IOU: belated sports day

Sports day was about a month ago--sorry for the delay. Lesson planning and long hours with the ESS have made me an absentee. Furthermore, this post has been somewhat of a blockage, as the highlight of the sports festival was the students and their performances and it's illegal and unethical for me to have students in public photos. However, I think that the spirit of the event can best be shown through the mascots, the giant murals each group of students painted and erected by the bleachers where they cheered.

黄色組　Yellow Team, "Merry Du'Emperor"


赤組 Red Team, "Sol Big Bang"


青組 Blue Team, "Marin Joker"


緑組 Green Team, "Balmy Fantasia"


These were entirely student-designed and reproduced on a 20 by 30 foot scale.

In addition to this, the students also worked on cheering costumes (think kimono meets pirate), cheering routines, dance routines, and a play. This is all in addition to the sports, which really were just an excuse to have a party and do a lot of art. The costumes, incidentally, were awesome. Not just cool awesome--awe-inspiring awesome. Girls wore knee-length pirate-ish dresses made of taffetta, chiffon, and Japanese print fabric. They had their hair and makeup done with care to rival most girls at my prom. Boys were equally piratically inclined with trousers, white shirts, and colored vests, unless they were team leaders. If they were team leaders, they had elaborate long coats, also made from some shiny material and some Japanese-print fabric. To see groups of these students taking the dusty field at a slow saunter was to see bad-ass personified.

And then they played tug of war and far more vicious games in these outfits in 95 degree heat. If they didn't play (and even if they did), they danced and did super-elaborate cheering routines to pop songs played by the brass band. The energy was insane.

At the end, the third-year group leaders stormed the podium and tossed the principal into the air.

At the very end, the students gathered in groups for pictures and tearful speeches. My school is a high academic school, so sports day is literally all the creative fun crazy time most of these students have. For the third years, it's their last chance to experience high school before they disappear under piles of practice examinations.

There's no equivalent in American high schools--there just isn't. The context is so different and the way it's planned and done--the sheer teamwork of it--just wouldn't happen. It wasn't about sports, but about the spirit of being a part of team, whether that team runs a relay, does a dance, or makes an amazing mural.

And I totally understand why the students were so sad when it was over.