Monday, September 2
In the school gymnasium, children sat on the floor, single file, reminscent of the rice paddies outside. From a chair beside them, I rose and approached the stage to give my opening speech to the entire school. I was neither prepared nor excited, but I struggled with the Japanese to get my point across.
I was happy to be their new English teacher, I said, and I hoped that they would help me learn Japanese. The event reeked of formality, but when it's your turn to talk, formality is not all that bad. At least everyone listens.
I spoke of the beauty and magnificence of the small village of Mima, and how I knew that my Japanese was poor, but that I was studying intensely (a lie any of the students who had tried to speak to me would have caught immediately). I finished, and a young girl wearing glasses approached
the stage and spoke to me in very broken English.
Welcome to Mima, she read from a sheet that was wrinkled from her nervous anticipation.
Afterwards, when I sat down in my seat, I noticed the shoes. All the children were in matching uniform, but the different stripes on their shoes caught my eye. Red for girls, blue for boys. The shoes were the same, rubber soled low-tops, but the stripes were different. There were no other noticeable differences.
No hair gel, not tattoes, no wild cut off jeans.
Everyone was the same, or at least appeared to be. And they sat quietly as the principal read off his daily notes.
Several students approached the stage at the behest of the principal. What was their purpose, I asked Mamiko, the English teacher I would be assisting for the year. "She says that she will make an effort this year in school and with club." OK, so does that imply that she did not make an effort last year, I wondered? In the beginning of each term, "bad" students will apologize to the school for their past wrongdoings, but must do so on the stage in front of the entire school.
Apparently the Japanese value embarrassment as the best means of rehabilitation.
When the speeches had finished, the vice principal lead the crowd in applause and then we stood in respect of the principal, who would speak again. He rose from his seat and climbed the stairs to the stage. He bowed in reverence to the Japanese flag, a red cirle on a white background. Simple yet organized, I wrote in my notebook.
My attention wandered to the other teachers, seated along the side of the gymnasium in folding chairs while the children sat on the cold, hardwood floor. They looked forlorn, as if waiting for a train that would never come. Many wore ridiculous clothing; bad ties and loud shoes, with the standard short-sleeve white button down and tie. It was clear that casual clothing did not fit well at Mima junior high school.
The gymnasium was full, but it was small; a basic old building evoking recollections of the movie Hoosiers. Aside from the kanji on the walls and Rising Sun flag, it very well could have been Indiana.
I picked up my dictionary to look up the word "taihen," Japanese for "very." As I did, I jerked the chair making a loud sound, embarassing myself boldly by interrupting the principals speech. Silence followed, as he waited until I put the dictionary down. Perhaps my speech had been acceptable, but whatever brownie points I had earned for it, I had lost in my attempt to learn a new word.
I looked at myself in shame; I stuck out like a unhammered nail. I was wearing a black shirt and a silver tie, wore dark socks with my inside shoes, and stood a good four inches over anyone in the building. Everyone else wore white. I sneezed and admitted to myself that first impressions were not my forte.
The music teacher stood and made her way to a grand piano in the front of the gymnasium. A gentle melody ensued, and the entire room burst in song. It was the school song, I was later told, but I knew none of the words, so I hummed the melody instead. It seemed like each verse was repeated three times, but the piano was soothing and I cared not. It was the type of song that anyone outside of Mima would condemn as simplistic and out of key, but to me, and I imagined to the rest of the penguins in the building, it meant much more.
Yet I couldn't shake the notion that my school was raising a community of computers. They dressed the same, they seemed to act the same, and at this point, what they said was the same, at least to me: gibberish. They showed little emotion until the ceremony had ended, then the girls laughed shyly and the boys smiled at me, hopeful that I would not be another beacon of regulation. It was only my first day, but I found the opening ceremony of the second term to be too rigid and formal, in the same way a tight belt can give one a stomach ache. It seemed that the
formality sapped the life out of the kids; they sat on the floor sapped of all individuality and zest. There were no clowns to be reprimanded for disrupting the event. There were no jokers passing notes to each other in mild rebellion. Only me, the redwood in black surrounded by bonzai in white.
