The Costume relay

This weekend was the school sports day, or Undokai, for both the junior high school and elementary school. It was a big event involved the whole community, parents of course but also the various professions as well. The children have been rehearsing the opening ceremony and various performances for weeks now and it all went swimmingly! There was a bit of marching around and flag carrying followed by stretching and then the various performances and games. Parents of the children and people from the old folk’s home were involved in many of the games; it was nice to see how the whole community came together. There was a lot of relay running, and I ran for the kyoko innkai team, the board of education. I was running the last leg, and by the time I got the baton the first two teams had already finished, but I made them up a place so I guess it wasn’t too bad. The taking part was by far the most important thing of course! Afterwards all the teachers and people who had helped set things up gathered outside for some food and drinks. The local police man was there too, and in his speech he actually said it was ok to get drunk and drive home as long as you were careful. Ah island life. Absolutely everyone gave a speech including me, although mine was all of four sentences long. After wards I and a couple of the younger teachers went to the hotel for more food and drink and karaoke. It was most enjoyable. The policeman amused me by always topping up peoples drinks, when they weren’t looking he would sneak in some more! This at least annoyed one of the teachers though, as apparently this is an Ishigaki custom and not done on Izena (or Okinawa honto). Unless I misunderstood the police man also gave me an open invitation to come around to the police station and have a drink with him, I quite believe it. As we had worked Saturday and Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were holidays, wooohoo! I completely bummed out and relaxed for those two days. Monday I spend on the beach and then went running before crashing with my book for the rest of the evening (although I did find time to have a crash on my bike – no injuries amazingly though!). And Tuesday was followed a similar vein but this time I did some exploring/hiking during the day before running and then crashing. I really like the Ryukyu pines trees, and took many pictures of them, I will have to take my paints out once it’s less windy. Teru tell me it is rare to have so many Ryukyu pines all together so Izena is special in that regard. Anyway I love em’.