がんばって!

One of the most stereotypical aspects of Japanese culture is the spirit of "がんばる" (ganbaru). It's basically the concept of always doing one's best/trying one's hardest. On the surface is sounds like a nice, respectable motto to base one's culture upon, but lately I've discovered a downside to this fighting attitude:

Ganbaru means you do your best when you're way behind, but also that you keep doing your best if you're way ahead. I learned this when I ran across this poster in the hallway of my school some weeks back:



These are some of the scores posted by our school teams at the last city-wide sports day. Here's the translation:

Soccer
First game vs. Yoshida middle school 0-7
Third place game vs. Asumi middle school 0-13

Boy's basketball*
First game vs. Shimyoshida middle school 14-137
Second games vs. Asumi middle school 6-193
Third game vs. Yoshida middle school 8-158

So there you have it. My school lost a basketball game by a score of 6-198. How does this happen? Well, my school is by far the smallest in the city and has trouble getting enough students to sign up for the club sports. This boy's basketball team has exactly 5 members which is the minimum for a game. In addition, the 5 members of the bbal team are all 1st year middle school students and they are all really short. They never had a chance against the other larger schools in the city that have dozens of kids signing up for the sports clubs.

Still, in America, that would have never been allowed to happen. The coach would have substituted in some weaker players, told them to focus on running down the clock, etc. I asked on of my Japanese friends why this didn't happen in Japan. His answer was "がんばる".