From classic to quirky: prompts that will liven up a borrow-it relay
The borrowing race is one of the classic events at a sports day.
In this event, participants search around the sports day venue for an item or person that matches the prompt, and the first person to reach the finish line together with what they found wins.
In this article, we introduce perfect prompts for the borrowing race, organized by category!
We’ve gathered a wide variety of prompts—from standard ones that are easy for small children to find and lower-difficulty prompts, to quirky and amusing ones.
There are also prompts for things you don’t usually see, as well as sweet, heart-throbbing prompts with a romantic twist!
Use the prompts we introduce as inspiration to make your borrowing race fun and entertaining!
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Interesting (1–10)
2,000-yen bill
The 2,000-yen bill, issued in 2000, is perfectly valid money you can use in stores, yet it seems like we rarely see it.
The challenge is to find someone who has this bill—famous for being rather uncommon—borrow it, and bring it to the goal.
It’s often said that these bills don’t circulate much outside Okinawa, so it’s possible you won’t find a single one even after searching the entire venue.
The fact that some people keep them at home because they’re rare might be another factor that makes this challenge more difficult.
A person who sings well
How about choosing someone who’s good at singing as the theme? There seem to be many possibilities: someone whose beautiful voice fills the music class, someone who hones their vocals every day in the choir or a light music club, or even a parent who teaches singing.
At the end, let’s have them perform a short phrase!
In conclusion
We introduced some recommended themes for a Borrowed Item Race—did you find any you’d like to try? There are themes from various genres, so feel free to tailor them to the age of the participants. You can also use the examples we shared as a starting point to come up with even more entertaining themes!



