First Day of School

The first day of school was kind of easy. I had heard that in the Japanese school system, formalized greetings and respectful proceedings are important. Well - the formalized start of the second semester managed to fill an entire half-day of school on my first day.

I had to catch a 6:41 bus to catch a 7:01 train to make sure that I was able to walk 30 min. to school and get there by 7:45. Everything worked out as planned, but for the rivers of sweat pouring down my face and into my new suit. In the span of 12 hours, I had biked through torrential rain and un-seasonable cold, and was now arriving at school before 8:00 in life threatening heat and humidity. I changed shoes at the door - leaving my polished dress shoes in the lower story of a cubby and changing into my $20 white nikes completing my Japanese teacher ensemble. The kids had home room and I attempted to look busy for an hour or so. Then we had our opening ceremony to usher in the new semester! The vice principal (by far the tallest man in the building at 6.1 plus 2 inches of slicked back hair), took his time getting the kids into perfect lines and whipping them into verbal submission. When he was satisfied with their level of discomfort (and maybe mine), he turned things over to the principal. Red cheeked and rosy, the principal reminded kids that they should continue to be everywhere 5 min. before they were required to be there. Awards were presented to clubs and specific students on last semesters performance. I was given a chance to embarrass myself in Japanese. I was so nervous given the formality of the event, that I thought I might faint. I did manage to eek out a self-introduction, but I wasn't fun at all - I had planed on making a splash, but the formality of the event threw me. The school nurse stole the show with details on the swine flu and how to guard against it.

After the opening ceremony, there was a fire drill. Then everyone in the building spent 15 minutes cleaning the whole school. This happens every day, but because of the fire drill, it was actually really dirty! Kids usually change shoes when they enter the building - this time, because they were required to evac. without changing shoes, the halls were filthy!

As we were in the practice of being everywhere 5 min. early, and having reached the end of the day, the kids returned to homeroom about min. 25 min. before they were scheduled to have done so. I'm sure nothing too school-like got done in this last 45 min. before kids were cut loose. Finally, with the half-day of school complete, the teachers were able to have a meeting and share stories of their summer vacations (about 2 weeks - less for some teachers). I got to introduce myself again and passed around some pictures. It turns out that the art teacher had gone to France and spend 4 whole days in the Luv! The head English teacher had drank her way around Germany (hell yeah!). We all passed out snacks from the places we had visited.

I got dropped off at a bike shop and bought my second crappy bicycle. This one will be on the top floor of the bicycle parking garage near the train station so I can ride it to school and cut my commute down 15 min. to about an hour.

Day 1 - no problemo.

Day 2 was more normal and a bit more fun. I got to teach 3 periods and got to spray a fire hose at a special after-school fire safety training presented by the Iruma-Shi fire department. Junior high school students just look and act like kids after all, thank God. I think I'll be ok.


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