Snapchat Saturday #1 - 駅伝 (10/19)

Snapshot Saturdays: Every Saturday I will be posting a photo of something I did that day, so that I can 
1) Keep track of the things that I do on weekends
2) motivate myself to keep busy since we only have 52 weekends throughout our year on the JET Program.

This Saturday, on October 17th, I participated in Aomori City's ekiden, the teams competing were made up of people that work for the city. There were 6 people on our team and there were about 12 kilometers to run in total. I ran first so I had to run 3 kilometers whereas everyone else ran 2 or 1 kilometer, but I managed to pull through without a lot of practice (I should've practiced much more than I did).

The race was held at Aomori Prefecture's Sports Park (JPN: 青森県総合運動公園) and the park was full of trees that were starting to change color.

The whole park was so beautiful. I've never seen this much open space designated as a sports park.
Until then, I had only seen dirt tracks, but this park had a well-paved track that part of the relay was held on. Not only that, but until that day we've been having super cold, rainy, overcast day so this was a real treat.

The race was in general really fun actually. Although I felt like I was going to collapse immediately after my 3k (showing how unfit I had become) I was able to talk with some other BoE workers (whose names I sadly didn't get / don't remember) and get to talk a bit more with the BoE workers that I had already met.

We didn't get first place, but we didn't get last place either. I got to keep the team number that we had to pin to ourselves, so I'll have that as memorabelia. Each team also got a prize for competing, even if they didn't place well. Turns out, out prize was just a box of 黒豆茶 (Black Bean Tea) which actually didn't taste that bad. Someone also handed out gifts individually for each of us, which ended up just being some type of Fabreeze-like spray, but the thought was nice.

All in all it was a good, warm day. After the race, I was supposed to go to my school's bunkasai (ENG: Culture Festival) but I didn't have enough time after eating lunch and showering. I also lost my keys for a quick 20 minutes, but it turns out it was in my supervisors car, who gave me a ride to the track.