ABSTRACT
Still, it is not all work. There are softball games and the valley’s marathon-relay race, in which the four villages making up the valley population compete against one another. Each team has ten members, drawn two by two from each of the age groups between ten and fifty. Each village fields two teams, whose runners start at the North Oni Primary School and proceed up the valley to Ichinotsuru, where they turn around and run all the way down to the South Oni school, before turning around yet again and racing back up the hill to where they started. Much to everyone’s surprise, Yashiki manages to come in a creditable second to Suzuka village.
