It was a rainy, blustery morning much like the day Harry first discovered he was a wizard when Miyazakians from all over the prefecture gathered in Miyazaki City to challenge the Amazing Race. We didn’t let the rain get us down, though!

The event participants were able to immerse themselves in the wizarding world through a variety of mental and physical feats, testing their knowledge of the films and enjoying magical pastimes such as playing Quidditch, mastering Charms, reading tea leaves, and making potions!

Unfortunately, we had to cut the race a bit short due to time constraints, so not everyone was able to enjoy all of the activities. However, everyone was a good sport about it, and all were in good spirits when they reached the finish line.

While all the participants did their absolute best, we could only have two winning teams.  Our fastest team was Team 7, and the team with the most points was Team 11.  Congratulations to everyone!

Thank you to Tomohito Takemura, Chika Khan, and the Miyazaki City International Association for supporting the event and helping us to organize it each year. Their help has been invaluable in helping us communicate with the city in order to acquire locations for the event.

Thank you also to Chaho Sonoda and Green Tea Fields for allowing us to use her tea shop as a location and graciously allowing us some indoor cafe space when the rain proved unavoidable.

Thank you to Genki Kobayashi and Miyazaki Municipal University. Mr. Kobayashi has always helped us to advertise the event so we can reach more Japanese participants, and this year MMU also allowed us to use their grounds as a location.

Thank you to our planning volunteers, without whom nothing would have gotten done. Thank you to our translators who worked very hard at the last minute so that all our participants could fully enjoy the event equally. And a big thank you to everyone who helped out on the day of the event, without whom we would have been doomed to failure.

And lastly, thank you to all of our participants, who braved the foul weather and made the most of an unpleasant situation. Thanks to you, it was a truly magical day!

Until next year!

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