Please pardon the lateness of this post. I fully intended to write yesterday, but somehow it just never happened. But it's for the best, really, because now I can write about the "
shigyoushiki," or Opening Ceremony.
This story really begins a couple weeks ago. School had just ended for the year and I was mentally preparing myself to spend all day, every day, sitting at a desk with nothing productive to do. I would study Spanish, I decided. And because I am incapable of actually focusing on just one goal, I also decided to relearn how to do some basic programming. And to read some of those books that keep staring at me every time I go home.
Then my laptop exploded.
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Jeffles Two Weeks Ago |
Okay, I exaggerate. But the power cord had melted and the side of the computer started smoking. At first I smelled something burning, so I looked around. Had I lit incense and forgotten? It has been known to occur, but no, I hadn't done so this time. That's when I realized something was wrong and saw the stream of smoke rising from my laptop. Wasting no time, I reached for the power cord, hoping to yank it out and shut down the computer as quickly as possible. My first attempt was driven back, though, by a flurry of sparks erupting into my hand.
The true effect of the sparks, though, was to steel my determination. Lappy needed to be put down.
Heedless of the flying specks of fire, I grabbed the cord and yanked it out.
And I breathed. The sparks stopped, as did the smoke.
It's possible that all I needed was a new power cord, but between this event, my laptop's truly horrible speakers, its penchant for literally dying for no apparent reason, the common refusal to start up, the visual hues that keep changing and dead pixels that keep popping up, and the pure slowness and lack of power of the machine in spite of its annoyingly large size, I needed a new laptop. The next day I found
PCTokyo and ordered myself a brand new machine. A week and a half later, it arrived.
With it also arrived a certain desire. This was a desire to play a new(ish) game. The newest game I've been able to play on my previous (exploded) laptop was a full five years old. So you see, I haven't exactly been enjoying top-of-the-line products. Thus it was, with a heart full of anticipation, I logged onto amazon.co.jp and ordered myself
Skyrim.
What does this have to do with the Opening Ceremony? Well, you see, Skyrim arrived yesterday. And the Opening Ceremony was today. This morning, in fact.
Yes, I admit it. I did stay up until nearly 4:30 in the morning playing Skyrim, only to awaken three hours later to rush to work. Is Skyrim the reason I was late to the Opening Ceremony, the reason I wore an unwashed shirt covered in lint from an old sweater, but not a tie or a suit jacket, the reason I nearly fell asleep in the middle of the ceremony? Maybe not. But the chain of cause and effect has to start somewhere and that's as good a place as any.
I tried to waste no time, tried to get out the door as early as I could manage. But alas, fate was working against me.
I logged off my chat messenger and shut down my computer a full five minutes earlier than normal. Not thinking of anything beyond getting out the door, I grabbed the nearest button-up shirt, which ended up being the aforementioned lint-covered shirt. I grabbed my bag, affirming that all the necessary materials were present, and stepped toward the door.
Then I remembered, Friday is bottles and plastic garbage day. I checked I my watch. Crap. Fast as I thought I'd been moving, somehow five minutes had passed by in my preparations. Well, if I didn't take my trash out now, I'd have to wait two more weeks and plastic seriously knows how to pile up in Japan.
So I got my bags of plastics and bottles together, put on my coat and my bag, walked over to the garbage drop-off point, and then made my way back to my bike. Another five minutes elapsed. I was now officially late.
Well, I can just bike fast, I reasoned. Perhaps that might have saved five minutes, but at that moment I remembered something else I had to do: buy a
bento lunch.
Normally, elementary school teachers (which is what I am on Fridays) eat the same school lunch as the students do. In fact, I have my very own personal schedule for which group of students I am supposed to eat with on which day. But today was a special day. Today there would be no
kyuushoku. And late as I already was, there was no chance in hell that I'd be making my own lunch.
So I biked to a grocery store that is thankfully open 24 hours and somewhat on my way to school, picked up something tasty-ish looking, paid for it, and hopped back onto my bike. I was now a full ten minutes late.
If I bike
really fast, I might be able to do it, I thought.
And maybe I would have been able to. Except that today I was biking directly into very strong winds for the entire ride. I'm talking the kind of wind that blows your umbrella inside out and threatens to pick up your grandma and deposit her in the next county over. Any dreams I had of making up the time I had lost were thereby shattered.
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Grandma This Morning |
Half an hour later, I arrived at a suspiciously quiet school. Suspiciously quiet in that it was as quiet as a school would be if all the students had been gathered into a single room and told to be quiet.
But here's the worst part. It hadn't even occurred to me that there might be an Opening Ceremony today until half way through my bike ride. On my schedule, all it says is that my day is full of meetings. No mention of the Opening Ceremony. (This would be why I was not wearing a suit and tie.)
So I arrived at the Opening Ceremony entirely unprepared, under-dressed, and late. What a way to start the school year and make a good first impression on the new teachers, eh?
The ceremony itself was quite boring, actually, and not very different from the sort of assemblies we have in Canada and the US.
All the students sat down in lines according to what grade and class they were in. Then the principle stood up and introduced the new teachers to the students. All the main players then gave speeches. Topics were standard fare ("Study hard and do your best!", "Don't forget your manners!", "Don't forget to have fun!"). We sang the school song (I mostly just pretended as I have no idea what the words are), then the students were introduced to their teachers.
This was one point that was slightly different. From what I remember, my schools when I was a kid always posted lists of who was in what class with what teacher. In Japan, though, the class stays the same. Only the teacher changes and even then, sometimes the teacher stays the same across several years. And again, slightly different, the teacher assignments were announced at the Opening Ceremony rather than posted somewhere as a list to be read.
Of course, there was also copious bowing, all the students wore uniforms (which they always wear, not just during ceremonies) and everything was conducted in Japanese. In these ways, the Opening Ceremony here in Japan is different from what we might experience in Canada or the US. That is, for schools in Canada and the US that actually have assemblies at the opening of the school year (and I know some do).
When the ceremony finally finished, I slunk out of the gym and went to the teacher's room to write this post. And so here I am.
~Jeffles
