Not Your Typical School Day

The school was a hive of activity this past Friday. All of the students and teachers were there. I, of course, was completely confused since school doesn’t officially start for a few more weeks. (Complete confusion has been a constant state for me since I’ve arrived.) I’m sure an explanation had been put in the newsletter and schedule on the board that I’m unable to read and hadn’t thought to ask someone to translate – I need to remember to do that from now on. Anyway, suddenly at 8:15 all of the teachers stood up, bowed, sat back down and the vice principal started talking. Apparently, it was staff meeting time. Once the meeting adjourned, the teachers started scurrying around and leaving the room and ''Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah'' started blasting through the halls. Students grabbed dust rags and vacuums and set to work cleaning the hallways, staff room and classrooms. Japanese schools don’t have janitors so students are in charge of keeping the school clean. The Vice Principal was also sweeping. I asked him if I could help but he said although it was very nice of me to offer, it was more important for me to study my Japanese. I would have rather cleaned.

I asked my JTE (the Japanese Teacher of English that’s basically my supervisor) if there was anything else in the schedule for the day that I should be aware of. She said they were showing a movie about peace in the classrooms at 9am that I could watch if I wanted to. The students had put together a movie using lots of writing on posters held up to the camera and voiceovers. I had no idea what they were saying but then they showed a cartoon about a little girl who took a trip to the atomic bomb memorial at Hiroshima. This past week marked the anniversary of the American bombings of Hiroshima (6 Aug.) and Nagasaki (9 Aug.). There’s nothing like sitting in a Japanese school watching a movie about people being incinerated by an atomic bomb your country dropped on them to make you feel completely horrible. It was nice that directly after the movie a teacher I’d never met introduced herself, welcomed me to the school and said she was looking forward to speaking English with me, but still…

On a happier note, after the movie there was a ceremony for the volleyball team. Apparently they are so good that they get to represent Ishikawa in the All-Japan Jr. High Volleyball Tournament in a couple weeks! I’m going to try to go cheer them on. I figure it will be good PR, plus, I do love volleyball.

The excitement of the day was over around 11am, but I did have lunch and communication hour with my teacher friend again and got to leave for the day at 2pm for a JET meeting at city hall. Next week will be a short week at school too because we have more days of orientation specifically for those of us living in Ishikawa. It will be nice to see everyone who’s located in different parts of the prefecture again. Hooray!