Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

uch of this week has been taken up with practises for the Junior High School Sports Festival on Sunday. In amongst my pathetic attempts at the 100 metre sprint, trying to do some weird overly complicated dance that the 3rd years had made up, and the hilariously unfunny 36 C mid-day heat that we were practising in, I seem to have forgotten quite a lot of what happened. One small thing stuck in my mind though.

The students had to practise the part of the sports festival where they make shapes using each others’ bodies, such as fans, pyramids and the like. Obviously, this entails some body/ground contact. Thus, one of the teachers thought that it would make sense to force the boys to take their shirts off, to save them from making their clothes too dirty. This had a nuance of logic to it, so my mind relaxed and allowed this reality to continue.

The same teacher then thought it would be an excellent idea to spray water all over the ground, creating a nightmarish bog-like marshland of terror, his reasoning being that “it would stop the dust from blowing”. Now, cultural differences aside, I know a masochistic cackle when I hear one, and when coupled with his maniacal wide-eyed grin as he pranced around the sports field spreading his liquid horror, my fragile sense of calm was disturbed.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 14th, 2002 at 2:02 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.