Sports Day

Today was totally sugoi! It was sports day so the students get to compete in different activities for the sports day title. It's like field day in elem. school but more crazy. What's really cool is that it isn't just judged on sports alone. Here are a few categories to give you an idea.
Tug of War, Costumes, Relays(running), Performance (team dance), Battle Horse, Conquerer, Obstacles courses, Storyboarding and some others. So Sports Day isn't just about Sports, it meets a wider group of interests and interestingly a huge amount of team cooperation and cordination. I was very impressed. The genk level was through the roof (I wish Sanjo could somehow pass on some of that genk to my other schools)
OK, so I won't bore you with all the details but I want to give a littler overview of my two favorite games that we are not so familiar with here in the US.

Battle Horse: This game is only for the girls on the teams. Just for the Ladies. Basically, Three girls are holding up one girl about to their shoulders. The three girls are the "horse". The one being held up by the horse is the rider of course and each rider has a bandana. There are about 6-7 horses per team a long with a captain. The horses ride toward the others and the riders try to take the bandanas from the other girl riders. Who ever has the most after a certai amount of time are the winners. However if the Captain's bandana is taken the game imediatley ends. So a blank is shot and all the horses charge across the field and the riders have at it with the other players. Talk about girl fight(cat fight) I mean arms winging and flailing and screaming and squeeling and pushing and shoving and all sorts of chaos it was absolutely fantastic. It made me want to play really badly. (But if I play I want to include mud somewhere in the game, like it's ok the throw it and try to distract other riders) Anyhooo it was sooooo hilarious to watch all the girls go seriously at it with their little white gloves on and all. I totally think we need to adopt this game.
Conquerer: This is a boys only game. It gets a little too violent for the ladies however from the looks of Battle Horse I bet they'd be a pretty fair competition integrated into the male teams. ANYHOOo. It's a boys only game. Which means that for Japanese guys you strip down to your little sport shorts and get fierce. Across maybe one half of a football field are the teams polls. A huge, thick wooden pole is held up by half the members of one team. At the top of this huge, tall pole is a flag. The other team is trying to get this down. So half of the team will try to protect their flag by protecting the pole and keeping it up and the other half will try to get the opposing teams flag. So again the shot is fired and they run at each other and straight into the grounds of the opposing team. But these guys are jumping on each other and literally crawling on each other to climb up the pole to get the flag. Some are so good at keeping the pole up that despite some one climbing the pole and trying to pull it down, the pole stays standing. Holy Cow this game was insane and the amount of injuries that came out of it where too many to count. I mean brutal, it was fascinating to watch the all out brawl and climbing and jumping on eachothers backs to get high enough over the opposing team to get to the pole and thus on to take the flag. Whaoo, it was really cool to watch. We should adopt this as well.
These where my two favorite to watch. There where tons of really cool things all day. The students did an amazing job and worked sooooo hard at putting it all together. Sports Day is completely and independently put together by the students and they did amazing. I had a blast today.

Plus I get to go to another Sports Day on Thursday, whoot. I'll bet Sanjo's the best though, nothing like a hardy game of reality like "Conquerer" and "Battle Horse".