School Part II

Today I’m off school because there’s a typhoon outside. It’s the most serious weather I’ve been in for a long time, as Long Island rarely gets hurricanes. 50-60 mph winds, horizontal rain, my apartment was shaking, whistling, and making all sorts of noises. The worst of it is past now. There should be some good waves before dark or at least over the next few days

Leaf Month (August) has ended and so begins September, or the long month. Next month doesn’t look too much better considering its kaminazuki, or the “month without gods”. Unless of course, you’re in Izuma province, where October is the “month with gods”. There's a mandatory meeting lasting the whole month.


Sports Festival and my first real responsibilities

On Monday, I had to give a speech to the whole school . . . in Japanese. But really that just meant the expectations were low and I could read off a card. It was pretty standard, telling about myself, how I’m excited to be there, etc. I even threw in a joke. Pictured above is my main job location, a Jr. High school with about 250 kids (7th-9th grade US).

I thought I was going to start teaching this week, but no, this Saturday is the Jr. High Sports Festival so they have been practicing all day every day. I could make a cynical comment about how it’s a little Hitler Youth-like especially the opening with all the kids marching around the track in battalion formation. Two kids even do Hail Hitler arm movements at one point. The Sports Festival is a century old tradition meant to prepare children for war. But they march to this heart-warming J.P. Sousa march I’ve been trying to find on iTunes and then the events are just great: laughs, teamwork, competition.

Yesterday, a practice sports festival was held. The blue team, my team, came in last, but we’re just acting as if we’re no good; the element of surprise. My favorite event by far translates as Spin.Spin.Girl-Fight. They should really bring this one to America. Long pieces of bamboo and car tires are placed in the middle of the track and two opposing teams of girls have to bring back as many of these center objects as they can to their side, after dizzying themselves with a baseball bat-spin. These girls are prety tough. i.e. a girl being dragged across the dirt (no grass fields here) still clutching a tire.

Other favorites include a twenty five legged race with a turn, obstacle courses, tug-a-war, and an event where a top “horseman” on a base of three other boys tries to grab the others horsemen’s hats. Also the boys do a real impressive acrobatic display.

Responsibility #2

I’ve also begun to eat lunch with the kids. School lunch is really different here. Two students act as lunch-lady, donning the hairnet and white coat, and bring all the food, drinks, and plates from the basement up to their classroom and then serve their fellow classmates. I once saw in a National Geographic article that 99% of Japanese schoolchildren eat a school-provided lunch compared with some number less than 50% in the U.S.

The food’s pretty hit or a miss. Tuesday was cold mackerel, with skin (no filets here), cold eggs and spinach, white rice, and a kinda stew with potatoes and carrots, and octopus and some other meat which no one can tell me what it is. It’s not a land meat, fish, or shellfish, so I don’t see what other meat is left.

Oh and last week, they had a teacher’s encounter day which doubled as my welcoming party. The teachers played volleyball against each other and we did a Tai Bo work-out. The Tai-Bo craze is just getting to Japan like 10 years after America, and it’s the same dude pushing it, Billy Blanks. It’s not known as Tae-Bo, but just “Be-Lee” (billy), as in “gym teacher Kiya-sensei, can we do bee-lee today”.