Week 2 (open): The Hardest Summer I've Ever Experienced

My summer vacation when I was a high school student was really hard.

I went to a high school in Fukuoka, and we had a very grand sports festival.

I belonged to "oendan". And I had to practice a lot for it.

oendan at a sport festival.

Why I belonged to oendan

To tell the truth, I really did not want to join it. It looked strange, hard, crazy....but about 10 students had to join it because it was a traditional club at my high school. Unfortunately, I was the one of them.


The extremely hard practice in summer

As you can see, our costume was "gakuran".

Male students wear it in WINTTER. But, I wore it in SUMMER. How crazy it was!

Some people say that gakuran is cool, or something. I'm sure that they only know the handsome boys in gakuran. (like the picture below) For me, gakurain is one of the terrible clothes.

i don't know who he is...

What I did for practice was....yelling, making very loud voice, some performance.　The video below is one of it.

I did that kind of things for 5hours or so almost every day under the sun.

What happened when I did that in gakuran?

Of course, it was really uncomfortable, smelled of sweat, extremely hot...

Fortunately, I never lost my consciousness. But I often felt bad.

And, what I really hated was that we must not wear shoes. 

We were always on asphalt. Have you ever touched asphalt in the summer? It is really really hot.

I had to stand on that. I was like a bacon on a ｆrying pan. 

After the sports festival

I was not lazy student, I guess(hope). So I joined almost all of the practice. 

I was really nerves on the performance on the sports festival. But what I had to do was what I did on practice. With my friends, I enjoyed it every year.

Since the practice was really hard, I cried a little every year after the sports festival. When I was 1st and 2nd grade student, I felt like "ah, I made it", and cried a little. But at 3rd grade, I cried because I knew I would never have this great experience, including the practice. I actually really hated the practice, though. 

What I think now 

As I said, I really didn't like the practice because it was really hard and I lacked physical strength (still now). But now, I have to admit that I really missed the practice in the summer.

Some friends who were better at sports than me often worried about me. I worried about some friends who were not so strong physically. We all helped each other. 

I often say "I don't wanna practice anymore." or "I wanna go home." with my friends. But I was there because my friends were there.

What I thought was crazy is now one of my good memories.

What I learned and what I will do

I learned that I have to keep learning, studying, practicing....even if it seems meaningless.

I have many things that I don' like. Or there are many things that look meaningless to me.

For example, I don't like studying English, or using English. This is just because I am poor at it. My current life is kinda satisfied. I am really into anime/manga or video games, and I do not need to use English for them. Probably I don't know why I study English now.

But, now I learned important things from my hard summer. 

What I don't want to do is not what I don't need to do.

I have to keep studying English, studying other things, practicing Japanese sword(one of my hobby), the piano.

Maybe, I will not be good at English, nor the piano...but I'm sure I will get something important, like perseverance or patience or self-confidence. 

(But I'm not a superman or anyone, so I have to choose what I have to do first.)

(And I am very permissive on myself, so it will be difficult for me to do what I actually don't want to and to stop playing video games or watching anime too much for it.)

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Now, the experience in the summer is one of my best memories.