7. Stand! Ready! Bow! (aka my first week at school)

This past week marked the start of my work at the middle school I'll be at for the next 6 months. It was pretty wild and I'm super exhausted! Ok I'll spare you the whining.  The other teachers said my main challenge would be staving off boredom, which has not been an issue at all so far.  I'm not allowed to post pictures from work, so here's some completely unrelated pictures to satisfy those of you who can't read:

Actually it's alright, but it's hard to get over the name.  Please note the slogan on the yellow bottle to the right as well.

These are statues of Buddhas or something (Hindu gods? That doesn't make sense.  They do have a lot of arms though)

They're all standing or sitting.  Except this guy, who really needs his beauty rest.

Anyway,

Day 1

As I arrive at school, I am introduced to my desk and to a very enthusiastic woman in front of me who immediately says all the English words she knows in a row (hello! Thank you! Goodbye!  My! name! is! Kishimoto! Nicetomeetyou!).  Certain teachers who speak English come over and say hi, including the principal.  In the morning meeting, the principal says a few facts about me and asks me to introduce myself with my prepared Japanese speech.  In his introduction of me, he has just told everybody about 3/4 of what I was going to say.  I forge ahead blindly! Before lunch, I am told the students clean their classrooms.  I offer to help, thinking it will help me bond with the students.  I get to the class just in time to see them start. They all get in position, move all the desks all to one side, and sweep the other.  Then a few of them push towels while they run across the floor instead of mopping.  Then they change sides and repeat.  It seems very efficient.  Little do I realize that this will be the most coordinated version of this I will ever see.  Usually it's three kids working and the rest standing and giggling.

I am told there is no school lunch today and I immediately panic.  Fortunately, the other English teachers decide to take me out to lunch at a very traditional Japanese restaurant.  Unfortunately this means that there are no chairs, but it's cool.  I've sat on my butt before.  On the drive over, this conversation happens in English:
"Mr. Hirota, tell me about your trip to Poland to visit your girlfriend" (they call each other Mr. all the time)
"Ok.  We went to a good museum and I learned about fish"
"No Mr. Hirota!  That is boring!  I want to hear interesting things. So does Nate."
"Ok.  I met her parents for the first time.  They are nice.  She has a good family."
"Sure, Mr. Hirota, sure.  Please tell us the interesting part!"

Unfortunately, neither I or Mr. Hirota knew what that meant (or at least we weren't willing to guess).
 All in all, a good first day.

This was on the outside of my car when I left for school, and on the inside when I got there. After growing up watching a lot of nature documentaries, I knew not to mate with it cause it might bite my head off.

Day 2

 I mostly spend the second day grading summer homework. Many girls wrote about their favorite band, which was usually this:

This is a band formed by a corporation that auditioned members considering the "sexiness of men" according to wikipedia.  Members range from age 14 to 20 years old.  There are more suggestive pictures of them, but I thought I'd spare you.

The homework has a multitude of fun English moments in it, some of which I will recreate now. This was probably my favorite snippet:

"I saw a movie.  The title is Transformers.  It was very moving."   (was it really?)
ALSO
"abusive language may sometimes be vomited to a friend."

Many of the students had to write about their plans for the future.  A lot of the resulting sentences sounded quite profound.  Here are a few of those sentences put back to back as if they were an overly artistic poem.
-------
 I exist a lot now in the world
that is an animal.  I play baseball in hot middle inevitable
death. There are a lot of future.  But
after hurry the future,
just I die.

Blindness in one eye is improvement
in crime prevention consciousness.
The words of transformation
are both
a shield protecting a person
and a pike making a lifetime wound.
It is no use: I never split open
even when I play the piano.
------
I have my first school lunch with the students today.  It's probably more awkward than my first lunch period in high school.  Here is my attempt at conversation:
"Hello"
[giggles with friend]
"do you play sports?"
[talks to friends to confirm what I say.  Her friend translates what I said.  First student looks at me, then looks down and resumes eating]
"What is your favorite movie?"
[no response]

I come away from lunch with a strong desire for connection in some way with the students, since I will be eating with them all year. Later this will influence my decision to tell the students that my favorite band is One Direction.  I should probably listen to at least one song of theirs.

Day 3

The third day, I have my first class that I "teach." For the first week, I just give 50 minute long presentations about myself.  I have thrown in some juggling, music, and magic tricks into these presentations because I don't want to be boring.  Hopefully they won't catch the sexual innuendo in the lyrics of the song I'm playing.  Turns out not even the teachers have a hope of understanding much wordplay in English.

I'm not sure if this happens every class, but every time I am present, the class starts with "Stand! Ready! Bow!" and all the students bow, which is weird to me. The presentation goes fairly decently, but when I go to lunch with the students, it is just as awkward as the day before.

One thing I forgot to mention is the structure of lunch.  All the students wait (relatively quietly) outside the cafeteria while the lunch ladies set out a lunch tray for everyone.  Then someone announces: "first years, please proceed quietly."  Etc with all the students.  Everyone brings their own chopsticks and spoon, and when lunch ends, everyone breaks down and cleans out their own milk carton.  Then they sort the dishes into different piles (they are required to eat every last bit of food that they have on their plates).  They put the plastic straws into their original wrappers and put them all in a designated container.  It's very methodical.

These are my utensils.  Chopsticks are still the biggest obstacle to me getting enough to eat here.

Day 4

I have presentations all day (5 total, 50 minutes each).  I think the English teachers are tired of hearing about my life.  Today the students are much more responsive.  Apparently it was just the third year class from yesterday (15 years old) that think they are too cool for me.  The one handicapped student in the school asks to have lunch with me today, so I sit at his table and have a great conversation in English.  He tells me he wants to be an English teacher, but they won't let him study abroad (at least right now) because he's in a wheelchair.  He also tells me that he is on the tennis team, which is super cool.

In the evening, I meet a guy who plays South American wood flute and panpipes and a guy who plays guitar.  They seem keen to play music together at some point so we'll see if that 'pans' out (ok that was dumb, sorry).  It turns out  I need to buy more clothes for work.  I head to the store and get some short sleeve "cool biz" shirts (that's what the summer dress code is called).  While I'm there, I pick up this gem as well.

Note the "since 1879" and the picture of the Volkswagen bus.

Day 5

Today I go to elementary school in the morning.  I am a celebrity because of my height and willingness to make sound effects and funny faces.  Immediately after my first presentation, I am swarmed by small children who literally drag me out to the field and do a complicated eeny-meeny-miny-moe to pick teams.  Then we play the extent of soccer that 6-year-olds can play.  After a few more presentations, I go back to the middle school and have a great, conversational lunch with teachers and students.  One of the male teachers likes to tell me often that I am a handsome guy and that I should come to basketball club sometime.  We'll see how that goes.  I am terrible at basketball, despite my height and apparent attractiveness to the middle-age Japanese male math teacher demographic.

OMG SPORTS FESTIVAL PRACTICE!  In the afternoon, they begin practice for sports festival, which involves no team sports of the conventional kind.  They do partner acrobatics, human pyramids, and some kind of thing which involves throwing yourself on the ground creatively whenever the PE teacher blows the whistle.  It actually looks pretty cool.   They also do this thing where they all wear black coats with white on the inside, and sit on bleachers.  Then they chant and beat drums.  On certain beats, certain children open the coats as if they were flashing the audience (they are wearing clothes obviously) which makes certain letters and shapes appear in black and white.  They change shapes/letters every beat - it is very cool, if you can understand at all what I'm saying there.

A great first week.  I am excited for the next, and for the sports festival and ensuing staff party.

Here are some random pictures:

Hmmm.  These remind me of something, but I can't put my finger in it.

The worst part is that this actually describes perfectly what is in the package and I'm a terrible person for laughing at it.

You too should be part of "Association of ProtectNature" if you aren't already.