Japan Is Doomed

Every year, all the first year and second year juniors (13~14 year olds) run a mini marathon to raise funds for charity. The boys run an 8km race, and the girls run 6km. This year, we chose Refugees International Japan and asked the students from everywhere in the school, plus other teachers, friends and so on to sponsor us to wake up at 6.30am and run alot.

For me, the waking up at 6.30am was much worse than the run itself. The run was to start not at school, but at the other campus about twenty minutes walk away. This of course meant we, as volunteer teachers, should stand on a freezing cold bridge and welcome the ten students who are daft enough to walk instead of taking the train like normal people. Still after standing around, the entirity of the rest of the day felt a lot warmer.

All the students were gathered together in the large soccer field (notice I say soccer, as a lot of Americans read this blog and they think football has to do with dressing up in a large box) for stretches, and a few speeches from the staff. For the rest of this update please count how many times I mention speeches. Trust me.

Once the stretching was done it was time to walk down to the start line. Off we trotted, all three hundred or so of us, to the start of the race. The track was 4km down the side of the Arakawa River, a short stop to get a line of green felt tip pen on your hand as a badge of success, then another 4km back to the finish line. Before we started it was time for another couple of speeches (keeping count?), and two laps around a tiny field as a warmup.

In case you are wondering, the four of us running for charity (left to right; Barney, Matt, Myself & Nakahara Sensei) were not incredibly angry, this photos were just taken with the sun behind the cameraman.

Then, at about twenty to nine, we were off! I had set myself the challenge of running a strong race, so I wasted no time in overtaking the majority of the students. It was interesting to hear “Ooh!” and “Aah!” and “Mike Sensei!” being gasped as I passed, before dropping in behind a group of students in about 10th place.

I feel now I should explain about the eventual winner of the race. He finished the race about 10 minutes before anyone else, never had any competition, and is one of the best long distance runners at his age group in the entirity of Tokyo. So for the rest of this update I am going to pretend he doesn’t exist.

I came in at a respectable 37.06, in seventeenth place. Matt and Barney came in at exactly 45 minutes, but the winner of the teachers was by far Nakahara-sensei, who I think was toying with me a little by just staying ahead of me until the last half kilometer, at which point he taught me exactly what running is all about by forcing to watch him disappear into the horizon. A true lesson in pain. We were then taken back to the school and about thirty speeches were made by various staff members and students.

Anyway, I’m going to disappear for the night now. I have two more updates coming up very shortly. The first is about the school speech contest, although I am waiting on photos to appear before I write that one, and the other is about my trip to Yokohama today for Chinese New Year. I actually had the speech contest before this run but chronology is for losers and history textbooks. Oh, and we finished with a short speech.