Himeji Castle Marathon

Sunday I ran my second race in Japan. This one was around Himeji Castle, which was perfect since I run around the castle nearly every day. I managed to get entered thanks to the teachers at Chelsey's old school. The P.E. teacher was entering some of the members of the track club, so he just put my entry in as well. I ran 5km, which was the longest race of the day, but here every road race is referred to as a marathon.
It turned out quite well; it ended up as my fastest 5km in four years. I was helped by fan support; Chelsey organized some of our fellow residents to come watch the race. They staked out a spot on the castle wall that I ran by three times, which is pretty good for a 5km.
I finished 8th overall. When I finished, I picked up my finisher certificate, and was about to head back to find my gear when a staff member came and gathered me to take me over to a tent with the other top 10 finishers. Almost immediately we were led up to a podium, then had a small ceremony, complete with orchestral music and lots of bowing. It was quite unexpected.
-Jason

I missed the finish and ceremony because our cheering spot was around on the back side of the castle. Luckily, some of the new Australian teachers were at the finish line and they got the ceremony on video. They had some trouble with the video software for getting the video off of their camera, so it has the strange text in the middle. You can tell that Jason's a bit lost and doesn't really know what's going on -- plus, count how many times he bows in video.