The RowStein Compendium: My Nihon Life.

'Ello again reader(s).

DW back again. Things have definitely settled down here at the RowStein household, my original goal in writing this post (and I suppose the goal of the blog itself) was to give our family and friends snapshots from our lives. And encompass both the photo-op worthy and possibly interesting daily drudgery of living abroad.

While that is definitely still the goal, after the massive posts of the past few weeks I want to try something a bit different. Effectively my days boil down to three things: exploring Japan, making and eating food, and studying. With that in mind I am going to aim for a single story or anecdote for a given week, and then close with some assorted pictures from those three categories. If you see a picture you want to know more about or a food you want the recipe for, just leave a comment and we'll be sure to hit it on the subsequent week. The Metrics from our early posts may also be seeing a revival in future weeks, but in a bit more rigid format.

Hopefully it will make a fast entertaining read for you all and a quicker write for us, which will make being timely a bit easier ;). Let us know what you think of the change in the comments!

So what is the tidbit for this week?

Sports Day

While those two words may accurately label the nigh ubiquitous Japanese school event, they are wholly insufficient to describing it. I had heard the term bandied about, and I had a vision of track and field type events, and maybe some relay events . . . INSUFFICIENT.

WR and I had the good fortune to attend Sports Day at our friend Eleanor's school, and it was a vivid reminder of exactly how different American and Japanese high schools are. While there are certainly track and field events for individuals and small relay teams, it is the group events which took the cake.

The entire school is divided into four mixed age groups, they have to design a theme, choreograph their own routines, make their own costumes, and play their own music. Points are tallied for each team throughout the day. So the most important thing to remember is that unless they have an injury EVERY STUDENT in the school participates in the group events.

The first group event we saw was Kumitaiso, which had been summed up to me as building human pyramids. What I didn't know was that it is not just a competition for height, it was a ~5 minute choreographed event with the approximately 150 boys for each team. There were elaborate patterns, and tall towers, but also people being flung through the air and what amounted to trust falls for three people stacked on end, with taiko drums and rhythmic chanting keeping it all in unison. For privacy concerns I didn't take pictures of Eleanor's school, but I did try and collect an assemblage of photos from the interwebs.

The next event was group cheering. This involved each of the four groups being subdivided into two dance teams, a group of musicians providing, and the remaining students forming the cheering section. One dance team was effectively western style cheerleaders, the other was a sort of dance/martial arts thing called dan (yup now you know what I was named after).

The two would dance independently and together, and if that weren't enough to look at, the students behind them would be using different colored pompons and colored flip boards to spell things out or do coordinated cheering.

The final group section was a more formal group cheering using the whole student body called ouendan. It feels a bit millitaristic by comparison, with formally dressed leaders, more taiko, and precision flag work.

This is a good representation of what Ouendan outfits look like.

When I wasn't clapping or cheering, my mind was busy reeling at the thought of trying to get everyone in my highschool to participate in something like this.

Well that's all for now. Here are some snapshots from the week past to round it out! Don't forget to let us know what you think of the format or if there is something you want covered.

Thanks for reading and don't forget to feed the fish!

DW

Food