He doesn't lose rain, doesn't lose wind...

Last week, I mentioned an assignment where students wrote about their future dreams. We continued the lesson with other classes this week and this one student’s writing really stood out for me. I liked it so much that I copied into my notebook to bring to parties and such. Anyway, I should let him speak for himself:

He doesn’t lose rain, doesn’t lose wind. He doesn’t lose winter and he is hot as a summer’s day. He has a strong body, and he doesn’t have desire, never got angry, always smiles quietly. He eats some rough rice and a few vegetables every day.


I want to be a man such as he.

Results Day

One teacher mentioned to me, upon seeing how excited these new students were, the irony of their enthusiasm: “if only they knew how hard they will have to work for the next three years…”

It was like a scene out of a movie. I walked confusedly through the crowds of students in uniform, teachers, and parents, all gathered around to see results from the school’s entrance exams. Some of my students would find me and say “Hello!” and stuff pamphlets and candy in my hands, only to disappear into the crowd moments later. I saw a few students and teachers with cameras up on the landing outside of the gym doors and thought that this would be a good vantage point for some perspective on the scene. I was about to talk to some of the photo club members when the doors behind me opened on either side and teachers carried out large bulletin boards with the numbers of those who got accepted to the school. Immediately, I was in a swarm of Japanese people, young and old, who were eager to see who would be among those to study at our school next year. The band started playing, and the sports teams – all in uniform, began shouting their school cheers. I’d never seen so many people excited about school before!

There were no classes this day as students from all over Iwaki came to our school to check their results. Iwaki High school is considered the top school in the city (and 3rd in the prefecture – something I’ve had mentioned to me many times while at this school) and so, there is a lot of excitement amongst students who get accepted. Also, many of Iwaki’s school clubs show up in uniform to hand out pamphlets and encourage the new first-years-to-be to join their clubs. The real excitement however, comes from the brass band playing while the sports teams shout their chants and find people to cheer and throw up in the air.

Again, I didn’t realize that this was going on and I didn’t bring my camera. I did get a few videos with my phone however:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qxw1AWJvtaQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5olTd24-I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LskGKhrpXVk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lslb5Kf0vXY

Shokuinshitsu

“Shokuinshitsu” is what we call the teacher’s room in Japan. For some reason, this is a very difficult word for me to remember. It is my hope that by using this word to name this blog, I will be able to remember it better.

The shokuinshitsu is usually a fairly quiet place – even depressingly solemn at times, where teachers often have their faces buried in books, or are busy typing at their computers. At home, teachers generally have their own classrooms and students will come and go according to the classes they’ve been assigned. Here, the students are put into homerooms where they stay for the entire day. It is the teachers who move from room to room. When they are not teaching, they are usually at their desk in the teacher’s room. In such rare cases as myself, I have an office away from this room.

I was in the teacher’s room the other day when suddenly, a teacher burst into the room, cell-phone in hand, and shouted something to the other teachers in the room. Immediately, all of the teachers reached for their own phones and began to gather together, speaking quickly and waving their hands around. It’s times like these where I am lucky to find someone with the patience to translate events for me.

As it turns out, many universities in Japan post entrance results online, but for whatever reason, Tokyo University does their postings by bulletin board. As such, our school sent a teacher to drive the 3.5 hours to Tokyo to check the results. The eruption of excitement in the shokuinshitsu occurred when the teacher received a photo from Tokyo that showed that of the 5 students from Iwaki who applied to the university, one had been accepted to the school.

Tokyo university is regarded as Japan’s best university and for a school to have a student pass the entrance exam, this makes the school look very good. In fact, there has been quite a bit of disappointment over the last 3 years because no Iwaki students have made it into the school. Iwaki also had a student pass the Kyoto entrance exam, which is considered Japan’s #2 university.

Both universities are National Universities, which are subsidized by the government. They are considered to be of better quality than the private alternatives and are also much cheaper. I think generally, private university tuition is about $10,000 for one year, while public schools cost about $6,000 -$8,000.

I’ve also heard from a few teachers that the difference between high school and university is much different than it is in North America. In North America, the typical high school student will occasionally skip class, maybe do an hour or two of homework each day, and still manage to get into university, where they will be overwhelmed with the intense workload of post-secondary education. In Japan, high school is the time when students must work hard to get into a good university – they will arrive at school before 8, stay until 7pm studying, then go home to eat and go to bed. But when they get to university, the workload is actually quite manageable. I learned this when I was talking to a teacher who played in a couple of bands, was a member of a theatre group, and I think played kendo as well. I asked him how he had time for all of this and he said that university in Japan is not so difficult.

Even though it is the end of the school year, students only get 2 or 3 weeks off, and so, next year’s freshmen have already been announced. I will write more about this in the next few days, but one teacher mentioned to me, upon seeing how excited these new students were, the irony of their excitement: “if only they knew how hard they will have to work for the next three years…”

Festival Day at Iwaki High School

Thursdays are the day that I go to my other high school, Midori Nomordi, but they have exams today so I spent the day at my main school. Because I didn’t have any classes to teach, I left my glasses at home. I figured that I would be sitting in front of the computer screen all day doing lesson planning and hopefully studying a ton of Japanese (my studies have been pretty weak lately). It turned out to be festival day today as I learned when in the main entrance to the school, the flower arrangement club had put on a display next the photography club’s exhibition, which was next to the drawing and painting show. I soon found out that several student clubs would be putting on presentations in the gym and that we would eventually go to the city theatre to watch a play. There has been a lot to look at today and my eyes are damn sore from squinting all day.

A colleague of mine recently stated his opinion that Japan is basically a country that is devoid of any real art. His argument was that in such a repressive country as Japan, it is impossible for artists to thrive. I didn’t know what to say at the time, but after seeing the work of these young teens today, I must disagree strongly. To support his argument, my colleague mentioned the names of famous Japanese artists who had to work abroad because Japan was too much of a repressive environment for them. Maybe the art he was referring to is of a higher, more mature, more impactual art. It wouldn’t be fair me to assume his argument because it was a bit of a brief discussion, but I am inclined to believe that if Japan is in fact a repressive society (however we may want to define this), that this is in fact the ideal climate for fostering some amazing art – or at least incredible artistic ability.

I thought today was going to be fairly boring, so I considered bringing my camera to school today. I thought it might be weird for other teachers and staff to see me walking around the school taking photos while they were all hard at work, so I left it at home. Hence, I have no visual proof of these visual wonders that I am devoting this post to.

I think I’ve mentioned, or at least implied a bit about my interest in photography before. And I quite enjoyed seeing the photography club’s presentation of work. There were definitely some great photos – portraits of siblings, interesting architecture, creative use of light and shadow, some good macro. When I saw the drawing and painting exhibit, it struck how easy it is to find an interesting image, or to even consider an image interesting enough to take a photo of, only to find out later that this image was in fact amazing. Photographers really just push buttons and turn knobs. There is a significant amount of knowledge that is very useful in creating great images – and a lot of finesse in handling the camera as well, but really, when it comes down to it, we just push the button.

Compare this to the painter or the sketch artist or the sculptor, who spends hours, days, weeks, working on their masterpiece. Not only do they consider composition just as much as a photographer – maybe even more, but they go through the arduous task of creating this image one stroke at a time. I can’t imagine the amount of time that some of these artists put into their images. The textures and perspectives put into these still-life images were incredible. One of my favorites was sort of a butterfly wall-paper painting with a person that occupied about a quarter of the image. The painting was turned upside-down and the words “Where are you” were placed throughout the butterflies. The effect put the person in an odd area of the painting and was actually difficult to see from this perspective. I thought it was pretty ingenious the way the composition played with the interpretation of the image. There was also a piece that was a collage of almost Neil Gaimen-type horror sketches of frogs with human legs, and a cow with a mermaid’s tail, and two legs that prodrude from a lobster, and bunny in a jester’s uniform chewing on a thorny rose stem. To sum up, I saw a lot of talent and creativity in many of these images.

Apparently, Iwaki High School also has the best high school brass band in Japan – and they have won all of the competitions to prove it. Although, one teacher informed me more modestly that they haven’t won them all… yet – and that technically, they should be considered to be only within the top 5 so far. In any event, I got to see a full 50 minute performance by a pretty incredible brass band.

The high school band program is a little bit different in Japan than it is in Canada. In Canada, students sign up for band as part of their course selection and it counts as credit towards graduation. In Japan, students sign up for band as a club activity, so it’s not for credit and they only practice after school. In a school of about 1100 students, I think there were almost 90 members in this band.

The selection of instruments alone was impressive. There were a couple of instruments that I didn’t even recognize. The conductor described one as a “sarusophone,” I think is what he said – it was a tall slender brass instrument that only got used for a few songs. They also had a couple of English horns, two stand-up basses that added good articulation to the low end, and I also saw my first contra-bass clarinet. This instrument stands at least 5 feet tall and was played by a girl that barely weighs 90 lbs. It comes in a case that is about the size of two full-sized beer coolers and takes two people to assemble.

One of the big highlights of the night was when the lead alto saxophone player somehow snuck out of the gymnasium, and there was a big instrument change that involved a drum kit and electric bass. It was a real smooth kind of jazzy song that led up to the sax player entering with a killer solo from the back of the gym. Heads turned, I had to stand from where I was sitting, and they guy, cool as river water, strolled down the centre isle to the front of the band where the rest of the section – soprano, alto, tenor, and baritones, joined him and they featured several solos, duets, and sectional ‘solis’ throughout the song. There was also a song that featured the bassoon player, who was incredible – the band also deserves credit as the entire group managed to play under the unmic’d bassoon. The clarinet section also had a feature song – no contra bass, but they did have what looked like a soprano clarinet maybe? They ended with a couple of crazy numbers where the entire band stood up and went through some pretty intricate dance choreography and still managed to stay tight. The last one featured a group of all males who put together a dance performance in front of the band without any instruments, which was fantastically gay in all meanings of the word.

There are many great things about Japan, but I imagine that much of this is due to the novelty of everything for me. There is no doubt however, that these kids were good. It was also refreshing to be able to hear something in a language that I understand.

I was going to put some random photos up with this post, but I think that they wouldn’t do any justice.