Radio Calisthenics

This is a story from a long time ago.
A few weeks after the company entrance ceremony, I was assigned to a factory. From that day on, every morning, I had to do radio calisthenics in an empty space near my desk.
It meant that new employees were also expected to carry on the factory's long-standing traditions.

When I was a teenager, I had a strong image of radio calisthenics being something you did on a school playground or in a gymnasium. Because of that, seeing the radio calisthenics music playing throughout the entire factory via the public address system, with everyone wearing matching work uniforms and performing the same movements in unison, felt very strange.

Radio calisthenics and summer vacation are linked in my mind.
At the closing ceremony, along with a large stack of homework handouts, we were also given radio calisthenics attendance cards. We would punch a hole in the corner of the card we brought home and thread a ribbon or yarn through it so we could hang it around our necks.

Every year, a large parking lot in the neighborhood served as the venue.
Perhaps they had built the parking lot, but there were few cars to park there.

When the exercises were over, we would line up in front of the adults holding stamps to get our cards marked. I feel like there was a goal of 'attending for X number of days,' but I remember it not being that strict.
On the final day, we received notebooks and pencils.

By the time my son was that age, he might have passed just by attending about five times.
On the last day, my son came home with a huge amount of Umaibo snacks. Perhaps some children didn't receive any, or maybe not as many people showed up as expected.

I don't think he was lured by the Umaibo, but my son participated relatively seriously for six years.
Even during summer vacation, he probably just wanted to see his friends in the morning.

A long time ago, there was a feature in an English learning magazine where they had several foreigners listen to the radio calisthenics music and perform the movements to it.
Naturally, everyone's movements were all over the place, but only during the jumping part did everyone jump in unison. I thought that music must be the kind of music that makes you want to jump.

Even now, when summer comes, radio calisthenics tours venues across the country, and those sessions are broadcast live on the radio. The schedule for this summer is also available online.

I remember that when I was a child, in a time when the internet didn't even exist, I wanted to go to a broadcast site just once and sing the radio calisthenics song at a volume loud enough for the microphone to pick it up.

The radio calisthenics in work uniforms with only adults, which I felt was strange when I first joined the company, became something I got completely used to before I knew it.
I think it is very interesting that the exact same exercises are still connected to the summer vacations of elementary school students in the Showa, Heisei, and Reiwa eras.