Kunitade Practice

Kunitade is one of the undoukai(Sports Day) events. Basically it is a series of various human pyramid formations involving 2-10 people. Its main purpose is basically to show the city hall people, other esteemed guests and parents that the time and money spent in PE classes did not go to waste on these kids. It also has the side effect of team-building and establishing trust between all the kids, I guess.

Some 2-3 man formations:







Pyramid:


And once the pyramid is set, the students look up, left, right, down, back up, and collapse the pyramid (resulting on 10 man falling on top of each other) on whistle blows.


Fan:
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There are a couple more formations that I didn`t capture, including a human tower (basically a circular variation on the pyramid).

These are just kunitade practices, held inside the gym. On the day of the undoukai, the kunitade is done on gravel fields. And it hurts like hell. I`ve done it on undoukai rehearsals on the gravel, replacing an absent big kid in the bottom of the pyramid, and got scrapes and cuts all over (and re-opened the wound on my left knee for the 3rd time, it has yet to heal completely in 6 weeks). Despite all that I really enjoyed it. It is just a ton of fun putting all your body weight on another while supporting someone else`s weight.

On a side note relating to kunitade, one thing I`ve noticed about these Japanese kids is that physically, they are completely comfortable with each other, despite being in the awkward age of puberty. Between boys, between girls, between boys and girls, it makes no difference. I`ve observed boys massaging each other`s legs and asses(!) between track races, boys holding hands, girls braiding and brushing each others` hair, girls fondling and comparing the development of each other`s breasts(!) in hallways (I wished I had my camera), and boys and girls tagging and tackling each other in piles. To me, this was a side of Japan that I did not expect.

I suppose that the fact that this is a small rural community and that these kids literally grew up with each other has something to do with their comfort with each other. Also in general these kids, unlike the teeny boppers in US that I`ve come to know, seem to have no concept of adolescence and are perfectly content to remain as kids. Their counterpart in more populated and more "developed" Japanese big cities might be more aware of their body and personal spaces and their development. Regardless, their innocense is refreshing to me.