国士舘大学新体操部

■Expedition to Finland 2018: Day Five

Today we are finally going to perform and give a workshop at the “Turku Gymnaestrada.”

We left the hotel in the morning to get to the venue in plenty of time for the show, which was supposed to start at 11:20 a.m. As soon as we arrived, we started negotiating to secure enough time for practice since we did not have a precise timetable for the day. Time given for our practice onstage was only 10 minutes, which was enough to check that everything was OK before the actual performance. The show started at 10:00 a.m. and the order of our performance was 4^th. When the show started, there was only a sparse audience at first, but people started trickling in little by little and the seats in front were almost full by the time we started our performance.

Our performance consisted of a combination of three routines: a group routine of 6 gymnasts, an individual performance and another group routine using a long jumprope. There was no time for the gymnasts to rest between routines. They did a very good job although it must have been physically demanding on them. Right after their performance, we were interviewed by the biggest newspaper in Finland. We could directly feel that so many people in Finland are interested to get to know Japanese Men’s RG.

After the interview, we headed for the workshop venue (the workshop was supposed to start at 13:30). It took time to set up my PC, which at first did not cooperate with the projector, but somehow I managed to finish preparing for the workshop. Many coaches and gymnasts from various kinds of gymnastics including artistic, general and rhythmic gymnastics participated in this workshop. They were listening eagerly to my explanation about the history, appeal and training methods of Men’s RG. I felt relieved that the two-hour workshop ended successfully.

After the workshop, we came back to the main arena and practiced for the Gala performance. We were getting used to the stage after the morning performance and started feeling quite comfortable. Rehearsals went smoothly for tomorrow.

We had such a long day, but that’s it for today! We will have another workshop and the Gala performance tomorrow. We will give our best effort tomorrow since it will be the grand finale of this expedition to Finland!