Sports Day Rehearsal

“Nikki, you can come watch. But, but… it’s not interesting,” said my supervisor.

Was he talking about his own class, an unforgivably long baseball game, or every movie staring Scarlett Johansan? No, he was referring to the practice for Sports Day. With such a dazzling recommendation I could hardly refuse. It also didn’t help that I was the only person left in the staffroom and feeling rather lazy and schmuckish because of that. So I happily logged out of my email account and headed down to the baseball field to see what all the fuss was about.

The kids didn’t have any class this afternoon because they had to rehearse for Sports Day. Apparently Sports Day is the be-all-end-all of a high schooler’s career. Things are rehearsed and practiced to the T because if they weren’t, shame would befall the school and the world would implode. How exactly does one rehearse for a day full of sports competitions and games though? I watched, learned and made hasty, irrational, xenophobic judgments.

The entire school of a few hundred students was gathered in the baseball field. They were divided up into four groups: red, green, yellow and blue. Each group was rigidly lined up. The first and second years donned white shorts and t-shirts and the third years (I think) were wearing blue. At the head of each group one student was holding a large banner that held the name of the group in kanji: things like “blue wind” and “yellow God.”

While I was sitting on the stone bleachers watching this, one of the English teachers appeared next to me. Despite the fact that we were on bleachers which work nicely as seats, he demonstrated his superior Asian Squat skills and plopped down next to me.

This was the English writing teacher who hadn’t spoken a lick of English to me, which had led me to believe that it wasn’t all that great. I was completely wrong. He has excellent English. In an attempt to talk to him one day I had asked his advice on where to deposit a piece of trash that I had the misfortune to be stuck with. Yes. I really DO have to reach for conversation here. But in all fairness, trash is an immensely complicated issue in Japan. We have like 10 different trash bins in the staff room – one for paper, one for plastics, one for juice boxes, one for juice cans, one for soda cans, one for milk cartons, one for bottle caps, one for pieces of paper masquerading as wrappers, one for twisty ties, one for things that are blue, one for things that are dead and burnable, one for students’ hair that has to be cut because it is too long and goes against all that is good and right in this country. The list goes on and on. If my calendar in Japan looks all jumbled and busy it’s because I am trying to write down on what days I am allowed to put out food scraps so that they don’t reappear in my life smeared on my door – it’s not because I have a life.

But I digress.

His English was good and we actually had a conversation. He explained the kanji on the signs to me, taught me some Japanese history, told me a little about himself– it was truly a bonding moment composed of a few short, sweet sentences. Then we sat there for a while watching the students run around in drills in silence. And then he disappeared as quickly as he had come.

To be completely honest I only stayed for an hour as after that Sweet Sleep was starting to beguile me. The four groups of students stood obediently in front of one teacher who was on a podium barking orders to them. Then one by one the groups would take off running around at regimented steps that would make the army blush in embarrassment to the constant chant of what I believe were numbers. Everything was uniform. I have never seen so many legs and feet move together in such synchronization. Are the Japanese famous for synchronized swimming? If they’re not, they damn well should be.

These trots around the baseball field occurred over and over again. Are they to happen with this frequency on actual Sports Day, or were the kids just continually getting something wrong? When each group had done a circuit one student would bark out an order, the rest of the students would start chanting and then they would all cease moving with a stern sounding count of “ONE! TWO!!”

Japanese is an interesting language in that it can sound all cutsey-wutsey one minute and then as thought a samurai warrior is charging toward you, about to chop you to teeny, tiny pieces. The barking that goes on during these formal assemblies and even during English class (a student grimly bellows the instructions “STAND…. BOW!!!” to all his classmates which quite frankly I find uncomfortable and unnecessary) falls into the latter category. It is harsh and grating. Much like Chinese always is.

After they had done a number of circuits the group was called together and they started to run in place – again all together –all uniform. The chanting acted as a kind of human metronome which would keep them all in time AS A GROUP.

In high school the closest thing I had to do to this was during my graduation. One teacher made fruitless endeavors to try to get some 300 bratty high school kids to stand up in unison ‘on three.’ It was fairly hopeless. But consider, as long as we’re all standing up in the end, does it really matter if we all do it at the exact same millisecond? The only person who is going to see us from the vantage point anyway is God and I hear he’s not big on assemblies anyway.

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Published:
9.8.06 / 5pm
Category:
what i call life, culture