Graduation Day

We had graduation day for the third year students at Iwaki Kouko earlier this week. The ceremony took place in the morning and all Iwaki students and teachers attended, so there were no classes for the day.

The ceremony was a very formal event that took place in the school gym. It was also the first day of work where the school asked me to wear a suit. Upon arriving at the school, I could tell that it was a very special day for students and teachers because everybody looked noticeably groomed. Teachers wore there nice suits and styled their hair, and one teacher even wore her kimono. Also, the gym had been transformed for the ceremony and the baseball field was used as a parking lot to accommodate all of the parents. I thought this significant because I got in trouble for riding my bike on the field a few months back – apparently its not acceptable to be riding on the field.

 

I managed to get a look at a program briefly before the ceremony began. Everything was scheduled to begin at 10:00am and to finish at 11:02am. It started with the band playing entrance music for all of the students, and the song finished about 3 seconds after the last student was seated. At this point, we were aksed to stand. I’d like to mention that back home, everyone in the building would eventually comply with this request to stand, whereas, here, in less time than it took for the speaker to say “ritsu” (stand), everyone had risen as one unified school body.

Next, we were asked to bow (“rei”), where again, the entire room showed its back to the ceiling at the same time. Having missed the dress rehearsal last week (I was either forgotten or uninvited – and I only found out about it when I went to print something in the teachers’ room, and nobody was there; this is very strange for the teachers’ room), it took me a couple of tries to figure out the timing for our bowing. I estimated that the duration of each bow was to last for approximately 1.3 seconds. This was more or less confirmed later when I asked another teacher about this. He said that you were supposed “1, 2, 3” – the way he counted it, the “1” and “2” lasted about a second, and the rising on the “3” count took a fraction of a second as well. During the ceremony, we were also asked to bow several times in our seats. I was impressed that even the students who had fallen asleep, still managed to bow in time.

 

Finally, we were asked to sit. This whole process would be repeated 2-3 times at the beginning, and then another 3-4 times at the end. After this first sequence, which only took about 7-8 seconds, I figured we were well on schedule to finish the ceremony by 11:02.

After most of the formal greetings, I think there were a couple of speeches. These speeches were generally beyond my vocabulary of “thank you,” “where is…” and “it was fun,” and they used much more formal language than I was accustomed to. As such, I didn’t pay much attention, and they all somewhat blended together into one long rant. I believe that aside from the speeches at the beginning, there wer also speeches made in the middle and at the end.

The actual congratulation of the students was much different than at home. Instead of walking across the stage and shaking hands with the principal, the homeroom teachers would call each student by name. The students would say “hai,” and stand up. Some students, it would be more accurate to say, shouted, “HAI!”, or on some occasions, even “HAAIIII!!!!” After each class had been called out, the students took their seats (together).

The ceremony ended with us singing the school anthem (sorry, I just remember we also sung the national anthem earlier as well), and then the band played exit music for the students as they filed out.

After the ceremony had finished, and the students were picking up their chairs to carry back to their classrooms, I spoke with a few teachers about the ceremony – as they were all very curious as to what I thought of it all. When I told one teacher that it all seemed to be a very formal and serious event, he told me that their graduation ceremonies are generally modelled after the American Naval tradition, and in fact, the school uniforms are a reflection of this as well.

The rest of the day was filled with a few cheers from the students and lots of photo-taking from parents.

Finally, in true Japanese fashion, all of the teachers went out in the evening and we all got drunk as skunks.