Yesterday was one of those days when I was busy all day. As usual, class in the morning, but at 3:30 PM the whole Board of Education, including all schools, the library, kindergarten, etc. participated in a mini-volleyball tournament, or "Mini-Bolley" as it comes out in Japanese. Mini-volleyball in many ways is a game that can only be created from the Japanese mind. Just physical enough to warrant its own line of shoes, clothes, and nets, but easy and random enough to be considered fair for everyone. Teams are four people each. You can't use your feet or head. The net is roughly as high as a badmintion net and the ball is large, soft and slow. Later there was a tournement dinner where the winning team was chosen by Rock, Paper, Scissors. (See picture below.) All in good fun you see. Most of the teachers were in an exceptionally good mood because they got to leave work early. I knew nearly everyone there and was feeling overwhelmed because I wanted to talk to everyone. Kevin and I played on the Board of Education office teams (we had two teams of four). The refs were very strict, which was sometimes frustrating, but overall it was very fun.
It is popularly known in the West that work and play are closely linked in Japan. How this is reflected in daily life is interesting: One's social life is considerably influenced by many off-the-clock work commitments. One is forced - so to speak - to spend a lot of time at work and at play with the same people. My theory is that this develops stronger working relationships. Ask a Japanese and they will tell you it's just tradition and comfortably leave it at that. A secondary aim of the mini-volley tournaments is to re-enforce that the healthly active Japanese life-style I have talked about. I like both qualities (described above) of the Japanese workplace. Contrast this to most Western workplaces who will perhaps only have one party a year at Christmas.
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