Last weekend was my daughter’s school’s annual undokai – sports day. Her school falls into, what is loosely translated as, an elevator school. This means that once you gained admittance, you may continue in that school up to its highest level. Her school has its own yochien program (three year kindergarten program) and continues up to its own college. The college is located about an hour outside of Tokyo and is the site of the undokai.
The campus is sets in a rural area surrounded by rice paddies. The school’s grounds are beautifully manicured with a large grass field next to the track. The grass is cut like a golf course green. It is from this area that parents and siblings cheer for their little darlings as they compete, dance and play.
As a second grader, our daughter participated in the sprints. Her legs are too long and her motion too awkward to be a sprinter means that her fast starts quickly come to naught. Each grade then competes with some random athletic test. The second graders are put into groups of four and given a wooden rectangular travois. A large ball is placed in the middle of the travois and the group of girls have to run about 25 meters, spin around a cone, run another 25 meters and drop the travois off so another group can do the same thing in the opposite direction.
The lovely setting and amusing feats and unusual music selections make for a lovely day. This year the second graders did their group dance to “It’s a small world after all.” There was the usual selection of classical and bad muzak verisons of popular songs including mandatory inclusions of Beatles tunes, and the ever popular “Oh Mickey” by Toni Basil. The musical highlight this year though was provided by the elementary marching band (yes, you read that correctly, the elementary school has a very SHARP, marching band). This year’s big number was “Tequila.” I feel confident that I was the only person yelling “Tequila” at the appropriate moments – at least I couldn’t hear anyone else. (And am I the only one that can’t hear this song without thinking about Pee Wee Herman? And doesn’t that make this song as unbearable to listen to as “It’s a small world”?)
Despite a far better showing than last year, our daughter’s school house still came in third this year. That is great…until you realize the school only has three houses. Oh well, at least they had fun…and there is always next year!