has a big pole with a flag on it, held up by guys with ropes on the side. Some stay as defenders, the others attack the other team's flag. They shove, punch, and claw their way to the top to get the flag first. Usually one guy climbs up the pole and it falls into the crowd of boys. I was mildly amazed no one got hurt.

(PS, I should go on the record as saying America should have games like this because kids need to get hurt more. I'm fully in Japan's court on this one. It was awesome.)

After lunch came the cheering competition. I was asked to be one of the judges because clearly my blond hair and cultural illiteracy make me a perfect fit to judge Japanese cheering. However, it was a lot of fun seeing two hundred kids dance to rock songs and shout. I shudder to imagine the effort involved at getting American kids to do the same thing in as coordinated a way.

More or less normal tug of war, although it was girls only and it was actually really brutal. Girls are intense, man.

This next series of pictures cracked me up, I couldn't even look at it straight on for most of the day once I noticed it. The banners were unfurled early on, but I happened to really look at them and realized first off that Japanese kids are way better artists than American kids. But then also...

First: the Blue Team's ferocious sea dragon, snarling with a background of lightning...

Second: the Red Team's glowering demon god, muscly arms about to deliver a death blow...

Third: ...
...
...the Yellow Team's glassy eyed winged unicorn in a field of glittering, squishy looking stars.

The Yellow Team got crushed.

I still don't know what happened in this game. There were jerseys being put on and taken off, teachers being found and dragged out to the field, then some hula hoop jumping. Ignorance is bliss.

Another fantastically dangerous game where one kid on the shoulders of three others tries to knock another kid's hat off. Clawing and scratching and falling from shoulders ensued.

Finally, the day came to a close. The Yellow Team came roaring back with a resounding win in the long final relay, but it wasn't enough. Up on the school, balloons were released in reverse order, eventually declaring...


The Red Team the winner! By 6 points out of a scale of almost 1700!

The closing ceremonies. A little after this (and I didn't get my camera out in time, curses) the three team captains saluted the principal while he talked to them. They saluted with a full stiff armed salute that looked creepily like a Nazi salute. I'm sure the gesture wasn't intended in any way to be paying homage to Nazism and gestures in general mean so many different things from culture to culture, but it did send a little shiver of recognition up my spine. Luckily this was just Sports Day.

Finally, the ranks gathered one more time to salute the Red Team winners. I don't think their captain has let go of that flag yet even today. The kids were so focused and determined all day, and it was a pleasure to be a part of.

Next up: a trip down to Osaka for four days to take advantage of a five day holiday!