Torigoe Olympics

On Monday, I went to my Monday school. I know it sounds obvious, but I call it my Monday school because most JETs are at their offices on Monday and not teaching, and because my other two schools I am at for four days a week, as opposed to just the one at Torigoe.

Anyhow, the English Activity Coordinator told me that something was happening in 3rd period and I should come. She explained it in English, so I had no clue what she said. Seriously there are some people out here that I understand so much better in Japanese. Lol!

So I go to the gym at 3rd period, like I am supposed to, and lo and behold, it’s the Torigoe Olympics or “oh-ree-n-pee-ku” as they say in Japanese. And I left my camera in the staff room! So the whole school (all like 36 students-lol) are in teams, and they all have bands around their heads to represent the colour of their team. Now the Torigoe Olympics is not like a Sports Day, they already had Sports last term. The Olympics is just some random madness. But the thing is that in every event in the Olympics, is team competition.
There were four events. In the first event, it was a janken (rock-paper-scissors) relay. You had to run cross the gym, janken against a teacher. If you win, you run back and tag the next body in line, if you lose the whole team gotta run cross the gym, before the next body could start. The men put me as one of the teachers to play Janken. I am the worst: I lost to every student except the very last. (Embarassment!) The yellow team, which I went up against came second in that game. Red won.
The next event was Team skip. Two people from the team turned a skipping rope while the entire rest of the team skipped tp see what number they could get to. Red won again, amassing an incredible 35 jumps in a row. (I can not even get 35 by myself, but then I just suck at skipping.
After that, there was the three-legged race, hilarity in any culture, this time I think Green won, and red cam dead last. The final event was the most hilarious thing I ever see in Sports History. They broke the school into seniors and juniors. Grades 1 to 3 compete together as did 4 to 6. You had to take the band off your head and hang it out the back of your pants, like a tail. Then you had a minute to run around inside the area of the basketball court, trying to steal as many tails as you could! If your tail got stolen, you had to go off the court and sit down. At the end of the two rounds, every single time had 6 points.
The final score: Red won, Yellow second, Green third and then Blue. That works for me since Red and Yellow were my primary school and secondary school houses.
I hope this is an annual event and not every 4 years like the real Olympics, really need to get pictures of it!