Joanne and Jan
Mood:  energetic
My gosh, how time flies!
Jan and Joanne (friends from Spokane) arrived last Saturday, Sept. 18th, and we have been having so much fun that i haven't even thought about updating my BLOG. We've taken the shinkansen to Hiroshima and spent hours in the museum there. Wandered through the gardens around Himeji Castle and oooo'd and ah'dd to our heart's content.
We've taken the time to explore the amazing grocery stores here and the bicycle parking lots and we even got to experience an emergency trip to the hospital to help Connie out when she fell and split open her knee. This was especially exciting since Joanne is a nurse and was able to follow Connie through the whole process of x-ray, clean up, and stapling the knee shut. This took about an hour and cost a whole $45. It's a marvel what tax dollars can do when they aren't wasted on war games!

Taikutaikai
Today Jan and Joanne rode bikes with me to "Taikutaikai" - Sports Day - at my junior high, Kobu. This is an all day event that happens at all the junior highs in Nishinomiya sometime during this week. My friends were so impressed with the quality of the kid's performances and the difficulty of some of the events. Our brass band played and marched as well as any high school band that i've seen in the states. The kids competed with all their might in sprints, laps, and relays. Some were serious races and some were definitely NOT so serious. We had three-legged races, and centipede races where the kids were lined up with their right ankles tied to one long rope and their left ankles tied to another long rope. It was truly amazing to see 30 students synchronize and be able to race up and around some poles and back to the finish line. It was also funny to watch some of the centipedes collapse when one person got out of step! The clubs all paraded in full uniform, very impressive. The girls performed some really fine dance routines for us. This was not just the elite kids of our school. Everyone, i mean, everyone participated - even the special ed kids. These guys took a lot of practice to get them to work in a group but they were definitely enjoying it every bit as much as the others.

The whole school practiced their events every day for the last two weeks. The teachers put all their hearts and souls getting their students ready for this day and it paid off. Parents, grandparents, siblings and friends came out in droves to cheer these kids on. Lessons learned included: team building, sportsmanship, practice makes perfect, determination sometimes beats sheer talent, patience, respect, acceptance of all levels of fitness and skill/talent and much, much more.

I couldn't help but make comparisons to our sports in the states. THERE IS NO COMPARISON. I hope that you will be able to view some of my photos shortly. They are truly impressive.

Our school system sure could learn a thing or two about kids from this event.

Personally, I think that we don't push our kids hard enough and expect more of them. I don't see how any of our students here could have walked away from this event without feeling super good about themselves. It is a privilege to have been a part of this day with such dedicated teachers and such enthusiastic, healthy, and athletic kids.