This past Saturday, Mr. Yamagata, the ex-principal of Mukaiyama who retired in March, died suddenly of what I was told was an “aneurysm of the aorta.” This was very unexpected. His parents are still alive, both in their 90s, as well as his wife and three grown daughters. Mr. Kamiyama told me that even though he had been a principal for many years, and at many schools, he did not like it as much because he could no longer teach classes. After retiring, he got a part-time job as a world history teacher again at one of the private high schools in Sendai, and was eagerly looking forward to teaching in the classroom again. He actually had Mr. Kasahara as one of his students, back before he became a principal.

Mr. Kamiyama sent me an email to tell me the news yesterday while I was at Minami. He said that since the funeral will be held during the day later this week, many of the teachers could not go and were planning to go to the vigil this evening. I asked if I could go as well. Mr. Yamagata was a very kind man, who always took time to speak to me in his very minimal English. He was the one who, last fall, took me for tea at a traditional teahouse and told me all about his family and growing up in Sendai. When he retired, he had a friend who is a potter make custom tea mugs for everyone on the staff.

Because he had been a principal at so many schools, taught many people, and worked at the kencho for 3 years as well, his vigil was completely full. After school this afternoon, I went with Mr. Kamiyama to the funeral hall. When we came in, we signed the guest registry and handed the attendants special funerary envelopes with ¥3000 inside. Then the attendants, most of them teachers from Mukaiyama, gave each person a token bag, which apparently has green tea and some other kind of small gift inside, as well as a card with the death announcement on it.

The vigil was held in an auditorium. Almost all of the regular seats were full when we arrived, so the ushers were trying to fill in the empty seats. There ended up being two empty in the front row of the left section, and we were put there. Mr. Kamiyama was rather uncomfortable, because those seats are usually for people very close to the deceased, but it did afford me an unobstructed view of everything. After we had come in, they brought in extra chairs and filled in all of the area in the back of the auditorium, in between the tables that had been set up with food for people who were staying afterward.

At exactly 6:00pm, the vigil began with the raising of the thin curtain on the stage at the front. There was a display covering the wall of a model temple as the background for a center display of white orchids surrounding the portrait of Mr. Yamagata, smiling and happy, more casual than he ever was at work. On the tier below this were hundreds of unopened white chrysanthemums arranged on ferns, which gradually grew to palm fronds and unopened white day lilies at the sides of the display. From the back of the room, a bell began to ring, and three priests proceeded to the stage. The bell ringer, dressed in purple and tan robes, took his place on the right side of the stage, on the chair in front of the two gongs, one large and one small, shaped like bowls. The priest carrying a tall stick of incense, dressed in light green and saffron, took the chair at the right, in front of the carved wooden drum. The head priest, in burgundy with gold embroidery, took the central seat, facing the display, in front of an incense bowl. They all began to chant, with gong ringing from the right, rhythmic rubbing of the head priest’s prayer beads, and putting more incense into the bowl at certain intervals. The chanting had a constant underlying drone because at least one of them was always keeping it going, even when the others had stopped to draw breath. I’m not actually sure they were all chanting the same parts in unison anyway. At times it seemed more like a round. Since I’ve never seen a Buddhist chanting ritual before, I don’t really know.

After about 20 minutes, the gong ringer began to ring the smaller gong more often, the head priest rubbed his prayer beads for longer, and then the large gong was struck with finality, bringing the impressive chanting to an end. The gong ringer began another chant on his own, while the priest on the left picked up his stick and began to beat the carved drum in front of him. The announcer at the microphone on one side of the auditorium stepped forward and announced that Mr. Yamagata’s wife and perhaps his brother would now light the first incense at the 10 or so boxes at the edge of the stage for that purpose. Then his children and parents came forward and did so. Then everyone else in the auditorium did the same. The boxes held loose grain incense on one side, in a separate compartment, and on the other side of the divider was a bed with a piece of hot charcoal in it to sprinkle the incense over. As the last people were coming forward to do this, Mr. Kamiyama motioned to me to move with them to the back of the auditorium so we wouldn’t be in the front row anymore.

After everyone was back in their seats again, either Mr. Yamagata’s wife or one of his daughters, I could no longer see, made a short speech, and everyone bowed. Then the priests recessed out, ringing the hand bell, and everyone made their way out. Mr. Kamiyama said this was much shorter than an actual funeral service would be, since it was only half an hour, but he couldn’t really explain what would be done differently at a full funeral service. He did say, however, that is required by law in Japan that all bodies be cremated.

Today I taught two of my very last classes at Minami. Friday is my last day there, and it’s the same day as the closing ceremony for summer vacation for all high schools. This does mean that my Friday is going to be kind of busy, since I have to be there for the ceremony to give a farewell speech at both schools, but I’ll get to that later this week.

My first class this morning was with one of Ms. Shiokai’s classes, with one boy on the front row who always knows the answer and is always talking, except you can’t get mad at him, because he’s usually translating the more difficult English words for the people around him, or answering the question meant for someone else, correctly. One of the girls from the International Communication club is also in that class. The lesson for them was on introducing family members, and the last activity was to draw a picture of their family and use it to introduce the people. Japanese students are such good artists. I liked walking around seeing all their drawings, and they were good at telling me who the drawing was. I really hope I’ve prepared them enough to feel pretty comfortable with the new ALT. This year’s first year students at both schools have been much more willing to speak in oral communication class, and I’d hate it if they got all shy about talking to the new girl.

The next class, though, was the really good one. Mr. Endo had no lesson plan, because he didn’t want two of his three classes to get a lesson ahead of the other one just before summer vacation, so he said today was “free talk” for my last class. I started by talking about why I was going back to the US. I astounded them all by writing the kanji for “linguistics” on the board, since they definitely didn’t know what that word meant. Even though I spoke only in English, and there was no script in the textbook or anything to look at, they understood almost all that I said without Mr. Endo having to translate much. This is one of Minami’s all-girl classes, and when Mr. Endo told them they could ask me questions, they had lots of things to ask me. There was the usual “Do you like sushi?” and “Can you use chopsticks?” but also “Is there a Tanabata Festival in the US? Do you like Tanabata in Japan or there best?,” “What is your favorite traditional Japanese thing?,” “Do you like Japanese language?,” “What was the most surprising thing about Japan?,” and a bunch of other ones. The girls asked them all in English, with relatively little help from the teacher, too.

When they seemed to be running out of questions, I told them about my successor. I asked if anyone was in the brass band, and the two girls who were (percussion and clarinet) looked very happy when I said she played the flute and they should talk to her about music. Then I told them that she speaks Ukrainian with her mother and grandmother at home in England. One of the girls asked if Russian and Ukrainian were very similar to English, so I drew them a language family chart on the board, and they understood it. Then someone asked if they could take a picture, and three of them turned out to have disposable cameras in their bags, so the entire class gathered at the front of the room and we took a group picture, complete with peace signs. As Mr. Endo and I were walking up the stairs to go back to the staff room after class, two girls holding hands for mutual support caught me to ask one last question, the ever fascinating, “Will you marry with your boyfriend?” I’m sad to leave that class, and really, a lot of my students.

Yesterday, Sunday, Danola had organized what she called the “Bugger Off Brai” as a farewell party for those of us in the Shiogama clan who are leaving. “Brai” is Afrikaans for “barbecue” or “cookout.” Of course, it didn’t quite work that way, because it turns out there are lots of regulations about having an open flame except in certain designated places, so it ended up being more of a picnic. What’s more, Danola didn’t even come, because she had gone off to climb Mt. Fuji with some other group of JETs, and her shinkansen didn’t get back to Sendai until about halfway through the party. Some hostess she is.

What we did end up doing was meeting Alex at Tagajo train station and following him to the Tagajo Green Space. “We” in this case was me, John, and Oliver from Sendai; Sharon, Kristel, Laura, Alex, and his girlfriend Kayoko from Tagajo/Shiogama; and one science teacher from Alex and Sharon’s school. Richard was supposed to come, too, but canceled due to a migraine. The Green Space was quite a walk from the station, but the walk was very nice, all along the side of the river there, with many fish jumping in the water, and actually pleasant temperatures under a sky that never actually rained on us.

The Green Space was very pretty. There were some sports fields at the end we came in on, then a very interesting fountain in the middle, with lots of sort of torch shapes making a little water spout forest, and then the grassy area with lots of little trees where we spread out our picnic things. Being a Japanese picnic, we were of course prepared with ground covers, and everyone took off their shoes before sitting down. Kristel had gotten very much into the spirit of things and probably brought more than half the food, including pasta salad, watermelon, and grapes. Alex, the strict vegetarian, had brought potato salad spiced up with totally fake bacon bits. I brought little individual stick slices of cheesecake on a kind of baklava base, because they just remodeled the part of Sendai Station next to the ticket machines and evilly put in a cheesecake shop. Danola was with me when I noticed it, and drooled over the prospect of cheesecake, but since she wasn’t there, she didn’t get any. Neener, neener. I’ll be seeing her before I leave, anyway.

Out of the group there, Alex and I turned out to be the only ones really leaving Japan. Sharon isn’t on the JET program anymore, either, so the school she shares with Alex will get two new ALTs next year. She’s going to be a receptionist at one of the private language schools in Sendai, and will actually be moving to Itsutsubashi, which is the neighborhood just 5 minutes north of me, towards Sendai Station. She is very sad that I’m leaving, but she can still visit Richard easily from there, too, and my successor will be in my apartment. On the walk to the Green Space, Alex and I had fun discussing a fantastic fantasy series that his brother had loaned him, and then he loaned to me, actually before he had read them himself, and he wanted to clarify some of the points he didn’t feel like he’d really understood, since I’ve actually read more of the books than he has now. Me being me, I would have happily discussed that for the rest of the time, but strangely, not everyone else seemed as fascinated. When we got to the picnic spot, we all started talking about various things we liked about Japan and our home countries, why students giggle when they hear ALTs say things in Japanese, and Sharon discovered that the name of one of her favorite Japanese foods is also a slang word for certain bits of male anatomy, kind of like ordering eggs in Mexico. She was horribly embarrassed.

After we decimated the food, we played a very pitiful game of soccer with a ball Kristel had discovered in one of the cupboards of her apartment. This is what it’s like to be in a predecessor-apartment. You can find all sorts of strange and bizarre things, even nearly a year after you move in. My own apartment was pretty bare in that regard, but Danola and Kristel are both still finding things tucked away in random little corners. The game ended in a tie, after my team demanded that we switch goals, because our trees were much farther apart than the opposing team’s goal trees.

After that, people were feeling tired, so we packed up and began the walk back. Kayoko took all the Tagajo/Shiogama people in her car, and John, Oliver, and I walked back to the train station. The party had started at 1:30, and we didn’t get back to Sendai until 7. Saying good-bye to people at Kayoko’s car took a long time, as some of us realized we really wouldn’t be seeing each other again. This group is notorious for not being able to leave parties in a timely fashion, and this time was even worse. I’m sure I’ll be hearing from them all again, though. The internet is a wonderful thing.

Friday was, as I mentioned, the second day of the sports festival at Minami. Sure enough, when I got to school, the enthusiastic English teacher was there, waiting for me. He took me to see his third-year homeroom class compete in the very first events of the day, since they had done well the day before. It seems that on Minami’s first day, they played all the preliminary basketball and soccer games, but it seems like most of the volleyball was left for the second day. This teacher’s class, 3-4, had done well in boy’s soccer and basketball. They were finalists for soccer, playing against another third year class, none of whom I have taught at all, since I only teach first year students at this school. Even with the year change, I only know students in the first two years there. At Mukaiyama, I know all the students.

The final soccer match started at 9am, under glaring overcast skies, on a very wet and muddy field. The sponges they had put down in front of the goals had done all they could to soak up the water, but could only do so much. For all that, it was a lot of fun to watch. I thought it was especially funny to watch the boys suddenly start running really carefully on the one corner of the field with sparse grass on it, because it became extra slippery over there. The referees all immediately opted to go barefoot. Unlike Mukaiyama, there is no rule that club members can’t participate in their own sport, so there were some very good players on the field, much to the misfortune of the goalie from the basketball team, since in the end, the game came down to a PK sudden death match.

After that, and several changes of shoes, we went in to see the 3-4 boys play basketball. They won, with a lot of help from the one star boy who rarely missed a shot. As the teacher said, “He’s on the basketball team, so I feel kind of bad [for the other team].” I kind of wish all basketball games were like the sports festival ones, only 15 minutes long. I can actually stay interested for that long.

Then the teacher bought me ice cream in the cafeteria, since the sun actually came out and suddenly the temperature rose about 10 degrees for the first time in a week, and we went back to the staff room, where yes, I admit it, I did read my book. But then I got up and wandered around outside with my camera, watching the girls practicing for their volleyball matches in the afternoon. I found one team of girls that I taught last year. Several of them I remembered as being very eager to participate in class, and they waved and smiled when they saw me watching them. One of them got the boy acting as their team manager to take a picture of us together. Another of them is the girl I pass every day on my way to Mukaiyama, who after many months of seeing me, actually smiles at me spontaneously when we pass each other. I was amused to note that she was playing volleyball with perfectly manicured nails.

While I was watching them, the social studies teacher I made friends with at the beginning of the year invited me to go out to lunch with him and another social studies teacher. I said I wanted to wait to see the girls play, since it was very soon, and he told me to find him afterward. I did indeed watch the girls play, as well as several other teams before them, but they lost in the end. It was still fun to see them play, since even in the course of a rather short game, they got measurably better.

Then I did go find Itami-sensei. He got permission from the kyoto-sensei for us to leave, and we went outside and met his friend, who was going to drive us to the restaurant. It turned out to be in either extreme suburbs of Sendai or an entirely different town, with lots of large, modern, single-family homes. This is apparently where the other teacher lived, and a restaurant that he goes to a lot, because after he placed his order, he went over to his house to shower and change clothes, and was back before the entrée was delivered. It was a very nice, small, airy Italian restaurant, owned by an Italian man married to a Japanese woman. I think they live in Italy most of the time, but whenever they come to Japan, they import clothes and jewelry as well, and have a small boutique next to the restaurant. If I understood correctly, there is an Italian woman who is the chef in the kitchen.

Mr. Itami ordered a whole set course for me, as well as himself, and it was all so good. Japanese people take their Italian cuisine very seriously. Perhaps they identify with another culture that seems to be very into lots of courses during a meal. I’m sure the Japanese version of Italian food involves much smaller portions than what one might actually get in Italy, but that’s all fine with me. I think it’s going to be a shock to go back to Western-sized meals again in just two short weeks. Mr. Itami and I discussed European culture, books, and art for a while, which is his real love, and when his friend returned, talk turned to that man’s major in college, philosophy. Because I mostly know philosophers related to educational theory, such as John Dewey, we started talking about my area of linguistics and why it is good to learn a foreign language. I think that talking to these teachers makes it more clear that the philosophy behind teaching English in all the high schools in Japan is not so much to turn out fluent speakers, but instead to expose the students to alternative ways of thinking and a much different culture, as well as gaining more appreciation for their own language. These are very good things, and it’s really the same theory underlying the foreign language requirement in US high schools and universities as well, but I still think they have separated the living parts of foreign language study from the technical (grammatical) bits entirely too much.

After the meal, the other teacher, labeled the “fighting philosopher” by Mr. Itami, took us around the neighborhood so we could see his house. He had a large yellow lab in the front yard, named Lopez after a Spanish soccer star. We got back to school just as the closing ceremony was beginning, both of them very much having enjoyed using my “farewell party” as an excuse to get out of school for nearly two whole hours in the middle of the day. I certainly didn’t object either. That’s one of the fastest days I’ve ever had at that school, and a lot more socialization than I usually get, especially from students and non-English teachers.

Tonight was the night of the farewell enkai for me and the student teachers at Minami. It was at “The Wine Bar,” so I wasn’t holding out much hope for the evening. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was just the English department. What’s more, I think I paved the way for one of the student teachers to declare more comfortably that he didn’t drink alcohol either. I’m glad if I did; it’s easier for me to declare it because I’m both foreign and a woman, so I can just let them think whatever they want. Plus, this was the poor student teacher who had to team-teach with me on Monday, all on his own, and he was so nervous.

While there was lots of alcohol present, including, yes, 3 kinds of wine, as well as beer and a choice of mixed drinks, there was also, blessedly, food. I spent the beginning of the evening talking to Ms. Shiokai and Mr. Endo. Eventually, Ms. Shiokai switched places with me because Mr. Endo and I had started talking about Izumi high school and its English camp, since he just got transferred from there and was the teacher in charge of the camp when I helped with it in February. He said he went to Izumi for some event last weekend, and the students who had been at the camp knew he now works with me, so they spent most of the time asking him how I was. Awwww.

Apparently, 5 years ago, he was chosen by the Ministry of Education to spend 6 months at UC Davis, studying American schooling and living with a host family to get a truly American experience. He was very surprised to learn that different cultures use different conversational styles. Just so you know, the Japanese way is like bowling; each person step up, says their piece, everyone watches until its done, and then the next person steps up. American conversations are like basketball, with everyone passing the topic back and forth and jumping in the middle. Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian conversations are like rugby, with lots of close proximity, physical contact, and energetic shouting. He said this greatly deepened his understanding of foreign experiences.

Then I got embroiled in a discussion of foreign travel with some other teacher that I’ve never taught with, but his desk is near mine. I’ve never heard him speak that much English before. He really likes to travel and had lots of fun telling me all about his adventures traveling in Europe. He’s very happy that his children will be old enough next year to take them. He’s been waiting for 10 years for them to be big enough to make traveling worthwhile. I sure hope his kids appreciate having a dad who wants to take them all over Europe. When I said I would be going to Germany and France on my home, he had many suggestions of museums to see in Paris.

And then, then I got abandoned. All the nice people I had been talking to either had to go home or got involved in other conversations, and I was left to the mercies of the very bizarre teacher who only barely sort of speaks English. Listening to him takes a lot of concentration. It doesn’t help that he becomes somewhat, um, expansive when drunk. And chain smokes. He really, really wanted me to play volleyball tomorrow at Minami’s sports day. I think I told him about 5 times that I’d be happy to just watch, since I didn’t think telling him that I despise playing volleyball would be very diplomatic. He was concerned that I would read a book the whole time. While this is actually a somewhat valid observation, I wouldn’t do that on sports day, since there are actually things to see.

I was relieved when Mr. Yamauchi came over to join us, even though he’s not my favorite teacher, because at least his English is better and he was willing to talk about other things. He turned the conversation to whether or not I am a typical American. I said, no, probably not, because I’m very quiet and calm. The smoking teacher said that this is an important function in a social group, “kind of like a priest.” Mr. Yamauchi decided that I was more Japanese than American, but then amended it by saying that since more Japanese young people are starting to have conversations like Americans, I must be like an old Japanese woman. So I’m an old Japanese woman priest. Who would have thought?

Today I ate lunch in the cafeteria with the school nurse, and got all the gossip. The boy with the broken leg will be in the hospital for a month, so there goes his summer vacation. He was from the winning class, though, so it was not all in vain, and the whole class went to visit him in the hospital yesterday after school. The boy who collapsed at the relay race is now fine. Mr. Ogata is reported to be a very able and skilled assistant, as well. So now you know.

These past two days have the been the school sports festival at Mukaiyama. If you want a US context to put it in, it’s kind of like elementary school field day, only more competitive and more organized. Each class competes against all the others, all three grades mixed, and at the end of the second day, the classes’ points are totaled from all the various events to see who wins the school-wide prize, which is a very impressive trophy with lots of ribbons and a large box of… something. I assume snacks.

The first day opened with the t-shirt contest. Each class designed its own t-shirt for everyone to wear. Kamiyama-sensei got an extra one for me, so I was officially part of class 2-1. Its design features a cartoon llama or something in the shape of the 2. The back says “ONE” in large English letters, with the kanji characters for “Xanadu” underneath, (no one knows why.) Other classes were better, if not necessarily more explicable. I think my favorite was the one that came in second, a black shirt with a bright yellow cartoon frog on the front, and “We are stars!” on the back, with all the students’ names. There was a class that substituted their homeroom teacher’s name in the McDonald’s golden arches on a bright red shirt; a class that parodied the Puma athletic brand with their Mr. Kumagai’s name; and a tribute to Mr. Nagane’s new wife (Mr. Nagane’s name wasn’t actually on the shirt, only his wife’s). The class that won, though, had a headshot of one of their classmates surrounded by all of their names on a bright orange shirt. While it was certainly the most colorful shirt, it won solely on the merits of its presentation. They got their homeroom teacher, the new gym teacher, to skip down to the stage holding a giant Pooh bear also dressed in the shirt, where he then proceeded to put the Pooh on his head and spin in a circle singing a popular commercial jingle until he fell down. My theory is that he lost a bet.

After the shirt presentations, everyone got warmed up to start the actual sports events. The leader of the warm up was revealed as the curtains for the stage opened. He was holding a theatrical pose, one arm up in the air, the other hand on his hip… in a bright orange speed skater’s full bodysuit. Accompanied by a student playing a medley of soothing classical tunes that managed to fit the routine perfectly, he took everyone through the traditional Japanese sports warm up in high style. Everyone thought it was very funny, and the students warmed up with more enthusiasm than they did the day of the Long Walk, even though it was the same exercises.

The rest of the first day was dedicated to the preliminary elimination rounds of the main sporting events, basketball, volleyball, soccer, and table tennis. These were, of course, modified short matches so they could actually have all the classes compete in a timely fashion, and no student who played on that sport’s team as his or her club activity was allowed to participate in that particular activity, just to make it fair. 2-1 did pretty well in the preliminaries for all the events. I saw the girls’ team win a volleyball game and then a basketball game. I haven’t seen basketball quite like that since my brother was in the pee-wee league at 5 years old. Not a lot of skill involved, but at least they did manage to score twice, and that was all it took in a 20-minute mini-game. I didn’t see any of the soccer or table tennis, but Mukaiyama always has its sports day during the rainy season, so I’m sure the soccer players were quite a sight to behold. The playing field is only dirt, after all, not grass, so it turns into a nice big mud flat. Mr. Ogata, who sits next to me, said he didn’t get to see any of the soccer either, even though he’s the soccer coach, because he was assisting in the infirmary and was too busy. Nearly 50 students went through there to get taped or bandaged.

This morning was dedicated to the final rounds of the four main events. Apparently, one of the third year classes won both men’s and women’s soccer, so they must be really good. I don’t think 2-1 won any of the finals. After the basketball finals, the teachers challenged the winning boys’ team to a game, and were resoundingly beaten. Mr. Ogata reported that one student broke his leg playing soccer and had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance, but that was the only severe injury.

The afternoon was dedicated to “fun games,” and that’s when I found out what all the kids had been practicing for by running up and down the hallways in all their free time for the past two days. This was, in my opinion, the most fun part of the whole two days. These were all the silly games. There was a scavenger hunt for things the audience had, like someone’s smelly shoe, a necklace, a PHS mobile phone, another class’s sports day shirt, 3 people with glasses, etc. There was also, of course, tug-of-war. There was team jump rope, with 10 people jumping. This involved a lot of variation as teams had tried to determine what the best configuration of people was, 10 strung out, or 5 pairs, all facing one direction or both, how long the rope should be, all for one minute of jumping. The key was to find your rhythm early, otherwise you’d never get very many jumps.

Then came the best events, the ones they’d all been practicing for. For two days there have been students running past the staff room with their hands on each others’ shoulders, saying “one, two, one, two.” It was for the 100-Leg race. 10 students in a row had their legs tied together with judo belts, forming a long centipede tethered at the ankles. They had to run down the length of the gym, take a turn around the person standing at the end as a marker, and get back to the starting point. 2-1 was one of the fastest classes, and had put some thought into it. They had chosen a group of all girls, to keep the height variation to a minimum, and they were all barefoot. They had also tied their tethers better than some groups, who had to keep stopping to retie them. None of them fell down either.

As if that wasn’t amusing enough, the next event was even better, in a totally bizarre way. The classes were divided by even-odd room numbers into two teams. Then each of the classes provided two teams of first girls, then boys later, to make a kind of horse and rider pyramid. 3 students formed the horse by having one student in front with their hands held back on either side to form part of the stirrups. Then there were two students behind that one who put their inside arms on the front person’s shoulders to make the seat, and their outside hands held the front person’s to make the other half of the stirrups. The rider was wearing either a red or white cloth hat, depending on which team they were on. The object was for the rider to first, protect his or her hat, and second, to grab as many of the opposing team’s hats as possible. It was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen. The worst part is that I didn’t get a picture, because I was out of film.

The last event was a relay race. This had to be held outside on the mud field. The teams that were serious about winning all had either bare feet or cleats to avoid slipping. I think the fastest class was the Kumas. They got a huge lead right from the beginning and never gave it up. All the teachers were very impressed. One of the third year boys serving as the last leg collapsed after he got across the finish line from hyperventilation and cramps. His entire class gathered around him and cheered for him until he could sit up, and then two of them helped him get up. They were going to carry him, but he said he wanted to walk. When he tried, though, even with his arm around one of his friends, his legs collapsed, so his friend just shifted him over into a piggyback and carried him across the field to the infirmary.

The day ended with the closing awards ceremony. 3-1 class, with the yellow frog t-shirts, won the grand prize, but 2-1 was in 4th place, which was still respectable. The gym teacher who had done the Pooh dance got a gag prize, and came out to claim it with Pooh strapped to his back and a huge gold bow tie bigger than his own head. The emcee ended up conducting most of the ceremony through a handheld loudspeaker because the microphone died, but he still managed to be extremely enthusiastic, as he had been for the whole two days.

I met Danola on Saturday, ostensibly for lunch, but actually ended up going to see her high school’s brass band performance much later in the afternoon. I really wish I’d gotten to go to Mukaiyama’s now, since their band usually makes it to national competition, but they just had to perform the day I left for my vacation in May. Oh, well.

Anyway, Tagajo SHS might not be quite on par with Mukaiyama, but they were still very good. Kristel was with us, and said that compared to the junior high school performances she’s sat through, it was professional quality. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but it was impressive. It was divided into two halves, the first half being what the band director had chosen to showcase their skills, and the second half being student-chosen, as well as student-conducted.

In the first half, the band was wearing their uniforms of black pants and green blazers, very Japanese high school. The interesting thing to me was how many of the members were girls. The boys were by far in the minority. The entire timpani section was female, and they were a lot of fun to watch. The second piece, which I didn’t like very much overall musically speaking, was very entertaining from the technical aspect. The percussionists got out bass bows and ran them up and down the sides of the xylophone keys and one of the cymbals, and the trumpet and trombone sections put down their instruments and played glasses of water at one point.

The second half, though, was where the students showed off their creativity. For the first several pieces, each successive row of the seating had on a different rainbow colored top, and the lighting was done with a rainbow theme as well. There were also some cheerleaders with pom-poms, American style, who ran onto the stage at various times. I’m not really sure why, but hey, it was entertaining. To give you an idea of what the students chose to play, there was a medley of spy theme songs, such as Mission: Impossible, as well as some more seriously musical numbers.

Then there was a break as some smaller groups, such as the flute ensemble, and three members of the sax section, among others, came out and did group solos (including the Beatles, of course). During that time, everyone else was changing clothes and then assembling in their places behind the starry curtain some of the erstwhile cheerleaders were holding up. When the main stage lights came back up, the band struck up a medley from Disney’s Aladdin, complete with band members acting out scenes. There were three thieves chasing Aladdin at first, (and he looked very embarrassed to not have on an actual shirt, just his little vest,) and then Jasmine appeared (who looked even more embarrassed about appearing in what amounted to a shiny blue bra and harem trousers; she kept trying to cover her stomach). When Aladdin and Jasmine finally eluded the thieves and the romance theme started, an actual magic carpet appeared… in the form of a cargo trolley draped with a carpet, being pushed inconspicuously by the former thieves. The audience thought it was great.

Then the starry night curtain was removed, Aladdin, Jasmine, and the thieves got to return to their instruments, and the rest of the band was revealed to all be wearing a motley collection of vaguely Disney-themed costumes. They ranged everywhere from Mickey and Minnie Mouse, to Peter Pan, to a sparkly Tinkerbell ball gown, to a boy in an Afro wig, to several female basketball punks. Most of the timpani section opted for a tropical theme to go with their maracas. The best part, in my opinion, was when the sparkly ball-gowned percussionist had to take the place of the person at the drum set from her more usual position with the bells and xylophones, and had to hike up her glittery, cloudy blue skirts to use all the foot pedals properly. They all looked like they had a great time, and the audience obviously loved it too.
Like all Japanese cultural performances, we were also given comment sheets and pencils. Danola got to vote for songs she wanted to hear next year. She rather dated herself by requesting Wham. Who knows, maybe they’ll take her request, given the way retro music tastes run here. She might have had more luck with David Bowie, though. Kristel and Danola both had quite a time navigating the lobby to get out, since many of the students Kristel had last year graduated and went on to Danola’s high school. I, on the other hand, was just another gaijin. Ah, conspicuous anonymity.

This was quite possibly the lamest 4th of July ever. It’s something like the fourth or fifth year that I haven’t gotten to go to Nags Head, which is what I’m traditionally supposed to do, or at the very least, go to a beach. This year, I wasn’t even on vacation. Not only did I spend the whole day at work, there were also no other Americans around at all, so no one would even recognize complaining as legitimate for the day. It was all terribly depressing. Rainy season in Japan was not meant for reminiscing about American summer holidays.

When I saw Kristel and Danola the next day, Kristel said that now that her parents have a house in Florida, she’s been in the US several times for the 4th and found it very surreal. When her parents first spent a summer there, they had no idea why everything seemed to shut down and no one was around to do anything. Now, they have enough American friends in the neighborhood that they get invited to cookouts and stuff, but before, they had no idea what was going on. That made me feel a bit better.

So, since I don’t have a good Japanese 4th of July story, I’ll tell you about my other foreign holiday adventure, from two years ago when I lived in Chile. That day happened to be the first day of our trip to Peru. The semester was over, it was “exam period,” which none of the professors actually used to give exams, and we were set to leave for the US in two weeks, so those of us on the program who didn’t decide to go home early (the weenies) decided to travel as much as we could.

Early in the morning, Jessica and I met up with some of the other gringas in our group of 8 and got on the plane in Santiago to fly to Arica, the northern-most city in Chile. It was winter in Chile, so when we left Santiago is was chilly and gray, but Arica is desert country, and it was bright, sunny, and warm when we got there. We spent the day wandering around town while waiting for the last two people in our group to get in on a later flight. The sky was brilliant blue, there were flowers blooming in the square outside the famous church designed by Eiffel, and then we walked over to the ocean. I took a “patriotic” picture of a statue of the liberator of Chile, Bernardo O’Higgins (Yes, O’Higgins. He was half-Irish. I’m not kidding.), on a horse, of course, in front of the big historic cliff that the Chilean army had to scale to recapture the land from Peru, with a Chilean flag at the top.

Later that afternoon, when everyone had gotten there, we took a taxi across the border, just 45 minutes, to Tacna, Peru, and from there set off on our Peruvian adventure. I want to go back to the Andes now. Sigh.

Yesterday I taught class all on my own, without a co-teacher. I didn’t mind that much, since it was a class I was supposed to teach with one of the more stressfully clueless teachers. When I came in by myself and announced that the other teacher wouldn’t be there, the students all applauded. What am I going to do next year when I’m not a celebrity anymore? I might actually be expected to teach my English classes at MSU based on something other than my exotic foreigner status. What a shock.

I was worried that I would have enough to do with them, but it turned out that we needed to finish 2 lessons, instead of just one, so that was no problem. I started out with a version of team “Telephone,” where they pass a sentence to the back of their row and the last person in each row has to write it on the board, the object being to get all 10 words correct and therefore keep all 10 of their points. It’s a successful game at both of my schools. Then we covered 2 lessons worth of material, with listening comprehension and pair work.

And I did everything in English. Everything. I did not speak any Japanese to the students at all, and they seemed to understand almost everything the first time. For the complicated instructions for the game, I asked for a volunteer from the class to translate, and that was it.

It’s kind of depressing to me to think about, actually. If these students had teachers who consistently spoke English to them in English class, they would be so much further ahead now. If more Japanese teachers would assume that their students could actually understand them and not baby them with simple sentences and immediate Japanese translation, they’d actually learn things! An amazing concept, I know. I suppose I should be glad that I’m getting all these valuable insights into what not to do when I’m responsible for teaching on my own. In the meantime, the Japanese schools are a long way from turning out fluent English speakers.

Why don’t people just ask me? The world would run a lot more smoothly.