Last Saturday I was blessed with the opportunity to partake in my school's celebration of Taikusai, a sports festival so to speak. For those Greenvale Alum's out there, it was a bit reminiscent of the old "Track and Field Day" festivities we used to have. I ran in the 80m sprint, the 8x200m relay and some strange human pyramid-esque hat stealing game. Both the 80m and the relay are pretty self explanatory. Our relay got 4th out of 11 classes in our grade level and I placed first, I believe, in my heat of 6 in the sprints. The hat game is where it gets complex. Bare with me as I try to explain. Each 'team' was composed of 4 males, three on the bottom, and the remaining one perched on their shoulders wearing either a red or white hat. The objective of said game was to do what ever was humanly possible to steal the opposing colors hat. To give this some perspective, there was about 25 'teams' on a single color. We lined up at opposing ends of the field, the whistle blew, and hell broke lose. It was surprisingly violent, seeing as I was kicked and elbowed in the face, and I was one of the guy's on the bottom. It was far worse for the guy on top. My hat-wearer ended up breaking his glasses in the fight. Hardcore.
This was one of the more interesting events. All the girls lined up at opposite sides of the track and then rushed in to pull and yank on tires in an effort to bring it back to their respective sides. Apparently, at least one girl breaks her arm each year, but it didn't happen this year.
The respective teams, The White Tigers (しろいとら）and the Red Dragons (あかい something)
The White Tigers ended up holding on to victory at the end of the day.
Seeing as I was allowed to bring my camera to school this day, I took the opportunity to snap some pictures of the classroom, or rather, the view from my class room.
The classroom
This boy requested to have a picture of his half eaten lunch taken, I gladly obliged. There you have it, a half eaten Japanese bento.
Oh you know, just making some okonomiyaki
The brave explorers
Various figures hidden in the rocks
Brews for the dudes above
The crowd watching Karuga
The ceiling of the shrine
Kagura, this time with dragons
The bell in the shrine
That, that sprawl, is Hiroshima. If you look really hard you can see my apartment building
Kagura dancers. It is worth noting that this dancers wear up to 20 kilos of clothing at one time, and all the gold is genuine and real.
This past Saturday, I went to one of my friend's house and decided to climb a nearby mountain, which happened to also have a pagoda and a shrine. It simply rocked. Despite, the fact that the short hike was largely vertical and my calves screamed in agony most of the way up. Who would've thought that table tennis doesn't tone your calves? A good time was had by all. The shrine was empty, as it is not that well known, which made it all the more beautiful. Afterward's we hit some Kagura, a traditional Shinto dance which incorporates bits and pieces of story telling as well.
