Sports Day at Junior High

The annual sports day at the local junior high school was held last Sunday.
As you might expect, they do it a bit differently in Japan: there’s less of the long-distance slogs and traditional athletics such as high jump and long jump, and more emphasis on en-masse events such as marching:

and acrobatics:

Now most junior high schools have at least a couple of hundred kids so they spend a whole day doing all the events for the different classes and year levels. Whereas Ruby’s school has just 70 students, so what they do is to combine their sports day with the get-together for the local area. So you end up with three sets of events: one for students, one for parents of students (and occasionally both, such as the parents vs kids tug of war), and one for the local residents. And it works really well to have alternating events where everybody gets involved.

I got roped into a few events including the parents relay (where I forgot to line up on my turn and left the runner stranded on the track) and the 100-m sprint (where I managed to finish last), but despite the disappointing results I think I gave it 110% and certainly sports was the winner on the day.

I’ve made a short Reader’s Digest version of the Sports Day for your enjoyment — seven hours condensed into 90 seconds, which is all you’re allowed on flickr. But it’s probably just as well — some of the dance sequences were awfully long…