I was teaching at Okabe Junior High during Sports Day season (September), and every P.E. class for several weeks beforehand was dedicated to practicing Sports Day events. The whole week before the big day—which was Saturday, September 12—classes were cancelled all afternoon and students were sent outside straight from lunch, to work on their teamwork skills and strategies for each competition. I spent my afternoons out there with them on the dirt field, clapping in rhythm and counting "1, 2, 1, 2!" to try and keep them upright during the three-legged race rehearsals. I also made a stellar marking post when teams were practicing jogging in formation and there weren't enough orange plastic cones to go around.
On the 12th, the sky was dull and sprinkles fell throughout the morning. Nevertheless, opening ceremonies commenced with a full-school march onto the field, the flag raising, the National Anthem, and several speeches of encouragement from the school principal, the president of the PTA, and the leaders of each of the teams the student body was divided into: red, blue, and yellow.
The competition commenced with a zillion different track events: sprints, distance running, and various relays. Hands down, the best part of this portion was that the music teacher had created a soundtrack for the races (lots of peppy marches and battle tunes—think "William Tell Overture"); the switch to the sound system was flipped on at every crack of the starting gun and faded out with every cross of the finish line. Along with the background music, some ridiculously cute students were giving race commentary along the way: So-and-so's in first! He/she sure is fast! Good luck, so-and-so who's falling behind!
After relays came the team events, where homerooms competed against each other in the three-legged race (except an entire homeroom of about 30 students was tied together instead of just a pair of students...so many twisted ankles, scraped knees, and ripped track pants during practice for this), and the group jump rope.
After lunch, spectating parents were incorporated into a couple events, including a game where teams had to try and sink as many bean bags as possible into a basket, raised high on a bamboo pole, in a given amount of time.
I didn't quite understand the scoring system, but there was a nail-biting lead-up to the final score display (a drum roll and cymbal crash with the posting of each digit), and the red team came out on top. Made sense since their team had a whole extra homeroom (yeah, I was rooting for yellow)...
And then it was time to go home and enjoy the weekend, including the following Monday off to make up for having to go to school on a Saturday. Nice.
I was glad to be a smaller, laid-back school for this occasion, since I've heard Sports Day competitions at other schools can be ultra-serious: months of training, drilling, honing team cheers...and lots of tears from those who don't win on the big day. It might have been cool to see some of the more elaborate contests larger schools include, but I'm all for seeing everyone still smiling on the way home.
As our ferry approached the island, the dreary weather lent a mysterious air to the steep green mountain’s temple- and shrine-bedecked foothills. Miyajima, the summit of which is Mt. Misen, carries a long history of being worshipped as a divine island.
The area near the ferry terminal is a bit less historically-oriented, however. We passed food and souvenir shop after shop, briefly dropping into Hello Kitty Miyajima before resuming our search for a certain oversized kitchen implement.
I should note that this island is also home to a seemingly rampant population of tame deer. Everywhere we walked, they were hanging out, eating maps, snatching food from visitors. Despite the warning signs, this lady fed a deer and of course it then followed her everywhere, nudging for more—she was so mad. And deserving.
We left the winding shop-lined streets and scavenging animals for the wooded hillside and the temple Senjo-kaku, constructed in 1587 as a space for the monthly chanting of Buddhist sutras in order to console the souls of the dead. It’s huge (over 1,300 square meters), and otherwise known as the Hall of 1,000 Tatami Mats. The neighboring five-storied pagoda was built in 1407.
Large paintings inspired by the temple’s natural surroundings were displayed in the rafters of the hall, and visitors wandered, stopped to write prayers and wishes on small wooden spatulas, and sat safe from the sprinkles and gazed out over our next stop below—the Itsukushima Shrine.
Built out over the water—at least when the tide is high—is a group of colorful buildings, first constructed in 593 and connected by a series of boardwalks. The famous Torii gate seems to float in the sea, except during low tide when the water recedes and visitors can walk around the sandy inlet and out to the gate.
Loving the Third Best View...
Lastly, we walked the decorated grounds of Daisho-in, a Shingon temple named for Kobo Daishi, who established the island as a holy site and lit a fire, said to have been burning for 1,200 years, on the mountain’s summit.
Back in Hiroshima, we ate Thai and visited an Irish pub chockfull of Australian military personnel; we also ran into a group of three former English teachers in the process of cycling the length of Japan, from Hokkaido to Okinawa.
Our final day in the city was spent between two museums: the Hiroshima Museum of Art (focusing mainly on French masters) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (showing a great photography exhibit by Tsuyoshi Ozawa, in which he met with women in different cities around the world and in each place, asked the woman for a local recipe, bought all the ingredients for the recipe, assembled them into a gun, photographed the woman wielding the vegetable weapon, then disassembled the gun and cooked and enjoyed the meal with the woman and company). We caught a good view of the city from a hill on the southeast side of town, then it was back to the station and back to Shizuoka.
The U.S. Military’s target was a T-shaped bridge in downtown Hiroshima, and at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the atomic bomb detonated just 240m south of that landmark, and 580m above the city. The T-shaped bridge (on the left in the photo above) led onto a large island in the city center once packed with office buildings, shops, homes, a hospital, schools. The northern portion of this island is now Peace Memorial Park, a mix of museums, monuments, and welcoming green space. 
The Peace Memorial Museum displayed before-and-after photos of the city and of people’s injuries, as well as many artifacts attesting to the incomprehensible strength and heat of the blast: burned school uniforms, charred lunchboxes, and singed hair from junior high and high school students who had been mobilized to help tear down houses to create firebreaks in various parts of the city—from nearer the epicenter: melted glass, glass shards lodged in a cement wall, a bent iron gate, and a crinkled iron and cement bridge support. Other displays included U.S. Military memos and video footage from the plane that flew alongside the Enola Gay, scientific explanations of how atomic bombs are created, charts noting the countries currently possessing or developing nuclear weapons, and denouncements to those countries from Hiroshima’s mayor. Out in the atrium, a clock displays the number of days since the Hiroshima bombing and since the last nuclear explosion on Earth.
The Peace Memorial Hall offered drawings and vivid personal narratives from children who survived the bomb—many having seen siblings and friends suffer and die, or having family members missing altogether. The fountain outside centerpieces 8:15, when watches stopped.
Beneath the arch is a vault containing the official register of the dead.
In another part of the park stands the Children’s Peace Memorial, not only for the children killed by the blast, but also for those who suffered long-term effects from the radiation—many developing leukemia and passing years later.
Millions of paper cranes are delivered to this monument each year as symbols of peace. This tradition began with a Japanese girl, Sadako Sasaki, who was exposed to the bomb's radiation at two years old, then diagnosed with leukemia at age 11. She set a goal for herself of folding 1,000 cranes, folding into each one her wish to get better. Sadako met her goal, but nevertheless passed away in 1955; her idea of folding cranes for hope and peace has since spread worldwide. 
And at the southern border of the park, a row of arches repeats “peace” in 49 languages.
Our afternoon was far lighter—a walk to Hiroshima Castle (known as “Carp Castle”), then a streetcar to our hostel, then a walk to Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium, where we hoped to see the night game between the Hiroshima Carp and Yakult Swallows.
After waiting in line to find the game was sold out, we sat of the grass outside the stadium and pitied ourselves for a bit before going to get Indian food and walk around the shopping arcades and monuments at night. 
The next day, a visit to the gorgeous island of Miyajima...
Since returning, the only visible damage I've encountered is the collapsed castle wall at Sumpu Park in downtown Shizuoka. And that in our apartment, three pieces of china are no longer with us.
Some of the teachers at my schools complained of having to spend summer vacation fixing damage to their homes, but overall, only around 100 people were injured in the event; only one person was killed. I hear a lot about readyness training. I hear Japan's structures are built for seismic activity. I hope the predictions for a far more serious quake are overblown (though I doubt it; very scary stuff).
The rest of Sumpu apparently survived unharmed: the castle and the teahouse surrounded by a manicured garden...
...which even includes tea bushes and a mini Mt. Fuji.
