On June 9th, I attended one of my elementary school’s undoukai, or sports day (I’ve seen it translated as “field day” somewhere too). Basically, the kids start practicing for runs and relays a few weeks in advance, and they prepare dances as well. An all around day to promote health and sports I suppose. I think pre-covid there were more activities, like tug-of-war and human pyramid, but covid killed some. I’m not sure about other schools, but this how it is at mine.
Now, it was actually supposed to take place on the Saturday before, and since there would be school activities on a Saturday, the Monday after would become a day off to replace the weekend day. However, it just so happened that the day it was supposed to happen was projected to have rain according to the weather forecast, so one of my school’s made the executive early decision to just skip the entire weekend (at first if it rained Saturday they would do it Sunday, but the ground was still wet), and instead make Monday a minimum day (there wasn’t any kyushoku scheduled), and postpone the Sports Day to Tuesday, eat kyushoku, and then dismiss the kids. Apparently on the Monday before, the ground conditions were still super wet, so they extended it to Friday the 9th, and worst case, the 11th. The forecast said it would be rainy, but the school still decided to do it since morning conditions looked fine, and it ended up only sprinkling just a bit toward the end. Thank goodness we got it over with!
My other school decided to first postpone to Saturday afternoon, and see what happens. Turns out, Saturday didn’t look too good, so it got postponed to Monday, only for it to rain in the morning, and then they too postponed it to Tuesday. Turns out, conditions were good enough to successfully run it on Tuesday, thank goodness! Otherwise, there was a whole other mess of an emergency scheduled planned…
I was at my other school on the day they were doing their entire run through, and the lineup basically went: opening remarks, a stretch routine with the 1st and 2nd graders, their 50m speed run, a dance performance, and then their relay. This would repeat with the middle grades, then the upper grades, and then closing remarks.
On the actual day of, everyone got to school by 8:10, and the lower grades gathered on the field for the opening ceremony. The principal gave a short speech, then the lower grades did a mini yosakoi dance. The middle grades had already lined up behind them, and once it ended, they ran onto the field to do a jumprope dance performance. After them, the upper grades did their yosakoi soran dance, and the first graders lined up at the edge of the field to get ready for their 60 meter sprint. In groups of 4 or 5, they competed to see who was the fastest in the group, and this would repeat until the sixth graders finished (I helped escort the 5th place to the waiting area). When that was over, the lower grades had their relay, running a fourth of the track, then the middle grades upgraded to half the track, and then finishing with the upper grade relay. Each level was split into 4 teams: red, white, yellow, and blue. The upper graders lined up on the field after, and the principal gave a short closing speech. After everything was over, everyone went back into their classrooms to do a reflection, and kyushoku was served around noon, since we had it on a weekday.
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