Health and Sports Day

Yesterday was Health and Sports Day, a national holiday in Japan. It was created to commemorate the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and is now held on the second Monday in October each year. There are always lots of sports and physical-activity oriented events, including school sports days, and yesterday morning K and H went to a city-organised event for children aged 3 to 6.

Various activities were set up in the city gym and the children and their parents, in groups, spent 10 minutes on each thing, with lots of adult volunteers there to help hold little hands...


The little boy getting onto the balance beam behind K is Rensei, who was there with his daddy Tomonori, one of H's old school friends. I met Tomonori independently, before I was going out with H, and I later (independently) met Ritsuko, who went on to become his wife. Rensei is just 3 months older than K and now we each have a second little boy, only 2 months apart! There seems to be a certain amount of fate in the 2 families' relationship; maybe we were all destined to be friends...


Anyway, back to the gym...

There was trampolining, rolling on mats and skipping; hula hoops, hopscotch and action songs; various jumping, balancing and ball games...

...and finally, tug-of-war. No sports day in Japan is complete without this one!

Well done boys, you worked hard!

H and K left home at about 8.30 and went for sushi afterwards, getting back here just after 1 o'clock. I stayed home with T and was paralysed with indecision about what to do with the free time! First I took T out into the garden and did some weeding for a while. Then he fell asleep (while I was preparing his morning food...) so I snuck upstairs and tided up my little room (it always seems overly grand to call it an 'office' or 'studio'). There was even time to sit in the engawa with a cup of tea and a magazine before he woke up again. Overall it was both a relaxing and productive morning, my favourite combination.

It did set me thinking though... What did I do with my time when K was a little baby? Unlike now, I didn't have a blog, Facebook account or online shop (recently restocked!), I was only teaching one class a week (admittedly, only 2 at the moment now) and, oh, I didn't have a 3 year old running around, demanding attention and waking up sleeping babies... And yet somehow I felt busy then too. I suppose it's that old thing of work expanding to fit the time available...