Athletic Festival Part One
Do not be fooled by this misnomer. It would be difficult to describe the events that took place on the day of this festival at my high school as a festival of sports, other than the fact that there were 100 or so relay races, one of which I participated in. There is no word in english to describe what occurred here, as well as to describe my utter and complete confusion as to how this all makes any sense to Japanese people. Im sure that pictures will suffice. The purpose of this festival is to show off athletic ability, commemorate the pride and the honor of the schoo and its recreational clubs, and to develop strong social connections throughout the schoolwide community.
The student body is split into 4 separate teams of both girls and boys. In the opening ceremony, the teams entered the competition by parading in a military formation around the track a couple of times while the band played a lively march, and then later formed ranks in the center of the field, where the festival offically commenced.
There is nothing quite like 700 Japanese men and women standing at such fierce attention that has the ability to strike fear into the heart of a man, including me.
To kick off the games, everyone (I mean everyone, students, teachers, parents and friends who came to spectate, about 1000 people total) participated in this stretching/calisthenics exercise, while music from something that sounded like Barney and Friends was playing over the loudspeaker. It was...interesting.
There were about 13 different kinds of races, events or other presentations following the opening ceremony. Points were awarded based on the performances,
and at the end of the day, the team with the most points was crowned champion. Most of the presentations were various examples of traditional dances, which all incorporated the Japanese art of Taiko drumming. This part of the show was actually pretty fun to watch because you could tell the students worked unneccessarily hard to pull off such a fantastic performance. This reminds me of a recurring theme I'm beginning to notice that characterizes the work ethic of most Japanese people (not in this particular performance I'd like to point out) They put in more
hard work than anyone else in the world is willing to do only to be able to accomplish something completely unnecessary. You can only imagine my frustration. The other dances were done to the music of "classic" U.S. Top 40's hits such as "Hey Mickey, You're So Fine", and The Village People's "Y.M.C.A." Needless to say, I wasn't really paying any attention once I heard what songs
were being played.
Hayashi-sensei (who also happens to be fluent in French, and with whom I practice Spanish, and what little German I know), was very impressed with the performance.
The student body is split into 4 separate teams of both girls and boys. In the opening ceremony, the teams entered the competition by parading in a military formation around the track a couple of times while the band played a lively march, and then later formed ranks in the center of the field, where the festival offically commenced.
There is nothing quite like 700 Japanese men and women standing at such fierce attention that has the ability to strike fear into the heart of a man, including me.
To kick off the games, everyone (I mean everyone, students, teachers, parents and friends who came to spectate, about 1000 people total) participated in this stretching/calisthenics exercise, while music from something that sounded like Barney and Friends was playing over the loudspeaker. It was...interesting.
There were about 13 different kinds of races, events or other presentations following the opening ceremony. Points were awarded based on the performances,
and at the end of the day, the team with the most points was crowned champion. Most of the presentations were various examples of traditional dances, which all incorporated the Japanese art of Taiko drumming. This part of the show was actually pretty fun to watch because you could tell the students worked unneccessarily hard to pull off such a fantastic performance. This reminds me of a recurring theme I'm beginning to notice that characterizes the work ethic of most Japanese people (not in this particular performance I'd like to point out) They put in more
hard work than anyone else in the world is willing to do only to be able to accomplish something completely unnecessary. You can only imagine my frustration. The other dances were done to the music of "classic" U.S. Top 40's hits such as "Hey Mickey, You're So Fine", and The Village People's "Y.M.C.A." Needless to say, I wasn't really paying any attention once I heard what songs
were being played.
Hayashi-sensei (who also happens to be fluent in French, and with whom I practice Spanish, and what little German I know), was very impressed with the performance.
posted by Alex Cruz at
9:04 PM
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