The "Beach Opening" Ceremony

This weekend was the official prefectural 'opening of the waters' to swimming for the summer. Aka and Geruma families came over for the day-long event at Ama beach on the west side of Zamami. The morning consisted of some droning old people singing and beating on a drum, then the requisite speeches, then eisa, then hula, then the showcase event: little kids chasing [mostly] live fish around an excavator-built pool.

Keiko-sensei prepping ichi-nensei (first grade) for their time in the pool.

Kindergartners go first, then 1/2 grade, 3/4, and 5/6. They keep dumping hundreds more live fish in as the event goes along. I was rather surprised at how tenacious and successful the kids (of both genders) were.

In the afternoon the students played games made for the beach, such as this awesome twist on tug of war. There are 5 ropes and about 20 members of each team. The first team to get three ropes back across their starting line wins. Usually one or two ropes were snatched up immediately, but the remaining three wars saw members continuously jostling between ropes trying to ally their strengths and give up hopeless battles.

I turned around once and saw this nice scene.