Unebi Middle School's Sports Festival
The sports festival at my first Japanese junior high school was incredibly fun. It started at 8:30 in the morning and
lasted until after three. I got there just before it began, and the kids were all set up by
class, with elaborate decorations that they'd been working on for weeks. I took a few group
photos, but ran out of time before the events began, so I had to run back to my seat under some
pavillions with the other teachers. But I did manage to get these classes:
3-1 (third year, first class), 3-2, and my two favorite classes in the whole school,
3-4 and 3-5:
The kids all lined up in time to a march, and stretched out their hands both in front of
them and to the sides so that they were evenly spaced.
Next, all the kids and teachers exercised together, along with a tape of music and a man
shouting out the exercises.
On to the events! They started off with one of many races. Each kumi had a different
assigned color for headbands, batons, cones, etc.
Next came one of my favorite games: Hustle Hustle Battle Stick! The hustle hustle part is
named after a pro wrestler's trademark that's been popular on tv lately. Anyway, Battle Stick is
played between two teams, all the boys or all the girls from one class on each side (boys and girls
had seperate battles). The teams start behind lines on either side of the field, and long bamboo
poles are laid out in the middle, perfectly centered. When the starting pistol is fired, the
kids rush to the middle and grab the sticks. All they have to do is get as many sticks as possible
behind their own starting line. Once a stick is back behind that line, the other team can't steal
it. If a kid is lucky enough to grab a stick with no competition, he can just run it back to the
line. But usually each stick turns into a mini tug-of-war. But that's okay too, even if just one
kid is being dragged by like four kids on the other team, if they can just go deadweight and stall
long enough, their own teammates might come rescue them after they've delivered the stick they're
working on! It was SOOO fun to watch this game, and the various strategies the kids tried,
sometimes running around to the other side of the stick and pushing, or things like that.
At the end of each round, the kids would line up again at their starting point and lift
all the poles up. A teacher would count the poles over a loudspeaker, and the students lowered
the poles one by one as they were counted.
Now it's the girls' turn! Look at 'em get dragged across the field!! This looked SO fun!
The next event was a boys' obstacle course. One boy from each class went at a time, and
they held a lot of races in rapid succession so all the boys in one grade (I think) got to race.
First they ran a few feet to a box full of tennis rackets and volleyballs, and scrambled against
each other to grab one of each. They balanced the balls on the rackets while running around a
big cone, left the props back at the beginning, and then ran until they reached a net that some
teachers and students where holding along the ground. The boys crawled under the net, and then
picked up a gunnysack that was laid out waiting for them, and hopped another couple of meters.
After discarding the sack, they had to pick up a ball from a pile on the ground, and toss it into
a basket on a stick. They often missed and had to try many times, before they could finally run
to the finish line.
It's a little hard to see what's going on in this picture, but it's your standard
tug-of-war. Students not participating in the actual match are holding their classes' banners
to cheer on their classmates.
Now it's the girls' turn for a strange race! Girls raced in pairs, rolling a huge ball
up to a stool. There they stopped while one girl in each pair pulled a balloon out of her pocket
and blew it up. They could blow it up as much or as little as they wanted, but it seemed to be in
their interests to take the extra seconds to blow it up a little bigger, because that made it
easier to pop. Then the girl with the balloon would hold it on the stool, while the other girl had
to sit on it to pop it. Once the balloon was popped, they rolled the ball the rest of the way,
around a cone, and back to the start again. At this point, I asked a teacher who comes UP with
these games! She told me that these games have been traditional ones for decades... wow.
Another boys' relay! This time a boy would run, jump over a hurdle, climb up the backs of
his classmates to the top of a pole to grab a colored pompom, and the run back UNDER the hurdle
to give it to the next member of the relay. His teammate would then leap the hurdle and climb up
the pole to put the pompom BACK on top of the pole, and they would alternate taking and replacing
the pompom until all the boys had gone. One boy actually broke his wrist during this game when
he fell from the top of the pole. Eep. At least that was the only major injury of this whole
day of sports.
When the kids went off to lunch, I walked around and took pictures of some more of their
decorations. They really worked hard on them! I feel partially responsible for the English sign;
a few WEEKS before this event, with no explanation, some kids asked me how to translate a
Japanese word I hadn't heard before. I let them use my electronic dictionary, and it came up
with "go headlong at one." I explained in detail that "one" was basically a place holder; they
could use a person's name or a thing or place that someone was going headlong at, and that "go"
could also be replaced with rush, run, or whatever. The kids nodded gravely and took notes... and
came up with this inspiring sign. Ah well. It's cute that they tried.
The first event after lunch was the cheering competition. Each class had prepared a
three-minute cheering routine. The teachers had to vote for the best three classes in each grade.
Unfortunately, all the classes in a given grade did their cheers at once, so it was difficult to
hear what they were saying or anything over the general roar, but I understand that there wouldn't
be enough time to have all the classes go one at a time. They were really fun to watch anyway; the
kids had obviously practiced a lot and worked hard on their props!! 1-4 featured a kid running
with a cardboard Disney Nemo to lead the rest of the class, dressed in construction paper scales,
as they did the wave. 3-4 had a Hattori-kun theme, including a great student-made Hattori-kun
costume. 3-5 had dyed their own shirts to make happi for a matsuri-style cheer.
As the finale for the cheering competition, a representative from each class ran with the
class' banner in a short race. Hattori-kun ran too!
Next came a jumproping event. The class pictured in orange headbands was REALLY good;
they got about 60 jumps in!
The next event was similar to a three-legged relay, except that the number of legs seemed
to be up to the kids. Lines of kids in pairs, singles, or enormous groups ran back and forth
between cones with their legs tied together. I guess the students got to decide how to split up
their numbers in the way they thought could get all of them through the fastest. Some of the
larger groups had difficulty moving at all, but the two boys in red headbands ran faster tied
together than I think I can on my own!
There were a ton of relays over the course of the day. Here are a few pictures of them.
After the competitions were all finished, the students lined up again for another round of
exercises. Then classes were awarded prizes for first, second, and third most total wins in
each grade, and first, second, and third prizes were also awarded for cheering in each class.
Go back to picture index.
