Undokai !!!

Mia's school just had "Undokai" or "Sports Day." This happens in October and is an all-day event. Students, their siblings, parents and grandparents all participate in the sports events. For more background on undokai:

http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/manga/0710/index.html





At the start, all children line up with their class. Each class has been divided into an Aka-gumi (red team) and a Shiro-gumi (white team), hence the red and white caps.

Then they all sing the school anthem.

Mia's class did an obstacle course where they run a foot race, zip over a balance beam, crawl under a net and jump over a horse to the finish line. Here's Mia's heat. Her teacher Emi sensei is ready to blow the whistle.

Look at that girl fly off the balance beam!

Each class performed a show for the audience. There were songs, people pyramids, and Mia's class sang, danced and cheered. I thought that the boys enjoyed the cheering more than the girls even...

Look at those boys cheer, they are a whir of excitement! Mia is in the red and white sweatshirt with purple pants.

The grandparents helped Mia's class with "tamaire" or the "throw the bean bag into the basket" event. Since Mia's grandparents were in the states, Mia had a rental grandpa who thought she was delightful. Emi sensei is doing the final bean bag count--yes, they won. Those grandparents were ruthless.

After lunch the school serenaded us again with an undokai anthem and dance routine. It was a Japanese version of the Hokey-Pokey.

Lining up for the next event.

The moms of Mia's class had their own event. Walking a course with a brick on our heads---(doing our finishing school finest), then meeting up with our kids, picking up a treasure hunt card, and finally finding what item is written on the card---yes it was written in Japanese.

Here I am getting a a little help from a Japanese friend, the front of my card said "pink" and the back said "sweatshirt". I found it quickly. Can you believe one of the dads was wearing a pink sweatshirt? Only in Japan...

Last, but not least was the tug-of-war event for the parents. The moms faced off as did the dads. Sadly, I lost both of the bouts. Aaron was the anchor of his team (there's a good joke there somewhere, insert your own). His team one a bout and lost one.

Undokai was quite the cultural event. We can't wait til next year, we are perfecting our tug-of-war technique right now!