Ekiden

The first image of this topic "Sports in Japan" was long-distance relay road race(Ekiden 駅伝) because I belonged to track and field team when I was a junior high and high school student, so I think I am more familiar with this theme not a little than any other students. However, my main event was not the long distance, but I had the experience of it. Therefore, I tried to focus on this theme.

Do you remember the movie "Kokoyakyu" that we watched last class? I think both "Kokoyakyu" and "Ekiden" have some similarities. In Kokoyakyu, baseball players in high school aim to take part in the special tournament in "Koshien"(甲子園）. Every player has the dream that they want to join this tournament and play in Koshien studium. Likewise, "Ekiden" has the similarity like "Kokoyakyu" explanation. Similar point is that runners for college students drive for participating in "Hakone Ekiden" (箱根駅伝） that is one of the very famous meetings. The final goal of baseball players in high school is Koshien and that of runners in college is Hokone Ekiden.

Next, I try to explain Ekiden itself easily.

Road relay is the event that some runners run with a form of relay, and are competed by time and speed. Each runner hands the sash that was handed by previous runner to the next runner. The team that has big delay from top team has to start with a spare sash because of using public road, although previous runner does not come to hand the sash. The distance that each of runners, total distance, and the number of section depend on each event. Runners run 42,195km with 6 sections(5km, 10km, 5km, 10km, 5km, 7,195km) in the criterion of international race defined by International Track and Field League.(The information is quoted from Wikipedia)