Well, I figured if I am going to resume blogging it might as well be with the biggest sporting event of the year. Yes, it was the 2016 Mizumoto Elementary School's sports day. An occasion that puts the Olympics, the Euro Championships, Ireland's tour of South Africa, and the GAA Championship in the collective shade (though the beating Tipp handed out to Cork in the football had us sitting up and taking note).
And what a sporting spectacular we had. Matched in its athletic grandiosity only by the blue skied magnificence of the weather. Which lasted until Saturday evening. Since Sunday we have had constant torrential rain everyday, all day. Cian and myself have taken to going to school/work in the morning in our surfing wetsuits.
But I digress.
Things kicked off with the usual bloodcurling calls to battle from the hoarse throated leaders of the Red and White teams. Which were met with clenched fist power salutes reminiscent of Tommie and John at the 1968 Olympics.
Then we had the 80m sprint.
Yes, that screaming streak of black and amber on the outside is indeed Cian in a Kilkenny jersey.
Silver. The gold was won by that poor lad who was clearly off his brown-eyed head on a potent cocktail of methamphetamines, cocaine, angel dust, anabolic steroids, EPO, and curry powder. Though to be honest if you look at the size of him he could have used a spoonful or two of growth hormones in the cocktail too.
Mind you this shameful display of rampant drug abuse was roundly ignored by the assembled VIPs. One of whom, in the photo below, is the school principal. Can you guess which one?
Next, was the tug of war. Last year the Red team had suffered two straight losses to the White team and as Cian summed it up, Red team were collectively "Mad as hell and not going to take it anymore"!
Suitably enraged, they made it two tugs in a row (?) and left the White team face down in the dust.
Then it was Mammy's turn. As a sort of light relief from the otherwise unremitting tension of the epic battle between Red and White, the school PTA organize a parent's tug of war. Sanae decided to participate and lined up with the only other hobbit present at the Undokai.
Unsurprisingly they lost.
Both the tug of war and their dignity.
Then it was time for lunch, under a tent as the sun had reached its zenith and the temperature had climbed into the mid twenties. Plus, the relay, the day's premier event, was yet to come and we didn't want Cian suffering from heat stroke before hand.
After lunch there was a burst of frenetic dancing to ensure that all the food was digested.
There were a couple of other events involving plastic tape and running aimlessly around but the heat and food had got the better of me by that stage and I kind of drifted off into a prolonged daydream about Galway beating Mayo in the Football Championship.
Just a daydream, though. Sigh.
Finally we came to the relay, the gold standard of modern day athletics. The victors would be walking tall for a year, basking in the glory, a burnished cloud of awed respect following them around wherever the went.
And the losers? Well, over there in the shadowy, cobwebbed corner they'll find the dustbin of history...
I would like to write that it was an unbearably close race that went all the way down the long final straight to the finish line, but in truth by the end of the second leg it was all over as a contest. The Red Team, in their collective gazelle like brilliance, quickly took an insurmountable lead and literally ran away with it as a contest. Indeed, before they even got to their anchor some people had begun packing up and making their way to the exits to beat the traffic.
So, yes the Red Team took home the prize for the first time in three (long) years but you've probably read all about it in the sport's pages.
