2nd Sports Festival

Today is the sports day celebration for the city we live in, as you remember back we had the one for the village we live in, and now all of the different villages get together and have a sports competition, I hear that our town of Shibinai usually comes in last due to a small young people population, well we will see what we can do about that today, I am entered in about 5 different competitions.

Masani-san was here to pick us up at 8:30am and we all loaded up and took off for Higashikagura. When we arrived the beginning ceremony started as we were walking up to the Shibinai area, Sumi-san was already there waiting for others to arrive.

After the beginning ceremony it was time for everybody to exercise and stretch, they have a special song they play and everyone gets up and does exercises, I don't know the routine so I just have to watch and follow along, it is fairly straight forward with touch your toe, knee bends and jumping jacks.

After the exercises it was time for the competition to start, the first event that Yasuko and I were in was called the Love Balance, this consisted of holding a large bowl on my head, and balancing a much larger ball in the basket while running, but wait there's more, Yasuko was behind me holding a hula hoop around the both of us and was not allowed to let it touch my stomach. If the ball dropped we had to stop put the hula hoop down and return the ball to my head pick up the hula hoop and start again. We were fast and easily moved into first place without dropping the ball. Shibinai came in first place on this event... Take that other towns.

The rest of the day went on with various relays, two legged races, ball throws, mass jump rope, and many more. At lunch time everyone took a break and ate the lunches that we had all brought, then it was time to compete more.

When it was all said and done out of 6 towns, our town came in 3rd overall and we got to hold the 3rd place trophy for the year. It proudly got displayed in the community center. Exhausted we all headed back home and after a 30 minute rest started a outside BBQ party that is going to go on well into the night.

We ate and drank our fills and staggered home around 10:00pm, wow these people sure know how to enjoy life, no more sitting in the house in front of a computer like I used to do in Texas, no time for that.

Temp: High - 79
Low - 64