osaki ni shitureishimasu: Belated Undoukai pics

It`s such a pain in the ass shrinking all the high-res pictures into a size reasonable for internet publishing/storage, it took me a full week to actually get to it. The pics are mostly in 300x225 resolution since there are many.

Anyway, so here they are, undoukai pictures. Undoukai is Sports` Day, basically an annual sports festival held during the autumn semester (2nd semester; Japanese school year, as well as financial/tax calendar, starts in April). It is a competition between all classes and grades as well an excuse for the townspeople to gather and hangout. Students spent a full school week, plus summer and afterschool hours to prepare for this event. Most of the time were spent on class mascots, made out of bamboo skeleton and paper mache`:

Mascot of class 1A (7th grade). Korosuke, some cartoon character created by the creator of Doraimon, another cartoon character (which I grew up watching).

1B. The head of Sakesagawa-sensei. I wish I had a picture of her to show the likeness of this project.

2A (8th grade). Goyaama. I have no idea what the hell this thing was.

2B. Ultraman.

3A (9th grade). This was pretty impressive.

3B. So was this.

This mascots, as well as the class flag, are props in the class parade, during which students prepare some sort of skit/dance number with corresponding theme.

The back of Sakesegawa-sensei taking a picture of her own likeness.

Segawa-sensei carrying his class flag.

Some formalities involved in the undoukai:

The announcer,

the marching band (they were placed 1st in prefectural competition and 3rd in Chugoku area competition),

the bigwigs (mayor, head of board of education, principles from other schools, etc.),

the Japanese, city, and school flags (raised during national anthem, which sounded strangely unfinished like it was cut-off in the middle),

students taking the oath of sportsmanship,

introduction of different club activities and award ceremony,

the volleyball team, which won the prefectural junior-high tournament,

and Nakayama entou, some kind of Japanese traditional dance which I was required to participate wearing a borrowed yukata.

And onto the events. These are fairly typical:

Warmup aerobics;

100m race, each class pick 10 runners (boy and girl), and the classes are ranked by the most heat wins;

800m race for girls, 1000m race for boys. Winner of race wins points for his/her class;

One of those 2 Man 3 Legs relay races;

Who can jump rope the most times;

Centipede relay race.

Plus three more events that are a bit more unusual. First, as I have introduced in a previous entry, kunitade, or human formation/pyramid, coordinated by whistle: