Go Tokichu!
I just have to give a shout out to the JHS I'm at now, Tokigawa Junior High School (in Japanese, Tokigawa Chugakko, or "Tokichu" for short). Two or three times during the school year there are "county"-wide sports competitions for the Junior High Schools. The top teams then go on to compete in prefectural (like state-wide) tournaments. The most recent of these was a couple weeks ago. Our baseball team won the county tournament, which I don't think anyone really expected. Especially not one of the Japanese English teachers who apparently promised some of the baseball team members he'd take them out to eat or to the U.S. if they won (ha ha on him). :-) He was a bit panicked the day after when some of the boys started asking him when he was going to make good on his promises. Members from both the boys and girls badminton clubs placed in both doubles and singles and will be going to a prefectural tournament. And we've got some kick-a@# runners at our school! One of the 2nd grade (7th grade) girls won the 100m, 200m and 400m-relay in county and prefectural, and she went to the All-Japan Track Meet over the summer. Another 2nd grade girl won the hurdles, the boys' relay team placed 3rd....all in all we're probably sending at least 5 students to the state meet in individual events, excluding the relay teams, and from a school with only 300 students, only about 20 on the track team, that's not too shabby!
Today there was a county sort-of cross-country tournament for 3rd graders for what they call the "ekiden." The boys run 4.2km and the girls run 3.5km. Our team got 3rd place and are going to the prefectural meet. I didn't get a chance to ask anyone in English about individual placement, but I gathered from conversations held in Japanese that at least one of the boys might have placed individually. He won the school "marathon" (ekiden) last month, so it wouldn't surprise me. He's not even on the track team...he's a baseball player. Go figure!
Top: Tokichu boys starting the school's marathon run.
Bottom: Tokichu girls school marathon.
That's right, I said 'the school marathon.' I'm gonna toss this in here too, because it blows my American-public school-educated mind. There's no way this would fly at a public school in the U.S. While P.E. classes are used to help the students train for the race, the ekiden is completely independent of P.E. class. It's a race held once a year and ALL the students participate. On the day of the race, the students go to 1st period class as normal, the ekiden takes place over the course of 2nd, 3rd and 4th periods, the students have lunch, then finish up the afternoon with the normally scheduled 5th and 6th periods, plus the daily all-school cleaning. As I mentioned before, the boys run 4.2km and the girls run 3.5km. They have a course mapped out along the streets around the school. It seems so much more official and serious than the 1mile we thought we were going to die doing in P.E. class in JHS in Fort Dodge. It makes me laugh thinking that Japanese students are trained from Elementary School to ALL be able to run multiple miles and American students balk at running one mile. I know I did when I was in JHS! Of course not all Japanese students are necessarily good or fast at running the ekiden. I think some of the slower times were between 30+ minutes to finish, but still. The fastest boy and girl finished with times between 14-15.30minutes. I know from personal experience that I can finish 1mile walking in that amount of time. :-)
And while I'm at it, I might as well mention that one of my 3rd grade (8th grade) students got 5th place at a county English Speech Contest. They gave honors to the top 6 students, so 5th place is nothing to sneeze at. She's great at English considering she's only 15 and has only been studying English for 3 years. It was a lot of fun to help her prep for the contest, especially being able to talk to her in English and have her understand AND respond without having a Japanese English teacher around!
(Saeka = 2nd from the left)
Below: Mr. Fukushima (Tokichu English Teacher), me, Saeka, Mayu (Tamachu student; from my other JHS), Geoff, the new 'other' ALT in my town, Mr. Yagihashi (Tamachu English teacher)
If you can't tell, I've been totally sucked in and can't help being proud of the students. :-)
Today there was a county sort-of cross-country tournament for 3rd graders for what they call the "ekiden." The boys run 4.2km and the girls run 3.5km. Our team got 3rd place and are going to the prefectural meet. I didn't get a chance to ask anyone in English about individual placement, but I gathered from conversations held in Japanese that at least one of the boys might have placed individually. He won the school "marathon" (ekiden) last month, so it wouldn't surprise me. He's not even on the track team...he's a baseball player. Go figure!
Top: Tokichu boys starting the school's marathon run.
Bottom: Tokichu girls school marathon.
That's right, I said 'the school marathon.' I'm gonna toss this in here too, because it blows my American-public school-educated mind. There's no way this would fly at a public school in the U.S. While P.E. classes are used to help the students train for the race, the ekiden is completely independent of P.E. class. It's a race held once a year and ALL the students participate. On the day of the race, the students go to 1st period class as normal, the ekiden takes place over the course of 2nd, 3rd and 4th periods, the students have lunch, then finish up the afternoon with the normally scheduled 5th and 6th periods, plus the daily all-school cleaning. As I mentioned before, the boys run 4.2km and the girls run 3.5km. They have a course mapped out along the streets around the school. It seems so much more official and serious than the 1mile we thought we were going to die doing in P.E. class in JHS in Fort Dodge. It makes me laugh thinking that Japanese students are trained from Elementary School to ALL be able to run multiple miles and American students balk at running one mile. I know I did when I was in JHS! Of course not all Japanese students are necessarily good or fast at running the ekiden. I think some of the slower times were between 30+ minutes to finish, but still. The fastest boy and girl finished with times between 14-15.30minutes. I know from personal experience that I can finish 1mile walking in that amount of time. :-)
And while I'm at it, I might as well mention that one of my 3rd grade (8th grade) students got 5th place at a county English Speech Contest. They gave honors to the top 6 students, so 5th place is nothing to sneeze at. She's great at English considering she's only 15 and has only been studying English for 3 years. It was a lot of fun to help her prep for the contest, especially being able to talk to her in English and have her understand AND respond without having a Japanese English teacher around!
(Saeka = 2nd from the left)
Below: Mr. Fukushima (Tokichu English Teacher), me, Saeka, Mayu (Tamachu student; from my other JHS), Geoff, the new 'other' ALT in my town, Mr. Yagihashi (Tamachu English teacher)
If you can't tell, I've been totally sucked in and can't help being proud of the students. :-)
posted by Mandy | 7:54 PM
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