Sports Day and my recent trips

Last weekend I had two full days of Sports Festival mania at my main junior high schools. I think that Sports Festival is considered to be the biggest thing besides graduation. It is very ceremonial and has required endless hours of preparation during the summer “vacation” months to perfect the students’ abilities to uniformly march and chant (ichi ni, ichi ni…), capture tires, race 3,4,5,6 and 7 legged style, jump-rope, race in lines like centipedes, etc. (see pictures below). It was quite the eye opening experience and hundreds of parents and city officials attended. To my dismay, none of the other female teachers wanted to take part in the teacher versus student relay races so I was put on a team with five very fit young male teachers where we ran 200 meters each against a crew of very fit 15 year olds. The students’ relay teams were comprised of the track and field team, the soccer team, the basketball team, the baseball team, and the tennis team. Needless to say, I couldn’t keep up and my performance was more than a little embarrassing. Luckily, we dominated at tug-of-war. I then went to the post-Sports Day enkais (drinking parties) where you pay a flat fee for all you can eat and drink for about 3 hours. Luckily, my schools were in conference rooms next to each other and I could switch off from room to room and watch the progression as the schools competed to see who could consume more. I knew it was going to be a good night when one of the very serious principals whom I had never talked to before came dancing over to me to give me high fives after only about half an hour.

I spent the next two days in Hiroshima and the small island of Miyajima which are both very beautiful. We got there a little late and the museum in Hiroshima was closed but I will definitely be back and I think the A-Bomb dome and the rest of the Peace Park were sobering enough for one day. In Miyajima, we saw the bright orangy/red floating torii (Shinto shrine gate), the shrine, and the pagoda. We also climbed Mt. Misen but it was rainy at the top and we failed to see the 360 degree views of the inland sea and the monkeys that supposedly live up there.

I had another three-day weekend this weekend which I spent with three others camping in the Iya Valley which is a very beautiful part of Southern Shikoku and one of Japan’s “three hidden regions.” Yesterday, we hiked Tsurugi-san, the second largest mountain in Shikoku (with uncooperative weather once again!), and last night I had my first onsen experience. Onsens are sort of like hot springs/baths that are placed in and around a big structure. They are very popular in Japan and therefore, Japanese people have been accustomed to soaking naked with lots of other people all of their lives. For the more modest, it requires a sort of bold attitude to split up into the designated men’s and women’s (and sometimes coed) areas and scrub down with buckets and multiple hoses and showers for a long time before wandering between the indoor and outdoor pools and saunas. It was surprisingly a lot less awkward than I had anticipated and I could easily get hooked to this very relaxing custom!