Sports Festival
Oct 09, 2012 (Tue.)
The fall semester sports festival took place on Saturday September 22nd. Both local and international exchange students at Kansai Gaidai joined hands to strive for victory in the various exciting sporting events, organized by the student staff of the Center of International Education.
After the team leaders signed a pledge for fair play, the blue, red, yellow, green and last but certainly not least pink teams started by doing traditional Japanese Rajio Taisou, morning aerobics to loosen up their muscles. After that, the games officially started.
The first sporting event was the Shippo tori (taking tails) and the objective was to steal other people’s ‘tails’ in order to get points within 2 minutes. The hot weather did not stop the students from giving their all madly chasing each other all over the athletic field. In the third game, the special staff team also participated, with their tails being worth 10 points, and they had to admit complete defeat.
The second sports event was the extremely amusing Daruma san ga koronda, a game difficult at first but once understood amusing and funny. After hearing the words “Daruma san ga koronda!” the students had to pose according to a theme, varying from a seductive model pose to a cool Spiderman, a nice sight to behold.
The next game, obstacle dash, proved to be a challenge in more than one way. One of the obstacles was a pair of plates and the students had to use chopsticks to move a couple of beans from one plate to another plate, way harder than it looks.
The fourth game Tama-ire, a tossing ball into a moving basket type game, got really serious because it was the penultimate game and the stakes were high. The green team took the lead after this fierce battle of baskets and balls.
Last game was the surprisingly difficult long-rope jumping. Each team still had a chance to win at this time and the pink team obtained a glorious victory by jumping seemingly countless times. After that the most valuable players on each team were chosen and the scores announced.
One of the participants observed: “Overall it was a nice and hot day. I was able to make a lot of new friends and even though my team did not win, I am really proud of everyone”. Fitting words to summarize a successful and enjoyable day.