Saturday my host family’s parents came into town for Riina’s (my host sister) sports festival. My host mom’s parents came from Nagano while my host father’s parents are here in Chiba. Like the BBQ I went to a few weeks what I had in mind and what it turned out to be were two very different things. The festival itself started I think around 9 ish, my host obasan and ojisan were up 5am though to go to the festival and lay down mats to claim a section of the viewing area. Then at 630 my host otosan went to go bring everything else. My host okasan went with Riina about 830. All this was told to me after . All I new was people were slamming doors all morning and I couldn’t figure out why in my hazy state. I was passed out until about 930. I walked down to Riina’s kindergarten building (got a little lost on the way) but made it in a pretty good time. The school was streamered and flagged out and the crowd was made up of lots and lots of cameras. At times it felt less like a festival and more like a photo opportunity. The games I saw though were great. I couldn’t understand half of them but there was some where the kids were pushing a giant ball around, one where they had to run on mats parents had to pick up the mats and move it around kind of like that the floor is lava type game. My host sister did a ninja dance with her class. It was another opportunity where I got to see why Japanese education is so much better then American in some respects. I never learned how to do a ninja dance. The greatest event for me of the whole day was when they played the Mario theme song out of the loud speaker, as per advice from Mikey I took my hat off and put it over my heart and I cant say a small tear didn’t fall from my eye. The teachers were all young girls and pretty cute except one guy teacher who was wearing a tight white shirt and short shorts 70’s style. It was so funny because before each event would start he would walk out with a small fake gun and shoot it off into the air and then trot back in his horribly short shorts. Oh and also It was great to see little kids in matching hats running around it looked like one of those psychedelic screen savers where the colors all shoot around when they were doing some races.
