Sat June 30

Today was such a fun day! It was the day of the Undoukai, so I went to school at 8:30 and we were all getting ready. The Undoukai started with a marching ceremony, us singing our school song (which I did not know), and Radio Excercises. Then we all changed into our class T-shirts and ran the Freshman relay, which we won! I am not sure but I definitely felt I ran my fastest ever. After that, there were the other classes' relays and then our "Eye of the Typhoon", or the relay in which we run with a pole through everyone and around cones and such. Unfortunately, we didn't win that.

Anyway, after that was lunch, and I had another fabulous picnic with my former Host Family and their grandchildren. They had such amazing food and it was a very very pleasant lunch. I completely stuffed myself. After lunch were the sports and club relays. I felt truly sad for some of them, because they had to run in/with stuff representative of the club/activity they represented. The Kendo group had to run in full fencing Uniform which was obviously very very hard, the Music group used a gigantic violin case as their baton, and so on. Afterwards, as all the kids were preparing for their various dances and activities, there was a Tug-of-War for the parents/audience, which seemed really fun. Then came, after Karate and Dance, the Eisa performance, which I think went really well. The attached pix is of me in Eisa uniform. After that was a finishing ceremony.

I don't know, I just really liked the environment of the whole thing. Everyone was soo excited and supportive it was really really nice!

With that said, there were also a LOT of injuries (pulled muscles, etc.), and I feel the school was doing a very bad job of encouraged taking care of one's health in sports. There was no warm-up whatsoever, and after we sprinted 100 meters, they made us sit down immediately, without even letting us catch our breath (which is terrible for health.). I understand how it is more efficient and helps the performance overall but still...I mean I stretched while lined up but otherwise there was no time (and no one did, because the administration did not stress it,) stretch.

But anyway it was a really amazing day. Afterwards we all helped clean up, take down the kumi-tents, etc.

BTW, I really like how the students treat our kumi as more like a household than a class. I mean, they brush their teeth in the sink on the balcony after every meal (most), they hang their wet clothes to dry, they clean it, everyone has their own plastic glass with their names on it and whenever we went out for PE, Undoukai practice, or the Undoukai, someone from the class always brings down the glasses and a huge bucket of water (again the class bucket.). The home room teacher is very much like the parent-figure, and he brings food and treats for the whole class (at times) and oversees everything. They wash the glasses in the class sink, change clothes in class (there is a locker room but no one uses it), and etc. they really treat it as a household, and there is also the feeling of familial closeness between all the kids. We all do stuff together, such as going to the beach day after tomorrow, and so on. I really like that aspect of Japanese classrooms, or maybe just our kumi.

Anyway after all the clean up there was an after-Undoukai Stage Festival in the Gym, which was basically a bunch of air bands/karaoke performances groups of students had made, and sideshows. The performances were really good, and I had no idea a crowd could get as riled up as all the kids did. And BTW I was impressed that they had such a variety of amazing dances, and all were clean -- as oppose to Mission, where you cannot even have a homecoming performance without at least one booty dance! Anyway everyone (900 kids) were all crowded at the front of the stage and jumping up and down and it was really fun but completely crazy (and very VERY hot.). After that there were two slide shows, one basically funny pic from throughout the year, and the other pix from the Undoukai -- where there was actually a very good pix of me grabbing the baton and taking off! I thought it was funny how after it ended they basically kicked us off of campus, said we sll had to leave by 7. They had done that before on the day school was excused early because of rain, and every Friday teachers make it explicitly clear that entering the school on weekends is banned. They probably don't want to have to take responsibility if anything happens to kids that are unsupervised.

BTW a funny embarrassing experience on my second day was that I walked out of the bathroom and into the gym (we had to take off our shoes before entering the gym building) with the bathroom slippers on! I was so used to walking out of the bathroom with footwear that I didn't even notice until I got to the gym! No one said anything but it was kind of funny :)

Yeah I think that's all, I had a great day, gnite!