The humidity finally hit here in Shimane this week. And it happened during the middle of the day so you could actually see the change in weather just by watching the students faces. Sitting in a room on a partly cloudy day with a slight breeze whipping your hair about your head is a far cry better than sweating from merely writing your name on a sheet of paper. These kids have dealt with it every summer of their lives. That I do not envy.
The timing of super rainy, muggy weather couldn't have been better as last week the kids all across Matsue BOE competed in the biannual sports tournaments. Every team in every school went to the designated spot and competed to be the pride of their school. The fun part about these tournaments is that school pretty much shuts down the 2 days competition is held. This is because not only do the teams go to contest, but the 1st and 2nd graders who might get to play as well next year and the teachers who act as coaches. The only folks left in school are the proverbial band geeks and art club members and they only have to show up for 2 hours worth of school where they only thing they have to do is not cause trouble.
Therefore, ALT's are allowed to roam about the city watching the junior high teams compete. On thesepast occasions, no matter how hard I tried I'd always miss the actual games my kids were playing in.
Every tournament has a pretty detailed schedule which you can almost set a watch by, but it was finding the venues that gave me a hard time. Not this year though. It was like the few karma points I'd built up over the past couple of months got cashed in.
The big game I wanted to see this go around was the baseball match between Shinji-chu and Marie McGill's school. Unable to make it (for she knew of the whooping coming her way) I got to watch the game solo. It was a partly cloudy morning so like an idiot I didn't even think twice about sun screening my pasty white skin.
By a luck of the draw, Shinji landed the 1st slot in the tournament which meant that out schools team captain had to do a special little yelling thing during the opening ceremony.
If you didn't know anything else about the culture here, and saw only this bit you'd swear it was a mock of the third reich salute. Of course it's nothing remotely similar and quite the honor to be given.
Tsubasa, our team captain did a great job of yelling out his given dialogue, which simply went something like this:
The timing of super rainy, muggy weather couldn't have been better as last week the kids all across Matsue BOE competed in the biannual sports tournaments. Every team in every school went to the designated spot and competed to be the pride of their school. The fun part about these tournaments is that school pretty much shuts down the 2 days competition is held. This is because not only do the teams go to contest, but the 1st and 2nd graders who might get to play as well next year and the teachers who act as coaches. The only folks left in school are the proverbial band geeks and art club members and they only have to show up for 2 hours worth of school where they only thing they have to do is not cause trouble.
Therefore, ALT's are allowed to roam about the city watching the junior high teams compete. On thesepast occasions, no matter how hard I tried I'd always miss the actual games my kids were playing in.
Every tournament has a pretty detailed schedule which you can almost set a watch by, but it was finding the venues that gave me a hard time. Not this year though. It was like the few karma points I'd built up over the past couple of months got cashed in.
The big game I wanted to see this go around was the baseball match between Shinji-chu and Marie McGill's school. Unable to make it (for she knew of the whooping coming her way) I got to watch the game solo. It was a partly cloudy morning so like an idiot I didn't even think twice about sun screening my pasty white skin.By a luck of the draw, Shinji landed the 1st slot in the tournament which meant that out schools team captain had to do a special little yelling thing during the opening ceremony.
If you didn't know anything else about the culture here, and saw only this bit you'd swear it was a mock of the third reich salute. Of course it's nothing remotely similar and quite the honor to be given.Tsubasa, our team captain did a great job of yelling out his given dialogue, which simply went something like this:
Let the baseball tournament start this day.
Let us all play fair and in the true spirit of sport.
Look in the sky, it's a bird...a really big bird.
Baseball is awesome!
Japan is more awesome!
Woot!
Let us all play fair and in the true spirit of sport.
Look in the sky, it's a bird...a really big bird.
Baseball is awesome!
Japan is more awesome!
Woot!
So maybe not exactly like that....but my imagination makes it far more entertaining. The boys won their first game only to lose the next day to the team who would win the tourney. After that loss, there were many a tear shed because as I would learn later, it would be the last game for the current 3rd graders, and they got beat bad.
Off then to the girls basketball competition. 
Traditionally, these girls lose every time and lose bad. I mean rally bad and after the first time I saw them play I understood why. No passing, lots of one handed lobs, wrong players in the wrong position and we even had 7 girls on the court at one time. So why did I go watch the girls get stomped on twice in a row? Because they're consistently my best students in class, they're always happy and even when losing they know how to have fun. Great girls all around. So Moe, Kasumi, Rena, Tomoka, Chisaki, Chiaki, Kumiko and Naho...yall are great, even if you're really bad at basketball.
This concluded day 1. Day 2 started with the 7-0 loss of Shiji's baseball team. I then head over to the super large sport center in Matuse where the table tennis tournaments were held. 
You know what's a super cool? Walking into a building and hearing 60 different games of ping-pong being played at once. It's almost like a room of typists slapping away at keyboards. I lucked out on timing here because once I found where the Shinji players and parents were sitting they pointed out that the last couple of games still going on were the girls championship games in both singles and doubles. Right next to each other, the Shinji gals wailed on poor Konan-chu. To be honest, no one is surprised though because year after year, the girl table tennis players at Shinji dominate. 
They are the school pride when it comes to sports. (Crazy huh)
After this and hanging out with the boys table tennis team, whole got eliminated in the first round that day, I head out for a bit of lunch and then the soccer pitch (we call it field, europeans call it pitch). Shinji's soccer team is full of some really good boys. In general they're all just fun to have in class. They also seem to be the shortest team in any game they play. Since Shinji doesn't have a huge student body, almost every team has to dip into the 2nd graders for enough people to play. It's almost sad when you seem them about to start and there's an obvious height difference between them and one of the powerhouse junior high's of Matsue. But then, when they when 3-0 and are super happy, they walk about like giants. For some reason, in that game the Shnji cheering section consisted of 2 people. Myself and Adachi-sensei, the cool science teacher, yelled pretty much the whole time. It was great.
And to top off the week, for it was now Friday evening, as I walked back to my car to head down the coast for a seaside grill out, night swimming and late night fire on the beach, I ran into Ishikawa sensei. The man who I first worked with at Shinji.
Yay sports week
Traditionally, these girls lose every time and lose bad. I mean rally bad and after the first time I saw them play I understood why. No passing, lots of one handed lobs, wrong players in the wrong position and we even had 7 girls on the court at one time. So why did I go watch the girls get stomped on twice in a row? Because they're consistently my best students in class, they're always happy and even when losing they know how to have fun. Great girls all around. So Moe, Kasumi, Rena, Tomoka, Chisaki, Chiaki, Kumiko and Naho...yall are great, even if you're really bad at basketball.
You know what's a super cool? Walking into a building and hearing 60 different games of ping-pong being played at once. It's almost like a room of typists slapping away at keyboards. I lucked out on timing here because once I found where the Shinji players and parents were sitting they pointed out that the last couple of games still going on were the girls championship games in both singles and doubles. Right next to each other, the Shinji gals wailed on poor Konan-chu. To be honest, no one is surprised though because year after year, the girl table tennis players at Shinji dominate. 
They are the school pride when it comes to sports. (Crazy huh)After this and hanging out with the boys table tennis team, whole got eliminated in the first round that day, I head out for a bit of lunch and then the soccer pitch (we call it field, europeans call it pitch). Shinji's soccer team is full of some really good boys. In general they're all just fun to have in class. They also seem to be the shortest team in any game they play. Since Shinji doesn't have a huge student body, almost every team has to dip into the 2nd graders for enough people to play. It's almost sad when you seem them about to start and there's an obvious height difference between them and one of the powerhouse junior high's of Matsue. But then, when they when 3-0 and are super happy, they walk about like giants. For some reason, in that game the Shnji cheering section consisted of 2 people. Myself and Adachi-sensei, the cool science teacher, yelled pretty much the whole time. It was great.
And to top off the week, for it was now Friday evening, as I walked back to my car to head down the coast for a seaside grill out, night swimming and late night fire on the beach, I ran into Ishikawa sensei. The man who I first worked with at Shinji.Yay sports week
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