The day begins with the students parading past the VIPs. The white team goes first, for whatever reason, and is led by the boys.
The red team follows, with the girls bringing up the rear. (As I've mentioned several times, the Japanese do not believe in "ladies first," but rather "ladies last.") Note that the only way to identify what team a student is on is by looking at the color of their headband. After a bit of dancing (and stretching) to warm up, the competition begins.
The first event is the tug-of-war, which is actually not called "tug-of-war" but rather something like "rope pull" over here. First, the boys fight it out. Then, the girls get their turn. Finally, the "all-stars" (both boys and girls) go at it.
What they do call tug-of-war is really the next event, which is more like a version of capture the flag. Two kids (either boys or girls) each wrap a kind of inner-tube harness around their bodies and try to be the first to grab the flag that is positioned about 6 or 8 feet in front of them. Some matches only last a few seconds, or at most about a minute, but this particular match in the picture lasted for about five minutes. The poor kid in the foreground is digging his fingernails into the ground in an effort to maintain his position. He put up quite a fight, but ended up losing.
Next came another capture-the-flag variant, which, as far as I know, was a Forestopia Sports Festival first! A certain number of kids had to first lie flat on their backs with their feet pointing toward the big red mat. When the whistle blew, they had to get up as fast as they could and sprint for the flag. Whoever grabbed the flag was the winner. After several rounds, a champion was crowned. (There is a separate competition for both girls and boys.)
After each event, the winning team is announced and a representative from the team is awarded a flag. The representative then hurries back to his or her teammates to celebrate the victory.
There are a few events that are strictly for the boys or strictly for the girls. The tire pull is one of the two girls' events. It can be a bit rough, but it's not nearly as rough as one of the boys-only events, which I call "Topple to Tower." I doubt "Topple the Tower" would be allowed in any school in America. Surprisingly, most years it seems that no one gets seriously injured during the event. This year, however, two kids did end up with their arms in slings, but, as far as I know, neither injury is, well, serious. I guess the reason the event continues has something to do with the samurai/kamikaze/bonzai-ness of the Japanese.
There was a similar girls' event in years past, which involved the two teams vying to be the first to climb a pole and place a flag at the top. I call it "Raise the Flag."
Since several girls were injured last year during "Raise the Flag," the event has been replaced with a more harmless event, at least temporarily, which is very similar to the tire pull. This time, instead of pulling on tires, the girls pull on bamboo poles. Whichever teams collects the most poles, wins.
The other boys' event, called "kibasen," is yet another semi-brutal type of capture-the-flag game. This version involves teams of four, consisting of one guy, the "horseman," (or I guess you could call him the samurai) being held up by three others, the "horse," going after each other. The object is to capture as many headbands from the other team's horsemen as possible within the time limit. One horseman wears a colored vest and is designated as the "king," which means his headband is worth more points than the others.
The competition also consisted of common track & field events, such as the long jump ...
and various sprints and relays. This guy pictured here happens to be the fastest guy in school as well as one of the fastest in the whole prefecture, actually.
No comments:
Post a Comment