Arm-wrestling in Japan?

Every day this month there has been time in the afternoon set aside as practice for the sports festival September 17. At first, teachers translated it as “sports day” and I thought of field day in Jr. High and High School back home. Translating it as “sports festival” makes much more sense. Saturday will be an all-day event. The girls have learned choreographed dances; the boys get in human pyramids, have mass games of “chicken” where they try to knock each other off each other’s shoulders; everyone is doing chants, and then there were all the regular group games typical of a field day.

The practices had been getting longer and longer everyday and there was actually one day last week set aside entirely for practice.

During sports festival practice Monday, a large crowd of boys gathered to try to learn some English, and I soon was speaking broken Japanese and learning and teaching new words. At some point in the hanging out, one of the boys said that another one was the strongest boy in school. One thing led to another and I found myself arm-wrestling one of my students. I am sure I am much stronger than he, but the Japanese are tricky at arm-wrestling. They throw (sometimes literally) their whole bodies into it. At first, I was going American style, by the book, but soon I had to imitate the body-leaning Japanese-style to beat him in not too much time.

After winning, I was faced with the second strongest kid. Then one of my English teachers went and found the third-strongest. He was a lefty but so am I, so it was no problem. Then they got the fattest kid which worried me for a moment, but he was the weakest of the four. I was totally exhausted at this point when my English teacher went and got one of the younger teachers for me to arm wrestle. He did the craziest full-body, angled-arm lean that beat me in 5 seconds. I asked to go again and lasted about 10 seconds the second time. I am sure he is a bit stronger than me, but it was all technique that allowed me to lose so quickly. I hope that was the last of arm-wrestling students. They were very impressed and said I was “very macho”. After I lost to the teacher, they said he was the strongest guy in school. I proposed I was the second strongest, but then they said Okuno-sensei was probably stronger (he is the omnipotent head gym teacher). I agreed and then asked if I was third strongest. We were sitting with the principal and they insisted he had to be in the top three, although I would never even think about arm-wrestling the principal. So I finally proposed I was the fourth strongest guy in school, and they laughed and seemed quite pleased at that.

Prior to Japan I have probably arm-wrestled only a few times in the past six years of my life. In the past six weeks I have already arm-wrestled eight people (five on Monday, two at a new JET party a few weeks ago, and one at karaoke two weekends ago). I am 7/8 which is a good start, although I was bigger than most of my opponents. I think I am going to get ripped at the gym and then become an arm-wrestling champion in Japan. The most important thing though is learning their crazy arm-twisting/body-leaning/ against-the-American-rules-technique.