Sports Day

This was one of my favorite days at this point. They shoved us all on a bus that held our program and another smaller program of students that got here a couple of weeks earlier than us. Everyone in my program has buddies and we actually share some of them with this other program which is why they came to Sports Day with us. The other program is a group of 8 guys who are all from Georgia Tech that are all engineers and came here to learn business Japanese. I saw some of the things they were working on and it was really intense (I'm glad I'm not in that program). For sports day they told us to bring some indoor shoes and get ready for some competition so we were all in the dark for what was going to happen. This day was run not by the academic workers or program leaders but solely by the buddies which I was excited to see. We took the bus downtown to a small little side road that I've never been to and we all got off and walked inside.Can you find me?

Now almost everywhere you go in Japan you are probably going to have to remove your shoes before entering- which I am already used to. We got to the neighborhood gym and of course removed our shoes before entering. There is a difference between indoor shoes and outdoor shoes here also. Indoor shoes are shoes that you only wear inside places like gyms where as outdoor shoes are for everywhere else. There are also normally little slippers in the bathroom that you use so you don't wear your indoor shoes into the bathroom. Hence, get shoes that are easy to take off and put back on multiple times if you are planning on coming to Japan.
We got inside after changing shoes and were split into teams. I was on the みどり (green) team and there was also a yellow, blue, and red team. With each team was a few buddies that were leaders of the team as well. We first started with the traditional way of Japanese stretching which is done to music- I've already done it twice since being here and it seems like they use it for most warm-ups. After the warm-up we jumped straight into the sports. The first one was the tug of war competition. Looking at all of the teams, I couldn't really tell who I thought was the best and worst but after the tug of war I quickly determined who I thought would get first and last. My team won the tug of war easily and so we got the maximum points for that and then moved on. Next was a tail catching game. Everyone put their headbands (that were given to us at the beginning) into the back of their pants like tails. The object was to get as many as you can for your team. We ended up getting last so it made me a little nervous about the rest of the games. The next one was a jump rope game which I really liked. Everyone on the team had to jump in and out of the jump rope once. It was a little difficult but I used my jump roping skills from childhood to perfect it. We ended up getting second in the game which meant we were second overall.
The last event was the three legged race. In order to win the whole thing, we had to win this event. I was first paired with one of the tallest kids who was planning on carrying me through the race but we decided that we might get disqualified if we did that and didn't want to risk it so I was then paired with one of the guys from the Georgia Tech program. Everyone on our team had to go at least once through the race. We started quickly, kept up with everyone, and ended up winning by a landslide. This pushed us into first place! We all sat down at the end of the day and they talked about the places of the teams and handed out prizes. For our team, we all got a huge bag of Japanese snacks and our leader gave us all chocolate ice cream balls that were delicious. I was just glad that we didn't lose because the losers had to help clean everything up.
Overall it was a very fun day and I got to hang out with people that I wouldn't have normally hung out with. I also got to know some of the buddies better which was fun. After Sports Day, we had the choice of either going back to school or staying in town. A bunch of us decided to stay in town and I was one of them. It takes about 45 minutes from APU to get down to the middle of town and it also costs almost $5 every time so whenever we get a free ride downtown, we take advantage of it. One of my friends, Connor, and I went to a local rental store called つたや(Tsutaya). They sell and rent CDs, magazines, videos, and so many other things. We picked out about 5 movies and went to go check out. Before we got to Tsutaya someone told us that we needed to get a membership card so we attempted talking to one of the workers to tell him that we didn't have one. It took twice as long as it should have because of how polite Japanese people are. We assumed that what he was saying was telling us what we needed but it was actually like he was telling us that what we had was alright- or something. I'm not really sure what was going on but we ended up successfully getting a membership card and renting the movies. They were only 100 yen each for a week which is about $1! It was pretty cool.
We went further into town and played some Pachinko at one of the arcades before going to dinner at a Korean BBQ place. The food was so good and I've realized that I have fallen in love with the sauce they put on the lettuce wraps that come with the meat. The only that sucks is that it is normally refrigerated so there is no way to bring it home- my goal is to find it somewhere in America though.
We went back to campus after that and I finished the day by working on my homework. I realized that things in Japan seem to be completely opposite than in America sometimes. I learned that their rest day in Japan is normally Wednesdays rather than Fridays like it is in America. Most upperclassmen don't have classes on Wednesdays because it is a little break in the middle of the week which is pretty nice- but of course my program still has classes on Wednesdays. They also focus much more on academics and a lot less on sports. APU, even though it is only 10 years old, doesn't have any varsity sports- they only have circles which are like clubs in America. The facilities here are also very minuscule which is definitely the opposite of America. The soccer field is actually in better condition than the baseball field which surprised me. It was my first time seeing an all dirt baseball field because I am so used to seeing beautiful green grass at UNCW and my high school- where they worship the ground where the baseball players play. The sports gyms are very different here also. They look about the same size as my elementary school and they are used for sports as well as a stage. They are all the same here but they look so different than the ones in America- it's just weird to see people care about other things that don't involve sports.