Professor Layton and the Case of the Mystery Bento

Given what happened on Tuesday night, I thought, surely, that the Pumpkin saga would be the most surreal thing to happen to me this week.

Alas…

Saturday saw the arrival of the junior high school’s sports festival, or taiikusai, an event that the students have been preparing hard for over the past few months: chanting in the corridors, dancing in the gymnasium, and designing giant kanji and accompanying ‘heroes’ to represent their team.

‘It’s 500 yen for the bento (lunch) today if that’s okay?’ asked my supervisor. I riffled through the shrapnel in my wallet. In the distance, I hear the muffled sounds of the school’s brass band warming up.

There were 6 teams taking part in the event, and I’d been assigned the purple team, for which, I was to wear a strip of purple cloth as a necktie.

A Japanese Sports day is probably something few foreigners will ever see, and my God! What a spectacle!

Within a sea of white tops and bright, blue shorts, the opening ceremony had torches and fire and thumping trombones and a relay lap around the brown gravelled sports field; dressed in silk capes, leading members of each of the teams, a boy and girl, completed half a lap each, stopping halfway to pass the flame, but alas, it was the boys who finished the lap, bowing with the flame in front of kouchou sensei (the headmaster), before lighting the schools very own olympic cauldron.

A speech is then made by the headmaster: let the games, begin!

Now, dear reader, do you remember the bento I paid for earlier?

Being the vampire that I am, I cowered underneath my team’s canopy, and stood within a small strip of shade, to escape the 30+ degree heat, all the while, the 70 strong troupe of purple, bandana clad students, were sat in the baking heat.

‘Adam-sensei?’ said an approaching woman, with a small black package in her hands.

‘Yes!’ I said with a nod of my head.

‘Something…something…Bento…something…arigato gozaimashita’ she said, pushing into my head a cooler bag, before walking off.

Fantastic, I thought, 500 yen, and my lunch has been delivered to me, yet again, another fine example of Japanese kindheartedness.

Soon after, I asked my colleague, of the yellow team, about her lunch delivery, yet, her’s hadn’t been brought out yet.

‘It’s pretty heavy- so I guess it’s for both of us?’

I put this to the back of my mind, and turn toward the competing students, to take in a series of sporting events that I could never have conceived; it’s more akin to a scene out of Mad Max, with the great wafts of dusts kicked up towards familial onlookers: games involving columns of energetic students charging around with inflatable sharks, and giant balls being carried on their backs; another where a column of seventy students is formed, the aim being to get a small student, in a white helmet, across a 50m stretch, without them touching the group, whereby, he can only walk on their shoulders and upper backs.

Mesmerised, and a tad burnt, we head in for lunch.

And there’s a ‘7/11 bento box’ on my desk.

‘What the hell is this then?’ I say to Davinia Sensei, unwrapping the rubber band, and opening the black bag, to find 3 onigiri, and a ‘Pokemon box’ stuffed with two sausages, skwered by a cocktail stick, two meat patties, and a slice of corn on the cob.

We both burst out laughing.

‘Poison?’ my supervisor quips as I explain to him the predicament.

Someone, somewhere, has gone to great pains to not only design this lunch for me, but then have a member of the public deliver it to me, at work, during an event.

I didn’t think to ask the courier from whom had sent it , given I’d paid for a bento.

However, though not intentional, I do know a disproportionate amount of old women here in Joetsu City.

My current working theory is that the secreatary of the Tai Chi club I’m apart of, and whom I see on passing on a Wednesday evening after Aikido, is the prime culprit- she has been very kind to me, giving me a lift to my first ever session of Tai Chi, before taking me to meet and great her ‘budo wielding family’, over slices of watermelon.

I distinctly rember her saying on Wednesday:

‘Endou kai ni do yobi?’ or, ‘Sports day on Saturday?’

If anyone at Nintendo wants to get in touch, feel free!

After laughing our way through lunch, the events continue.

Underneath the cirrus strips, and the sounds of the occasional passing train, two of the most incredible, and suprisingly brutal, games arise:

The hat game– boys only- three boys hoist a fourth boy onto their shoulders, with onlookers forming a gladitorial arena; carnage and dust clouds ensue, as the aloft member has to snatch away the ‘hat’ from the member of an opposing team.

The tyre game– girls only- simple premise: a few dozen strong heap of tyres are placed at the centre of the sports field. The team with the most tyres wins. Get the tyres by any means necessary, and I mean, any means necessary.

Throughout the day, the point scores of each of the six teams have been updated along on the second floor corridor of the three story building, and on entering the closing ceremony, the numbers on white placards dissappear.

Only the beating hearts of the students can be heard.

One by one, six teachers, sat under the long windowsill, produce the final scores: in turn, as each team’s score is revealed, the students produce the same amount of sound, regardless of their finishing position.

And herein lies something I really, really like about Japanese Sports day.

Back in the UK, except for the sports day being a complete farce and chance to lark about for a day, students here do not just give all of their spirit to the event, but also, none of the events are individual pursuits. It’s not about the best runner, the best jumper, it’s about the best team- moreover, the phrase ‘it’s the taking part that counts‘, has never been more applicable.

And to round off the day, students formed a huge circle, in birthday order, were given a balloon each to blow up, but not tie, and let soar them into the summer sky.

Sports day, was without a doubt, the most organised fun I’ve ever been a part of… though perhaps, bizarely, the most memorable moment being the Curious Care of the Mystery Bento.