TAIIKU NO HI (Sports Day)

Sports Day is a national holiday in Japan. With Sydney attending Japanese Yochen or kindergarden we get to attend a Sports Day event and take part in the festivities. I will have many pictures and videos to follow once the day arrives tomorrow and if this very pregnant mom survives the day outside, pray for cool weather and clouds. October 10th was the opening day of the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. In order to commemorate this first Olympic games held on Asian soil, October 10th became a National holiday. The Olympics helped speeding up with Japanese infrastructure. Preparing for this event, Shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka was put into construction four years prior to the event. It was first serviced on October 1st, 1964. Traditionally, Japanese schools and business, as well as towns and villages hold sports day, in fall and spring. Events such as, big ball relay, tug of war, beanbag toss, three legged race, running relay races are popular programs. I wanted to give you all a little background about this holiday since I did some research myself this week so that I knew what we where celebrating on Saturday. Sydney has been preparing at school all week. She had an extra day of school and was 30 minutes late getting home one day because they where busy preparing. It should be a fun day. Sydney and I will be taking our friend Miss Robin along with us because Daddy is in San Francisco for a ADA conference. We miss him but will get lots of pictures for him. More to come tomorrow!