Rival Schools - FIGHT!

Well, rival classes, anyway (^_^).

Here's one of the things I've been meaning to write about for a little while, but other things got in the way. It's almost over now, but the Spring Holidays (and therefore end of school year holidays) have kicked in here in sunny old frickin' cold Japan, along with the hanami season.

At the end of the Japanese school year, at least in the town I live in, every school has what they call a "class match", an inter-class sports competition. The boys play soccer football and the girls play volleyball against each other.

Only the first years and second years (7th and 8th graders) fight it out because the 3rd years have graduated and are on holiday by this time.

The boys play soccer out on the sunny and quite windy playground in a tournament-style competition, each half lasting 10 minutes. Usually the boys are quite vocal, shouting out encouragement to their teammates on the field, but this year, they seemed like they couldn't give a shit pretty subdued:



The guys on the sidelines even had time to start burying this dude in the sand!

Trust me, the kid on the right is throwing sand - he's not trying to go "south of the border" on that guy in the centre, although that would have been a lot funnier! (^o^)
The guys aren't that good, hey - they're not pros yet - so most of the matches are goal-less draws that go to penalties. Kind of a lame way to decide who's the best, but there you go.


The girls' volleyball tourney has a very different atmosphere. I guess as with girls all over the world, they tend to team up and get on with each other a lot better. There's a lot more cheering and clapping, team huddles and general cheerfulness.



Sorry all you weirdo jailbait-huntin' Japanese schoolgirl fetish anime porn watching chikan, no Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball shenanigans for you here! Not even any sand, the boys have to deal with that.

Something I didn't realise until this year is that the kids make their own programmes which are very detailed and contain lots of hand drawn pics, like this:



I was surprised how much effort some of the kids go to for the class matches. Pretty cool. I also like how the homeroom teachers really get involved and support their own classes' teams, which encourages the kids no end.

I didn't pay close attention to who won in the end, but a few days later, I did notice this poster up in one of the classrooms:



Yup, Class 2-1, you guys sure got game victory.