Spring break's over and I was due back at elementary school today for the entrance ceremony for the new first graders. The weather was nice and the sakura, aka cherry blossoms, at school were in full bloom. The temporal flowers properly mark the arrival of spring and the beginning of the new school year. Entrance ceremonies are almost like graduations, except the kids are coming instead of going. The setup is the same and everyone dresses up; there's still a lot digicams and short speeches, though, not too many tears. The kids come in looking totally bewildered and have to try to sit quietly in a chair for about 45 minutes; that's a toughie. We have a bunch of new first graders--70, in fact, which is the school's limit for two classes. If they'd accepted anymore kids, there would have had to been 3 first gradehomerooms made. After just one speech, about half of all the 6-year old legs were swinging like mad. Clutching his crotch, one boy jumped up in the middle of the ceremony and ran over to the principal, to tell him that he had to pee. Luckily, the school has boys and girls rooms right in the gymnasium. After the little speeches and introduction of the first grade teachers, we sang the school song and wrapped things up.
Almost all of the teachers have been reassigned as to which grades they teach, so it was interesting to see some of the upper grade teachers now teaching lower levels and vice versa. They even change desk positions in the staffroom. It almost felt like being at a new school again.After the ceremony, the teachers had a little break, while the first graders and their parents got acquainted with their homeroom teachers. I went down to the classrooms to observe. I said hello to a few little ones, and they and their parents seemed happy to see me. I suppose most of the parents have heard of me by now; I even heard aa few of the new parents and students utter my name. I think I have a pretty good rep amongst the little ones, so it's all good.
For lunch, some of the teachers splt into groups and went to different restaurants. The group I was with decided to go for sushi. We went to a family-owned sushi shop about a 10 minute drive from school. The sushi was delicious. We all had sushi lunch sets, which included green tea, miso soup, some pickled seaplant, some type of egg-based custard-like soup, and really small scoops of sherbet with fresh peppermint for dessert. All for a 1000 yen a head, which is not too bad for quality sushi. Over lunch, we talked about fish and vegetables, which normally wouldn't be the topics of an interesting conversation for myself, but they kept asking me how to say different names of stuff in English, so I had a chance to converse in Japanese.
Back at school, a couple teachers walked me around, showing me the different trees and flowers we had at school. I was surprised at the variety of plant life we have right on our school grounds. I noticed them before, but never took the chance to look at everything up close. I was surprised to learn we have a plum tree and 4 different species of cherry blossom trees at school, including a shidarezakura, a weeping cherry blossom. The light pink and white flowers of the sakura are gorgeous now--it's easy to see why they're the pride of Japan.
Since there were no classes today, everyone spent the day in the staffroom getting prepared for their first classes. Teachers were passing out snacks like crazy--someone brought sakura manju, a sweet rice and red bean pastry which was pink with with a lightly salted leaf from a cherry blossom tree wrapped around it. The leaf was edible, and the manju was pretty tasty. I gotta give it to the Japanese, they have some pretty creative and aesthetically-pleasing foods, though small.
I was hoping I would get to go home early, since there were no classes, but I ended up staying the whole day. It was cool, because a lot of the teachers were laughing and talking with me. Later in the afternoon, some bigwigs from the local board of ed. came around. Everyone was making a big deal about it, like the Prime Minister himself was going to show up; everyone ran out the staffroom to the school entrance and stood in a line waiting to greet the visitors. Some teachers got antsy because the visitors were running late from making rounds to some other local schools. When they arrived, everyone was acting all serious. We went into the staffroom, and the top guy, followed by an entourage of 6, came in an introduced themselves one by one, followed by a bow. We all had to make deep bows after each intro, so we bowed like ten times in 2 minutes. After the introductions, the board of ed. folks left--immediately. I was like, "That was it? That's what the big fuss was about?" One teacher said it was like a "daimyo gyoretsu" or like a "samurai lord parade." She hit that right on the head. Then in English, she said it was "nonsense." I told her I agreed. Just a show of pomp and circumstance B.S.
Anyway, I'll be doing it again tomorrow at junior high, minus the cheer and camaraderie, I expect. We'll see.
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