Gunma Games!

Gunma Games today! This is an annual event run by the GAJET group (an official group linked to JET that plans events for Gunma JETs and the community) and has JETs from all over Gunma prefecture coming to attend! We get split into our regional teams and compete in games with each other.

Woke up at 9:00am today but slept in till 10:00am before waking up properly and having a banana and メロンパン for breakfast! Set off at 11:00am on my bicycle to the fields where the games were being held, and arrived at 11:45am for the opening ceremony at 12:00!

The Games started off with everyone doing radio exercises – this is something that is commonly done at schools and companies in Japan in the morning. After that it was a round of 4 games, each being run simultaneously, so we chose people who would participate in each of them first. There was folding the paper crane (and then fanning it across the field), a relay race, cabbage bowling, and cabbage toss! I didn’t participate in any of these events since I wasn’t feeling too well, so I just watched and cheered from the sidelines most of the day. Our team won the cabbage bowling and cabbage toss! Lost the relay (one of our guys fell over twice!) and the paper crane. It was all really fun though and everyone had great spirit! It was also really hot and sunny so we were constantly standing under the trees for shade and drinking a lot of water and reapplying sunscreen.

The next round of games was the classic balloon stomping one, where we tied balloons around our ankles and had to pop our opponents’ ones. This game ended up quite hilariously because everyone’s balloons just popped on the grass without anyone have to really do anything! It was still a great match till the end – people were really competitive! We then stopped for a quick lunch break here. Some of us cycled to the nearest supermarket to grab some food and more cold drinks. After the lunch break it was a water game, where we had to use sponges to carry as much water as we could to our team’s bucket. I found it really cute how seriously the organisers took these games, because instead of just judging who had the more water by looking, they actually brought those suitcase weighing things to weigh each bucket! After a sudden death match between us and Chubu, we ended up winning this game!

Next was a short trivia game where the first team to get 5 points wins. Most of the questions were about Gunma prefecture, starting off easy (What is the name of Gunma’s mascot?) and then getting harder (Name the 5 neighboring prefectures to Gunma). The final and best game of the day – Ultimate Cabbage! Basically like Ultimate Frisbee or netball but instead of a Frisbee/netball, you’re throwing around a cabbage (wrapped and tied up in a bag/cloth of course)! This was the only event of the day that I participated in, and it was a lot of fun! We discovered our team’s ultimate combo by having our tallest person (194cm!) be the goalie (the person in charge of holding the basket to catch the cabbage) and our team members lobbing the cabbage high for him to catch – super effective combo. We only came 3rd in the end though, but a lot of fun all around!

After the day ended, we headed straight to the Beer Garden on the rooftop of Takashimaya, and had an enjoyable time drinking and eating! I love how their 飲み放題 always has a large selection of non-alcoholic drinks available. Another ALT and I left a bit early (20:00) to go see the lantern festival at Kannonyama. We went in the her car and had a bit of a drive around and up and down the mountain before we successfully arrived at the parking lot. The lanterns/candles were very pretty and there were so many of them! We walked the whole park, all the way to the statue of Kannon. Unfortunately it was too late to climb up the statue, but we still had a great time taking photos/videos of the candles, and the night view of Takasaki from atop the mountain was actually really nice!