Sports Festival is basically a competition between homerooms (and, later in the day, clubs) to see who is the best at... I suppose general athletics? But mostly track-type things? Each homeroom designs a t-shirt that they all wear for the day, though, so that's pretty cool. Some of them are really cute.
The day starts out with a variety of events that had me flashing back to those godawful mandatory track and field days in elementary school, where everyone was forced to participate in two or three events, and I failed at everything because of aforementioned lack of athletic prowess. There were stations for long jump and high jump, as well as tracks for sprint races. The students' achievements in each component were recorded, which then translated to a score for the event for their homeroom. I don't really understand how it all works. Also in the middle of the track was a tug-o-war station, which was really entertaining to watch for a while.
Before lunch was the "obstacle course," which is definitely not what you're thinking about, unless you watch anime about school life. This was the point where basically all of my anime dreams came true. It was amazing! So. What this is. It's a relay race, with each person/group at each section of the relay tackling a different task. It starts out with one runner, who spins themselves as quickly as they can 20 times when the pistol goes off, and then sprints forward to grab bread hanging on a line with just their teeth. Once they've got that, they run to the pair waiting ahead and tag them in. That pair runs to a bucket that contains the names of a bunch of the teachers. Those teachers are waiting ahead, all dressed in ridiculous costumes for extra fun. The pair must reach into the bucket, grab a name, locate their ridiculously dressed teacher in the crowd of ridiculously dressed teachers, and run with them to the next point. They tag in the three-legged racers. That part is pretty straightforward. When that pair reaches the end of their section, they tag in a potato sack jumper, who jumps to a certain point and then is allowed to abandon the sack and sprint the rest of the way to the final section. They tag in a team of five of their classmates (or sometimes four classmates and their homeroom teacher, which was just hilarious) who are strapped to those group ski things? You know what I mean?
Yeah, so they're the final section of the race. It's all very exciting and very funny, and so much like what I've seen in anime that it pretty much made my day right there.
After lunch (which was a bento provided through my social committee fees, so that was nice) was the time for performances. Each homeroom created and rehearsed a two minute dance routine (which I still don't know when they had the time to do) to perform, and I was part of a panel of ten judges who would hold up a number from 1-5 after each routine. It was really awesome, and of course the sports course homerooms for each year were the best because they had, like, acrobatics and gymnastics in their dances, but some of the other classes were good too! I was out in the sun for about an hour straight doing that, and got totally sunburned, but it was worth it.
The day ended with relay competitions between homerooms, and then any clubs who wanted to compete together (the brass band has some surprisingly fast kids).
Everything since then has been pretty boring. I did go camping ("camping" really, since it was a fully furnished cabin) with a large group of other JETs partway through the month, and got to swim at a fabulous spot in a startlingly cold river way down south. That was pretty cool. But yeah. It's exam time at the end of first term, and then summer vacation starts. I've got some super exciting things planned, including my parents' first ever visit to Japan!
