School Sports Day - 2014

Like the school Culture Festivals I just wrote about, my schools also have their Sports Day events in autumn. It's certainly a busy time for students and teachers! Sports Day, called undokai, is very similar in my current senior high schools compared to what I experienced at my junior high schools in the past few years. So again I'm just going to recap these fun events with some pictures below.

The first set of photos here were taken at the co-ed junior/senior high school in western Tokyo where I mainly teach:

School field before the event gets underway

The relay is one of the main events that everyone looks forward to

Students also performed large coordinated dance routines

Honestly, I don't know the how this game works exactly

Great finish... just slightly over-exaggerating I think ;-)

The next shots are from an all-girls junior/senior high school in central Tokyo where I taught at for a few months (the sports day took place in a separate location due to limited space on the actual school grounds). I have to be a little more sensitive about students' privacy here, so no close face shots! Anyway, here are the pictures:

Traditional group stretching routine called rajio-taiso 

Opening school-wide run to kick off the event 

Competing teams throw as many balls in the net at possible in 60 seconds 

A neat dance performance the girls did towards the end of the event

And lastly, the closing ceremony