Day 68 in Japan - Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today is Dad's birthday - I wish I was there to go out to dinner with everyone else, and give him his present (which hasn't been posted yet), but the wonders to Skype make me feel a lot better about not being there.

I was in a bit of a panic this morning as I was leaving for work - I couldn't find my bag with my wallet, phone, ID, money, teaching resources, notebooks, camera and basically my life in it. After a few minutes of frantic looking, I came to the sinking realisation that the last place I had seen it had been in the basket of my bike, which I had left outside overnight. I opened up the the door, and yep, there it was. I can't believe I was that absent-minded! No, not absent-minded - downright stupid. Thankfully this is Japan, so it was still there and completely untouched, but I shudder to think what the implications of me losing all of that stuff would have been.

Best Shimizu teaching day so far - kids were great! AND I HAD MY FIRST SOLO LESSON.  I played hangman for most of the first lesson, because a kid got arrested and teacher had to talk to him. So, we had an impromptu lesson instead of the dry textbook - I wouldn't have been able to pull off the explanations by myself. Thankfully the kids were nice and friendly, and tried really hard to understand me. It would have been nice if the teacher had given me more warning than letting me know as we were unlocking to door to walk into the classroom, but all's well that ends well.

View out of my window at Shimizu prison high school.

Got all sorted out with posters on walls with stamps for kids who participate in class, and got a lot of lesson planning sorted. In my third year culture class, the students were working on projects and I started talking to a few of the girls who were just about finished with time to spare. We started talking about English music, and they sang me "Poker Face" (the Lady Gaga one - there is a song here by a famous artist, but as far as I can tell it's a different song). The lyrics of the chorus, according to the girls, are "Ca ri ma, ca ri ma, carima carima Ca Ri Ma". I ended up singing them the real lyrics (thank you, wasted You Tube hours with Applegirl) in class - there was a full 5 seconds of total silence in the otherwise rowdy classroom when I finished, and all the kids were staring at me. Apparently they think I'm cool now and I was invited to a Lady Gaga concert, a Taylor Swift concert, and one of them wants me to take her if Justin Bieber tours the country. BAAAAAAHHHHHH, I thought I would be able to escape terrible English pop for a year.

I thought I'd try to show you some photos of the classroom at Shimizu - each one of the chairs is normally filled with a student, because I have 40 kids in my class here. Next year, apparently, they will split the classes to teach only 20 at a time, which will be much better for the conversation classes. The kids sit in 6 rows with about 6-7 kids each row. They sit in order of their student number (each class is numbered 1-40), which means that the boys (usually 1-20) are on the right hand side (standing up the front, facing the class right) and the girls (21-40) are on the left hand side. There are two big TVs in the room, which I can hook up to my laptop to show them stuff on the screens, but the teachers really aren't very keen on me using them (they were OK for my self-intro, but when I talked about using them again I got a tilted head, indrawn breath, and a "Hmmmm, chotto...". This means no.)

From the window

What I see each class, without students.

What the kids at the back of the room see.

Today was such a good day that even my usually bad class was good today! Yay!

One of my students waiting to go home at Uozumi train station.
Nice work, iPhone camera!

I spent the evening doing science stuff for Kevin when I got home. Sam went for a big walk, and it was nice to get some alone time, even if it was spent just on science. It is hard to snatch any alone time other than the bike ride to and from work here - all day at school it is a constant stream of students, teachers and classes, and then poor Sam is dying for some company by the time I get home. It was nice of him to get out of the house tonight, and I felt a lot more relaxed for it (or maybe that was just the result of getting Kevin's toxicity data packaged up and sent off?)

Food Highlight of the Day: Frozen icecream/chocolate dessert. Se picture, below, and drool.

Day 67 in Japan - I Think I'm Lost

On my bike ride to work, I normally see a few trucks parked along a road that is fairly close to the entrance to the school I had always assumed it was a truck stop, or that there was some construction going on nearby and this was the closest place to park a truck or something. But this morning I found out the much more sordid truth - the truck drivers all come and park there in the morning so they can watch the schoolgirls riding to school in their skirts! CREEPY! They have a regular morning meeting there, with the express purpose of perving on 15-18 year olds. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I am a little bit perturbed by this.

Today's classes were great - I LOVE my science class (remind me of this when they all misbehave in a week or two). They are such clever and friendly fun kids. Most of my favourite students are in the science classes at Akashikita. Have I explained how that works? In every year, there is a dedicated "course" class - a class filled with students who are keen on science or maths. It's really competitive to get in, so the class really is filled with a bunch of good kids. And there was some gossip today - one of the first year kids busted a boy and girl from third year "studying" in the dark with the door locked in the 1-9 classroom on Monday. Ha! I think all of the teachers thought it was pretty funny, but had to put on their serious faces when the principal told us.

After school, we had ESS club and we finished watching Up. I think the kids understood about half of what went on, which isn't too bad, right? When the movie finished, I practised pronunciation with two of the girls whose speeches got through to the Hyogo Prefecture Speech Contest finals. I am really proud of them - particularly as one of them is the girl who was crying about not being able to get hers done. They are picking up pronunciation quicker than expected, but I guess we'll have to see how much sticks in the next lesson.

On the ride home, I took a small wrong turn and ended up finding a temple (picture), I think? The architecture looks about right, but I really hope that I didn't just ride my bike up to some poor persons house and start snapping away with my camera. This is exactly why I need to learn Kanji!

Temple? Or some dudes house? 

The last of summer is passing - it was twilight by the time I got to leave work today (no vampire jokes, please). The sunflowers are also dying away (photo), and today it only reached about 23 degrees. It's lovely to not be sweating 20 hours of the day, although I can already feel that the air is getting chilly. I think it's going to go from boiling hot to freezing cold without passing through "pleasant".

Summer is definitely on it's way out.

I just got back from an interesting run. I decided to use Runkeeper for the first time (an iPhone app that keeps tracks of how fast and how long you run, whilst playing you music), and thank god I did, because now I can see the weird route I took when I got lost. I decided to try a bit of exploratory jogging, which was going fine until I decided to explore around one of the dams around here. I ran up the hill along a path and then ran alongside the lake for a while. The path got smaller, and smaller, and then disappeared altogether. I thought I'd just run onwards, because I could see what I thought was an exit. Nope. Ended up falling down a hill, scratching my legs, and then wandering around behind a bunch of people's houses trying to find a way out of the dam reserve without climbing into someone's yard. Eventually, I climbed a fence to get back onto the road, and then resumed my run. I am glad that I have my GPS trail as a record to be able to post something here to show you.

I got lost just after the 1 km mark - where the map
line goes along the water, and the speed line goes up (note: speed
line is min/km - inverted to normal - so up is slower)

Food Highlight of the Day: Stir-fried marinated beef from the Max Value. Even though the Japanese seem to rate the quality of beef by how much fat there is on it, this stir-fry (itame) was really delicious, and complemented our yakisoba nicely.

Day 66 in Japan - Four types of chemical reactions

First thing today - I got yesterday's purikura pictures. The machine tries to automatically adjust the colour of your skin and hair, and does something to try to makes your eyes "nicer". It seems to try to make them a little bigger, puts digital mascara on you, and tints your eyes blue. Or at least that's Sam excuse for his George Michael-ish appearance in the following pictures (particularly the second one here).

Last night's midnight photo booth photos.

Today's classes - 1 good, 1 bad, 1 good. This is unusual at Akashikita, where usually all of the classes are good. But in one of my classes, I had a girl who was really bitchy. It's amazing how much one person can affect a class, and the whole thing was really flat because of her. I was feeling a bit sad after that, and then the next class (same lesson plan) was brilliant, which perked me back up. And in the afternoon I got to teach my lovely science class. We looked at four types of chemical reactions - synthesis, decomposition, single replacement and double replacement. I really like teaching this class - it's nice to have something solid to feel like I know what I'm doing, and the science parts of these classes feels like doing "my thing". Which I guess bodes well for me committing to my science career? Hmmmm...

On the way home, I bought Sam some snacks, because he spent half of the day trying to convert me a video for class that I didn't use in the end. I saw a lady with a dog tied to the back of her bike - not resting in a bike basket like everyone else here does, but TIED to the back tray of her bike. With rope. She had made it lie on the tray, and then looped rope around and around and around it to strap it down. I wanted to take a photo, but couldn't do it surreptitiously. 

I had great plans tonight to go for a run, but as I got home, the sky was just turning black. There was a lot of rain tonight, so any exercise for the night was called off. Skyped with Mum and Fletch instead.

Marge, the rains are 'ere

Food Highlight of the Day: I got hot dogs and hot dog buns for dinner - they were GRAND. I don't know when I last ate hot dogs for a meal.

Day 65 in Japan - Back to Reality

Even thought I expected today to be pretty miserable due to being buggered from the weekend, it was actually a decent day! My classes were pretty good, and I am getting used to standing up in front of a class, and I think I could even wing some lessons if needed now. My listening class was pretty fun - the teacher asked me to talk about Australian history, and last week I talked a little bit about the time before European settlement, when Australia belonged to the Aboriginal people. The students looked really confused, so this week I brougt in some photos and talked about didgeridoos and boomerangs. I pretended to play boomerang in front of the class, and showed how they could make animal noises in the middle of playing, and the kids thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen. One boy almost choked because he was sneakily drinking some water up the back when he started laughing, which made the class laugh even harder. He he he - good times. Then had my ESS club speech practise with the one boy who got through to the finals - we had to sit in a room for 2 hours and read the same bits over and over. By the end, his b/v and s/th sounds had get better, but I think we were both ready to make some z's.

The weather snuck up on me, and it had started to rain while we were practising the speech, so I had to ride my bike home in the rain. I was SOAKED by the time I got home, but it was pretty fun (although I was fretting for the safety of my iPhone after 10 mins of riding, when the rain started to get really heavy.

Just a little damp.

We had dinner with our friend Mai (remember, the lady from Softbank who helped me so much with my phone? She's totally adopted us now) at the kaiten zushi place. We ended up staying and talking for 4 hours straight! It was really excellent, but definitely a bit exhausting, particularly after my big weekend. After they kicked us out of the sushi place, we went and got purikura - photo booth photos. I will post the photos tomorrow, because they will be sent to my phone overnight (<3 Japan!)

This was on the outside of the photo booth that we used, and is PROOF that Japan is an RPG/dating sim.

Sam and Mai preparing the photos

Food Highlight of the Day: Mai got us to try some of her favourite sushi, and the one that I liked the best was maguro sashimi (raw tuna) with softboiled egg on rice with nori. Oishii desu.

Day 64 in Japan - Sober karaoke and canyoning

Today was big. The story will be told in photos. With sentences where they are needed, but I need sleep a lot, so mostly just photos.

The view from Leben (our hotel) this morning when we woke up. Shikoku is so beautiful.

Behind the hotel - there was no one else around to disturb with...

MORNING KARAOKE! We found a karaoke machine in the spare room
that actually had a decent English selection (old but good). Simon (blue jumper) proved to
be an EXCELLENT karaoke-er. Couldn't convince Fiona to sing, even with Disney.

The second car gang bidding farewell to our beautiful accommodation. 

Bye bye cows! Your brothers were delicious, and your sisters make great
milk.  That's really weird to read, isn't it?

View from the car halfway down the mountain.

We ended up canyoning in the second group today - some of the others we went with were in the morning group, but we didn't have to start until about 1 or 2 pm. Instead, we enjoyed a sleep-in, a HEAP of pancakes and scrambled eggs, morning karaoke and a conbini lunch. Then we met up again at Happy Raft and got ready for our afternoon of canyoning with Scotty and Shin. We slid down waterfalls, went ziplining horizontally and vertically, jumped into pool, swam and had a totally fantastic time! We had two really thick wetsuits on so we didn't feel the cold (At least, I didn't feel the cold), and a nice big canvas nappy to protect our bums. It was a beautiful and incredibly fun afternoon!

Me, sliding down the waterfall.

Our canyoning group - wet, tired and totally happy after 3.5 hours of canyoning!

The cliff/waterfall we ziplined down.

Me a-coming down the mountain.

Post-adrenaline smiles!

Wetsuits are so flattering :)

Last view of the Yoshino River

We had to head pretty much straight back home after we got out of our wetsuits, so that we would be able to make it back home at a semi-reasonable time for teaching tomorrow. The always-wonderful Simon drove us all back, while we stuffed around with our iPhones trying to use the Bump App to swap as many contac details as we could. We stopped for a conbini dinner somewhere on Shikoku (in the Tokushima prefecture, I think), and headed across the lit-up bridge again. Oh, and we had our first petrol-buying experience. It all seems to be full service, so you just sit in the car while they do the petrol and wash your windows for you. Hire car dropped back with no issues, and we all said our goodbyes at Sannomiya station and got on our respective lines. I had a slightly frustrating trip home, as there didn't seem to be any local trains running to Okubo for AAAAGGGEEEESSS, so I sat at Nishi Akashi station (my most hated station) for like 45 mins when I was damp, tired and just wanted a shower an bed. Finally got in at about 12:30. Classes tomorrow are going to be ROUGH!

Food Highlight of the Day: While the breakfast pancakes were ALMOST the highlight, I think that I am going to have to go with the conbini cheeseburger for dinner in the car on the way home.

Day 63 in Japan - Rafting in Shikoku

Woke up at about 6:30 am crumpled up in the back of the minivan, and there was no getting back to sleep. I switched to the other car, and we did a conbini breakfast run (and I learned that the conbini we went to is called SunKus, not SunBus, as I had been calling it). The conbini was about a 20 minute drive away (thank you again, Simon!), along the mighty Yoshino River, which we would be paddling along later in the day.

The view we woke up to this morning. Life is terrible.

Yoshino river in all it's glory - the water was SO clean!

We grabbed our food (and importantly, COFFEE!) and headed back to wake up the others, because it was time to head over to Happy Raft to get ready for our day of rafting. We sorted out money, dumped our bags and valuables, and then got our wetsuits, lifejackets, helmets and paddles.

The gang trying to figure out change and getting ready to get changed.

Wetsuits that were actually dry before we out them on! Luxury.

We jumped into a few minivans that carried us to the river entry area, then jumped into rafts in groups of 6-7. I think there were probably about 50 people rafting all up with us today. It was a brilliant day, and it's hard to describe the lovely feeling of floating down the clean and cool water of the Yoshino river, surrounded by white-green rocks with GIANT mountains stretching up into the sky on either side of you. We ran into a bunch of fisherman as we paddled along, and there were a few houses here and there as well. I can't imagine how lovely it would be to live in an area like this. We did about 5 decent rapid bits - apparently they were Grade 4 or 5 or something, but I don't even know what that means, so I don't know why I wrote that.

Happy Rafters! (I'm at the front of the boat) Our guide, Andy,
only had one day left until retirement... or going to Canada or something.

Right near the Happy Raft camp.

We had a great lunch (all-you-can-eat bagels), and then had an afternoon with a few more rapids, floating along the river, making a double raft stack and generally stuffing around in the water. It was brilliant! I jumped off what seemed to be a HUGE rock with Jodie (probably only about 3-4 meters - like the little rock at Jamberoo), and tried to take a little green rock home but lost it like 30 seconds after I picked it up. On the bus back, I talked to two lovely Japanese ladies from Osaka - a write for a food magazine, and a freelance photographer.

Simon, king of rafting!

Rob, Fiona and Adina waiting outside the Happy Raft building.

After rafting, we were all a bit chilly from the water and the sudden change in weather (yes it was just 3 days ago that I was sweating in the 30+ degree weather), so it was decided that we were going to an ONSEN! MY FIRST ONSEN! And I was shitting myself! I was so nervous about getting naked in front of 5 girls (who were all pretty damn good-looking, just to add to my nervousness), let alone the whole change room full of Japanese women blow-drying their daughters hair that awaited us when we walked in. I was with Jodie and Fiona when we went in, and none of us had ever onsen-ed before. We had no idea if we were doing the right thing, so we just closed our eyes, took a bit breath, stripped off, lamented the tiny size of the "modesty towel", and got into the water. Long story short - it was lovely. Super relaxing, nice and warm and even thought I didn't ever forget about the nakedness like everyone said that I would, it wasn't awkward. We soaked in the indoors pool, the outdoors pool and dipped our feet in the freezing cold pool when it got too hot.

Afterwards, we went up the mountains to find our hotel. And up. And up. And up. And up. The road was just wide enough for the huge vans and it was really dark, and little bit scary to be honest. I admired out poor drivers even more. But when we finally got to the place, it was ABSOLUTELY worth it! It was called Leben, and it was like a swiss ski chalet up in the mountains. The lady who ran it had cows (one milk cow and the rest beef), which supplied us with a barbeque and CHEESE SHE HAD MADE HERSELF! That's right - we ate real cheese. In Japan. It was gouda (that's an unintentional pun, but I just made myself laugh - it really was gouda). We had a great night of eating, talking, watching Japanese TV and feeling sleepy and warm under the big doonas. When we got to bed, I slept really, really solidly (and had cheese dreams).

Our night in Switzerland - the place smelled like wood. It was absolutely great.

Food Highlight of the Day: There is so much choice! Much needed breafast coffee-in-a-can, all you can eat bagels, yakiniku with meat fresh from a cow... but I'm definitely going to go with the lovely Leben gouda cheese. You can actually see some of the cheeses in the photo of Leben above - they are maturing on a shelf above the kitchen.

Day 62 in Japan - I'm leaving in a minivan

Normal day at school - nothing too exciting happened. All of the kids (and the teachers) were still a bit worn out from Sports Day, so the classes were a bit sleepy. In ESS club this afternoon, we started watching Up (Carl no o-ji-san), which meant that I cried in front of the ESS club. I think I got away with it - it was really dark, and the kids were really enthralled with the movie. I really love the feeling of leaving work for the weekend here - I ride down the hill on my bike and I can feel the wind in my hair and the potential of the next two days. It's not like leaving science on a Friday afternoon, when I know that I'll be back in to look after the cells again tomorrow, or at the very least, will be analysing data from the couch. Time off here actually means time off!

Colourful poster stuck up at school. I'm not sure, but I
think that the broadcast club are asking for requests for music
 to play. Or maybe they are having an animal collection day? With bowties.

I meant to have a quiet evening after school getting ready for the weekend ahead (last minute packing, shaving legs, charging camera battery etc.), but I got a call from Dan almost as soon as I walked in the door, asking if I wanted to go out to dinner. OF COURSE if food was involved, I wanted in! I ignored packing, exfoliation and common sense, grabbed my half-packed bag, and headed out the door - to Sannomiya, Thai food, and our Shikoku adventure!

We had good Thai food in a little place in Sannomiya - the eating and drinking district of Kobe, then wandered the streets trying to decide what we wanted for dessert. There were five of us in the end - Jodie, Dan, Brodie, Sam and I. We ended up at a fancy cake place and I got a chocolate delight of some description, then went to eat our fancy cakes in Tits Park (the standard meeting place in Sannomiya) . Then Jodie, Dan and I said our farewells to the others and headed to Tarumi, to meet up with the others who had signed themselves up for the Hyogo JET weekend of rafting on Shikoku Island.

We spent quite a while chatting at a bus stop before we realised we were waiting in the wrong place, but we didn't end up being later than the minivans that were coming to pick us up, so it was OK. Our knights in shining minivans were Simon (mans man, ladies man, man about town, as long as that town is Wellington, NZ) and Takeshi, who very kindly and very bravely volunteered to drive this weekend. Takeshi organised all of the car rentals for us, and I was really grateful to the two of them for helping us out. It would have been pretty much impossible to get to the rafting place on time if it wasn't for them. Simon was particularly brave, as this was his first time driving in Japan, he had a huge minivan to manoeuvre around, and he was going to have to do an overnighter to get us to rafting. We met up at about 11:30 at Tarumi station (in Kobe), then headed to pick up a few of the others at Sougoundokoen Stadium (where I saw Vissel Kobe play a few weeks ago). They were lost and late, and it was starting to get a little frustrating for the drivers, but we eventually all got together and got on the road.

On the way, we went over the Akashi Kaikyou Bridge, and I was so excited! It was a really cool long trip across. Even thought I didn't really expect to get any sleep, I fell asleep somewhere on Awaji Island, and dozed on and off until we got to Shikoku. We finally pulled into our destination at about 4 am, and the poor drivers got a few hours of sleep before a big day of rafting tomorrow.

FHotD: Thai food - I have a brilliant penang curry in Kobe. Of course, it wasn't a patch on Orawan's penang curry, but it was nice to have something with a bit of real chilli in it!

Day 61 in Japan - Lazy Thursday afternoon

Didn't feel so great, so we stayed in most of the day. I slept a lot, and blew a lot of dust-coloured snot (from Sports Day yesterday) out of my nose. Mostly, I read I Shall Wear Midnight - the latest Terry Pratchett book. I ordered it specially and have been delaying opening it until I could spend some decent time reading it. And today was that day.

Creepy-looking Okubo at night - this is just south of the station.

In the night, we went for a walk to the shops just for something to do, and ended up eating dinner at Saizeriya with the entire under-16 population of Akashi! Apparently a lot of school kids were out in the class groups celebrating their successes or commiserating their failures on Sports Days. I ran into a few class groups from Akashikita, which was a little embarrassing considering that I had chucked on whatever rumpled clothes I found on the ground, didn't brush my hair, smelled a little bit, and probably had dust-coloured snot running out of my nose. But it didn't deter a few of the girls from the local Commercial high school (meaning that they are from a notoriously low-level academic school, which turns out girls to work in shops, according to one of my teachers), who came up to talk to Sam and I for ages! Even though their English was terrible, and our Japanese seems to be going backwards, we chatted for about 45 minutes before we ran out of there. We went to check out the price of Pokemon Black and White as well - the new "reboot" of the Pokemon series launched on Saturday, and EVERYONE here is playing it! I think it has ended up being the fastest selling DS game of all time, and my kids are all asking which Pokemon I chose. We aren't planning on buying it, because we wouldn't be able to understand the existential angst, clever pop culture references, deep insights into the human condition and intriguing plot twists that are sure to come with any Pokemon game in Japanese.

Food Highlight of the Day: Yoghurt Scotch Taste drink. Wasn't as bad as I expected - kind of like a tangy, really strongly fake-banana flavoured off milk. Next time I may invest my 120 yen elsewhere, though.

Day 60 in Japan - Bri Does Sports

Today was a long day. A REALLY long day. It was wonderful, and hot and dusty (Japanese schools don't have grass - they have dusty dirt fields for Sports), totally Japanese and the most fun day I've had at school so far. I am a bit too buggered to write a proper blog about the matter, so I will provide you with some short summary bits, some dot points and a bunch of pictures.

First, the opening ceremony - the Japanese, Hyogo (our prefecture), and Akashitkita flags are marched around the sports field and then raised up the flagpoles. Then, all the students march around in their classes, and the classes all show off the flags that they have been working on for weeks.

After the opening ceremony, the events started. One thing about Japanese sports festival day - there are no individual events. Everything is relays - it's really just classes competing against other classes. I guess if you want to race other people to show how fast you are, you join the track and field club and compete there. So there were boys relays, girls relays, mixed relays, 6 x 100 m relays, 4 x 200 m relays, swedish relays, and even the funniest relay I have ever seen. But more about that later.

Some of the (not plain running relay) Japanese events that were on the programme today:

- bohiki (girls in teams fighting to drag the most bamboo logs back to their side of the field)

- tug of war (line up 80 people and get half to pull a rope one way, and the other half to pull it another way)

- relays (Sweden relay - meaning that each person runs a further distance - first person runs 50m, then 100 m, then 200 m etc. AND very excitingly an obstacle course relay - the girls scramble under nets, bounce tennis balls on rackets, bounce balls, and they boys run, do hurdles and vault over a horse. Or more hilariously, fail to vault over a horse. Oh, and then they sack race).

- hoop stick (starring a certain new ALT - you have to push a bike wheel with no spokes and no rubber tyre bit along the ground with a thin bamboo stick)

- kibasen (boys fighting for caps - this one warrants it's own explanation and videos below).

- whole class jump rope (40 people, one rope, 3 minutes. Class who gets the most continuous jumps in 3 minutes gets the most points)

The ladies of the desk - I was officially part of this, but
I didn't do anything important the whole day.

Two classes lined up ready to Tug o' War

Bohiki - Girls fighting for "bo" - bamboo sticks.

The whole school lined up ready for the first relay events

Obstacle course relay START!

Ready... set... GO!

My science class' prize-winning flag :) Yay 1-9!

Probably.

My school's marching band are really fantastic.

The parade of the sports clubs - kendo, swimming, karate, soccer,
soft tennis, handball,  volleyball, baseball, weightlifting and more.

The BRILLIANT sports club relay. You haven't
seen a relay until you have seen a boy
 in swimmers freestyle around  the 200 m track, following a guy
attempting to run in full kendo armour, who is covered in dirt
from falling over the baseball guy who did a full slide
over the line. The best relay I have ever seen :) 

Me stick hooping. I got a big round of applause when I finished! :) 

About half of the class flags - they were lovely and colourful,
and they were really all good - no lazy classes at Akashikita.

So, the only other thing I wanted to talk about (other than casually mentioning my fantastic stick hoop performance again to make sure that it sticks in your mind) was the kibasen - the "boys" event that I gather is kind of the highlight of the day. The three kanji that make up the name for this event are ki (knight) ba (horse) and sen (battle), and that's exactly what it is, in a Japanese way. There are 4 boys on each team, three as the "horse" and one as the knight, who has to try to steal the cap of the other teams knight. It's brutal and fast and funny and probably dangerous, but I loved it. 

Chaos in a single picture.

So anyway, now I am really, REALLY tired and covered in dust, and a little bit sunburnt and I am definitely going to bed.

Food Highlight of the Day: Today's bento lunch was a special "Sports Day" bento. It contained prawns, prawn cutlet, squid, a huge mussel (uneaten) rice, pickle, konnyaku, sweet potato, chestnuts, fish, lettuce, cabbage, plum, orange, sweet red bean, and more stuff that I'm forgetting. Due to it's special sports day status, as well as it's epic size and contents, it gets to be food of the day.