It's the day before the last day of school before a summer vacation that really isn't really a summer vacation. Happy day!
Summer vacation in Japan coexists of the staff coming to school, and the kids coming to school. There aren't any classes, so the kids must practice sports, or their musical instruments or other activities for three to four hours a day. I guess the perks are we get to start school at 8:35am instead of 8:15, and I have the liberty of eating lunch at home instead of at my desk.
I'm currently devising ideas to get away from the impending hours of boredom that do not involve sacrificing one of my appendages to get an air-conditioned hospital stay. Regardless.
What better way, you ask, is there to end a semester of school than having an English recital? What a great question and I really wouldn't be so presumptuous to assume that I know. I think three hundred people sitting in a stinky, sweaty gymnasium for an hour and a half while listening to snipets from Mother Teresa, The Beatles, Shel Silverstien, REM and Sylvia Plath (mostly my picks, could you tell?) being recited is a great way to wrap things up. All in all, it was a success, and the JTEs at my school are relieved that it's over. I wonder if any of my students had the blinding realization that their experience for that hour and a half was kin to my daydreams when I'm roped into listening to a lecture on the dangers of amphetamine drug abuse in Japanese. Nah... They probably didn't make that connection.
I did have a bit of a scare, though. I had to recite a poem for the student body and staff. It was kind of a "perfect example" scenario. My nerves were a little skittish before the big plunge into possible mind blankness, but I ponied up to the bar and pounded out, what I believed to have been, a riveting performance of Crossing the Water by Sylvia Plath. (I wore black attire and did heavy eyeliner to set the mood.) I really would like to feel accomplished and appreciate all of the kudos that were given to me afterwards, but I have to keep reminding myself that when my apple-polishing co-workers said I was the best out of the bunch, they were comparing me - an exquisite orator who has a breathtaking, albeit gregarious, command of the English language, (not to mention a native-speaker) - to a group of clinched-fisted, heart-filtering, bundles of adolescent nerves functioning as junior high and high school students (who were required to speak in a second language). Can anyone say "no contest"? At every cry of "jouzou desu" (talented) on the way back to the staff room, I had to feel a little bit like I had just beaten senseless an already comatosed drunk from the backwoods of Arkansas who had just been pronounced brain-dead and when I was finished, danced around his flailing body like I was Mike Tyson. Seriously, no contest.
During the second part of the recital, one JHS student and three SHS students read original compositions in English. Before their presentations, we had a ten minute break. I took that moment to go and congratulate my student who had just performed, and to with the others good luck.
I don't get to spend a lot of time at the junior high school, and don't really recognize all of my JHS students, but if I see a kid wearing the tell-tale shin-length skirts and suspenders, I'll say hello in English. So, I wasn't all that surprised that I didn't recognize the JHS girl who was sitting stunned and awaiting her doom of presenting. She had quite a hefty speech prepared and I noticed it was titled Cultural Diversity. I was impressed and asked her (in Japanese) to see it. She handed it over and said to me in fluent English that she had lived in Virginia Beach for four and a half years and that's how she knew about diversity.
It was one of the most surreal moments I've had while living in Japan. This girl was sitting in the midst of all her classmates, donned in their identical uniforms and their hair in identical razored-cuts and speaking to me in American English. She was using words like "'cuse" and "I wannna". In her speech she commented on how odd she thought it was that milk is sold in one gallon containers and how people in the US give straight answers, instead of the vague and non-committal replies that are so common in Japan. She mentioned several times how confused she was when she arrived in the US, and now how confused she is to be back in Japan. My heart continues to go out to her. I can only imagine the extra burden of starting down the long road to adolescence in a country where she couldn't communicate and fully understand the customs, just to be returned to Japan, where assimilation and group mentality rules, four years later - right before starting high school. I wanted to tell her how I thought what she had was a gift and that she shouldn't be discouraged by what some of her fellow students might misconstrue as strangeness. So many of us rarely have the opportunity to fully experience completely different cultures, and to be bilingual. Weather or not it was for her to decide, she's already accomplished the, sometimes startling, awareness of the world by the age of 14. She ended her speech by saying that she hoped the people around her would understand her actions.
The HS students followed her speech and presented really endearing pieces on their dreams and what they value most. I asked Koichi, the freshman who presented, to have a copy of his speech because I liked it so much. Here's what he said:
I think life is the most important of all objects. I can feel happy, angry and sad because I am alive. In reverse, if I'm dead, I can't eat or run. So, life is the most important. When some problems stand in our way, we can't give up. Know deep, deep in our heart. We will know what we new are. And, be happy, be happy to be alive now. If we are alive, overcome the problem. Living is happy, we will be kind to others and we will feel like sharing our happiness with them. It makes us even happy to be alive. I want to have important life. And I feel thank to the important life. So, now that the annual English recital is out of the way, I've been reminded about how precious life is and it's strangeness from place to place, and the A/C is blasting at full potential in the staff room, I am prepared to start my summer vacation.
And that is the end of the story.
I finally got around to staying in a capsule hotel. My friend Laura and I (now known as Romeo and Mecrucio) spent a weekend in Fukuoka where we danced with J-boys in silly thug attire and slept in plastic pods equipped with personal air-conditioning, TV and radio. Our luggage was stored in lockers, and we used the communal bath.
Hercules sleeping in some creative positions. He's full of fleas and mites at the moment. I'm in search of some really good insect killer, especially if he takes his naps on my bed.
This is what I'm talking about when I say I have centipedes in my house.
