Sports Day Festival
Today was actually a very cool day. It was supposed to rain, in the morning, but it didn't rain all day. How fortunate for the students. I wished I had brought a camera, it really was amazing to see the difference in culture through the festivals that each culture has. I was pretty fortunate because the school had bought me a uniform that matched all the full-time staff, so I really did feel included.
They had about 33 different events lasting from 8am to 4pm, and then clean up. I felt sorry for some teachers because they were there at 5:30am to call everyone to tell them if we were going to have the festival or not. So those people had a really really really long day. The kids really put their hearts out into winning, you can really tell. Most of the people who won were from the Basketball team since they are ranked in the top ten in the Kanto area. But the fastest person at the school was on the volleyball team.
I participated in the teacher's relay. I had to wear big pants with another person and kick a ball to the other end and then run back. Some of the other teachers had to carry three boxes on two sticks, three legged race, and run in a UFO across the field. That's really the interesting one. Our team lost because one of the members forgot to pick up something on the way back and had to go get it and come back. We would have made second, but ended up at fourth place. It was fun though, since we make all the students do crazy things all day. A lot of the parents and families came out to watch too. So it was a really big deal.
Each grade had a dance performance that they have been working on since the semester started. They were all very impressive. The marching band was also very impressive. I could really see the cultural difference and to tell that it's a very "girls" school. But it's interesting how to play off of that. Some of the dance routines had flag tossing, and then a display of fans, and balloons, and balls. It really was great to see. All the members of the grade were part of the performance too so the level of difficulty was really really high that's also what was so impressive. How to coordinate about a hundred people to make it look cool. The school even bought everyone lunch too, which was nice. And after the clean up the school took all the teachers and staff to eat Shabu Shabu. I was lucky because I was sitting with my two bosses.
They are actually pretty good people and really nice, but then again, that's the Japanese way. I was a little worried about my English Department Chair. She wasn't worried about what I was going to do for my lesson plans for my Junior High School plans and also for the teachers. She always emphasized, do whatever you want. All in all it was a great day. I found out some news that shocked me, that two teachers were married. I NEVER see those two together and I think everyone was shocked that they just got married. I heard news like that happened before too with another teacher in the English department, and they thought it was weird because everytime that they were together, no one saw. So everythings always secret secret. It's really hard to tell what's really going on in the situation. That's the most interesting thing about Japan. You really never know what's going on.
