Sports Day in a Japanese School

Sunday - oh gosh - why did we say yes to this?  We were to be honoured guests at a sports day held by a school on the same site as the Showa part of BST.  Dave had already met Ichihara Sensei (the head) and we were included in the guest list this year.

The sun shone and the temperatures were quite high - the wind was blowing too.  We arrived to hear the noise of music and children cheering so we knew we were in the right place.  As we collected our 'Guest' badges we were escourted to our seats by a young woman in a track suit wearing a mask so I will never recognise her again!  The seats we had been allocated were in the sun so our first act of disruption was to make everyone else move up so that we could have a seat in the shade!  This was organised by our gracious hosts, not us, I hasten to add.  Although we had slopped on the sunscreen we had come without hats - but that was soon sorted by the amazing attention to detail of our hosts - a straw hat was proffered and accepted by me.  At this stage, I realised that the wind was blowing quite hard and when you have a wide brimmed hat on the best one can hope for is that you don't look silly.  To look silly and be seen chasing around after your hat is probably not good etiquette!  So I sat with one hadn on the hat and the other working the camera.

This was not a sports day in the English sense of the word.  It was a fun day with a few sports and a lot of synchronised activity - flag waving, dancing, gym movement, all done brilliantly by beautiful, beaming children who were obviously having a great time.  Why do we make ours have mini olympics? Why do we have so few winners?  Do we set our children up to fail?   The parts of the day that were running were very much team events - the relay for instance was across the year groups and was a real spectacle but the sense of competition was very real.

Kyoto

So you have all read Memoires of Geisha, right?  And you think you know what they do?  Yes, we thought that too and then we went to Kyoto.....

The shinkansen (bullet train) left Shinagawa station here in Tokyo and flew through the countryside for two and half hours before depositing us at Kyoto Station - a huge place with so many lines, local and national that it was a very confusing moment and we followed the crowd to one of many exits.  We had planned this carefully and decided, as it was our very first visit to the city, we would keep it simple and stay at the very western and very smart hotel actually at the station.  It was a fabulous place but it was on many floors and in many wings so finding your way around it was a little tricky to start with.

Dave decided to try the masssage and I decided to explore on foot and see what could be found.  After all, I had heard such magnificent tales of the city that I was keen to find something to impress me.  I walked for miles and the whole place seemed to have a sad, run down air; shutters closed with grafitti sprayed on them and a river that was begging for water to flow down what had obviously once been a wide and thriving channel which now had only grass and few small areas of water in it - where the cranes lurked looking hopefully for fish.  It seemed a sad and tired city - the days of old weighing heavily on its shoulders.

So it was a somewhat disappointed Trysh that returned to the hotel almost two hours later.  Had we really come all this way for this? 

Following a conversation with the concierge we tried to book a tour of the city but it was full.  The concierge was helpful and suggested that with a taxi we could visit the city's attractions easily.  We set off with a map marked in Japanese and our limited phrases to see what could be found.

Our first stop was  Nijo Castle - the home of the Shogun and what a place this turned out to be.  We learnt about the system - lots of ladies in waiting and lots of swords.  We learnt too about the nightingale floor boards - boards that squeak when walked on so that spies who arrived in the night could be easily discovered and dealt with.  The spies were called Ninja - and that is why they learnt to move around by climbing walls and scaling heights - to avoid those squeaky floor boards!

We met some young students who wanted to practise their English on us.  When they discovered David was a Principal and I was an English teacher they nearly died of shock but they came running after us to present us with a small bird done in origami by one of the girls as a thank you.

We moved on to the next awesome moment - a visit to Kinkakuji Temple - the Golden Pavillion (see photo).  What can I say?  Beautiful and stunning seem to be an understatement really.  Yes, it really IS gold.

David and me at the Kinkakuji Temple

Lunch called so we headed off to Kyomizu dera Temple which was set high on a hill overlooking Kyoto.

In the winding back street near the temple, we had a proper Japanese lunch - a Bento Box with a selection of delicious things in a lovely local resturant overlooking a Japanese garden.  Tempura is definitely our favourite kind of food here but we are getting a taste for the less western flavours - like tofu which is very soft here and can be very tasty especially when made with sesame.  I'm still not really into the noodles - but if I have to, I prefer the cold ones over the hot!

   Praying at the Goddess of Mercy

In the evening we met up with a Canadian ex pro footballer who, 16 years ago, married a real, live Geisha and now does walking tours around Gion (an area of Kyoto) telling people about the real life of the Geisha.  He pointed out the houses where they train, the tea shops (which sell anything but tea!) and the schools they attend and we did see both Geisha and Maiko (Geisha in training) just going about their business in the streets around the place.  Once you know what you are looking for, you can spot them easily - it's all in the hair.  They train for years in the art of dance, music and conversation and they are seen very much as the keepers of the tradition rather than the innovators of society, which they were many years ago.  We were totaly enthralled by what he had to tell us and David is now re-reading the book by Arthur Golden.  Sadly, I was too shy to take photos of the girls and my snaps were blurred and not good at all - but I did one from the back which isn't too bad!

Great trip - great to see outside the city of Tokyo and to learn a little more about Japanese culture.