On Saturday, Jamie accompanied me on the trek to "Gurobaru Arina" to watch the Fukuoka Sanix Blues rugby team take on a team called the Liners. The train took an hour and a half, and the taxi to the arena took another 20 minutes and cost more than the train (at least one way.) How can the Blues have any fans when the stadium is so far out in the middle of nowhere, I wondered? The answer is, they don't really. The crowd consisted entirely of the players wives, their adorable children, aspiring junior high school rugby players, and two gaijin with nothing better to do than watch men in short shorts crash into each other on a glorious Saturday afternoon.
I had seen parts of a few rugby games in college, but can't say I ever really paid attention to what was going on. So before heading to the game, I watched Video Jug's (www.videojug.org) "The Armchair Fan's Guide to Rugby" to brush up, I mean learn for the first time, the basics of the game. Rugby is sort of like American football, with smaller players and way less padding. The scoring is pretty similar (5 points for a "touchdown," a chance to get 2 extra points after scoring, and 3 points for a "field goal" during regular play. The video said this is really hard to do, and after watching the game, it seems like being able to walk off the field at the end is somewhat of a miracle in and of itself.)
In action! The Blues were actually wearing yellow, since the other team had the same colors I guess. Keizo is the yellow person on the far right. He played very well, scoring the first points of the game!!
When all was said and done they lined up for their uber-Japanese bow. The Blues emerged victorious 56-24. Keizo has just spotted me in the stands and is sticking his tongue out above, but I don't know if you can see it--he's near the middle of the line.
Sunday's athletic event was of an entirely different nature. While the rugby game was a "short" (only when you are watching, I'm sure) 80 minutes long, Araki's "Sports Day" lasted close to 7 hours. The reader might recall a very early post about Kurume High School's Sports Day in September. Same idea, but a little different. In fact, when I mentioned how excited I was to see my first Araki Sports Day to my teachers, they asked if I had any idea what to expect. I told them about watching Kurume High School's, and they all kind of shook their heads, and told me not to expect too much from the junior high students. Everyone also wanted to know if we had "Sports Day" in the U.S. I had to say "no" and a few times tried to explain the number of lawsuits that would come about as the result of forced physical fitness in the hot sun.
The day began around 9 AM with a parade around the "field." The band lead the way, followed by the student council and each of the "blocks." At Araki, there are 4 classes in each of the 3 grades. For Sports Day and Culture Day, all the class 1's (7th, 8th and 9th grade) combine to form the yellow block, the class 2's form the blue block, class 3 is green and class 4 is red. On Sports Day in particular, it's a fight to the death to win events and points for your team. Four 9th grade boys are chosen by their peers to be "block leaders." They are popular, athletic and tend to be somewhat noisy in class. But it's nice to see them excell elsewhere, right?
The beautiful band girls (there are two, maybe three boys in there too.)
After the parade, the first event was the 7th grade relay. Here are the boys lined up for stage one: balancing a rugby ball on a platform while running around 1/4 of the track. Look how tiny the ones in the front are!! I've only taught two classes to each class, so most of their names are a huge mystery to me. I want to call the one second from the left Harry Potter though because he has glasses.
The girls rounding out the last leg of the relay with a "mukare" (centipede) race. Their ankles are all tied together. Surprisingly no one fell over.
Why the radio-led stretching happened after the first races of the day, I am not sure. I was the only teacher not participating though. I spent the whole week prior to Sports Day at my other junior high school so I wasn't around to practice with them. Hopefully next year's schedule will work out better. Note the principal's nicely neutral white jogging outfit. Hehe. I also wore a white shirt and some jeans, trying not to be prejudiced to one block or another (although I was a little disappointed that the yellow block didn't do better.)
Next item on the agenda, bamboo climbing!!
Now it's the 9th graders turn for the relay. Mako, Akiko and Rika all lined up and ready to go. I don't remember who was representing the yellow block because Tsutsumi-sensei had an unfortunate habit of getting in front of a lot of my pictures.
And the boys' leg of the race, pulling each other on tires.
Pyramid building. I don't know what this portion of the event is called, but it involves only the boys, and it demonstrates their team spirit. Unfortunately, after stacking themselves all up, the yellow block dropped their banner in the unfurling process. You can see it on the ground below. You can't see the enraged block leader on top of the adjacent pyramid though...whoops.
More boys activities. Weird cordinated areobics.
The girls program--dancing!! Unfortunately my camera died mid-way. (I really need a new camera, mine has no battery life anymore and the right side of the screen is going black. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated :-P)
And finally, one of the last events of the day was the "demonstration relay" (for a lack of a better name.) All the students put on their club uniforms and lined up. Not surprisingly the track team won, but I thought the kendo team (far right) was unfairly burdened because they had to wear their full uniforms, including long, wide pants and heavy breastplate as well as use their kendo sticks as the baton. So not surprisingly, they came in last. 
In the end, the green block won. We then put away all the supplies and took down the shade tents. I went home and took a much needed shower before meeting the triumphant teachers for an enkai. The enkai was shorter than usual though because they were all exhausted from the weeks of practice. They also had Monday and Tuesday off for all their hard work, but yours truly had to go to work.
Yay for スポーツ！！！
The picture makes it look a lot better than it was thanks to the juicy, American-sized, blue cheese burger. A cheese other than the Japanese equivalent of Kraft singles? Heaven on earth! [Side note: My Japanese skills are improving and I can read some food labels, although maybe I don’t really want to know. I recently discovered that Japanese cheese comes in two types: hot for melting, and cold for cold sandwiches or serving with crackers. Does anyone else find this a little disturbing? Shouldn’t one cheese be able to do both?]
In an uncharacteristically slow Jamie, Allison, and Wendy fashion, it took us a whole day to find a purikura machine in Okinawa. Once we found one though, we found a whole “purikura house” and got to try out several machines, including a special Okinawa version that had Okinawa themed backgrounds and stamps. Fabulous!!
Many mini ones for sale along Kokusai-dori.
Recycyled roof tile shisa.
Tiny bathroom guardian shisa. It did its job; this was one of the cleanest public restrooms of the trip!
And, last but not least, Mexican luchador shisa!
Okinawa is probably the only place with protected vending machines.
(See "A" if you need more of an explanation.)
Cleaning time!
I should know by now that pictures of me stuffing my face are bound to be unflattering.
The coolest way to keep cool.
