27 - Singalong

It’s all go. All of it. First was the cultural festival at school, which was panic-ridden chaos until the day itself due to the unknown influence of a pair of typhoons. Now we have the upcoming Skills Development Conference to worry about, or rather I do, as I’m presenting. That afternoon I am exempt from the usual keynotes speech and demonstration of team teaching because I have another presentation, this time back at my school, with my OTE. I think he feels a bit out of the fire and into the frying pan, allowed out of the SDC but instead to be judged by other teachers from Kita ward. Poor guy. I haven’t told him about my plans for an ICP next year, but I don’t think he’ll be happy to hear of the extra work. The day after the SDC is English Festival at Gaidai, which brings with it a whole new pile of stress, as three of my students are giving a speech in the contest. They’re nervous, to say the least; this is the first time our school has ever done something like this. They’re going up against some real heavy-weights, even discounting the three international schools taking part. I’m proud of them even for trying, and I’m sure they’ll do really well, but I hope they’ll think the same when it’s all over. And in the midst of all this, just this morning I remembered that I was supposed to reply to an invitation to watch a friend’s wedding over the internet, which is tomorrow.

I’m not sure what’s wrong with me, whether its fatigue, stress, that cold that I thought I’d gotten over during the weekend. But whatever it is, it’s been making me real scatterbrained and emotionally fragile. I keep walking into things, too, and suddenly thinking I’d forgotten something important before realizing I’d just imagined it. Or had I? I can’t even tell. It’s not for want of time; just last night I caught my second shiny Pokémon, a Slowpoke. Looks just like regular Slowpoke, but with a matte finish. I have big plans to pump him up into a beefy Slowking, which unfortunately involves trading him to someone else with a certain item to kick-start the evolution. Do I trust anyone enough to temporarily lend them my beloved, once-in-eight-thousand shiny? We shall see. Maybe I’ll need to take something of theirs as a hostage until they trade Excalibur the Shiny Slowpoke back. You see the sort of stress I need to contend with? But no, I’m not feeling weak because I don’t have time to relax. Sleeping’s been tough of late, maybe that’s had something to do with it. Making dinner with Steph always seems to take an eon. I’ll think about ways to shorten that down. And maybe the clutter around the house isb’t helping, Steph wants to do something about that this weekend. But then that’s less time to rest and regain my energy and… Urgh! It never ends…

A silver lining: tomorrow morning’s the second elementary school music festival, this time for the bigger of my two schools. I’ve never been invited to this one before, and wouldn’t have been able to go since it had a tendency to land on a Wednesday, of all things. But I am excited. My smaller school’s festival was once again unbelievably excellent, with stellar performances all round and a complete lack of mistakes of any kind. It was even better to hear the first and second year kids sing Itsy Bitsy Spider, complete with gestures, in well-practiced English, and the fourth years rattle off a short refrain from a Stevie Wonder song in equally high-grade English. Blows anything my old schools could have done out of the water. My bigger school seems to want to up the bar a bit, though, as their second years are doing all of their songs in English. The ABC song, Bingo, London Bridge and Are you Sleeping, which I’d never before heard in not-French. This last month I’ve been working with them to fine tune the pronunciation and hear their grievances about saying LMNOP really fast. (I taught them that it’s easier to just try and say e-le-me-no-P, which they think is hilarious for some reason.) Other than that, I have no idea what’s in store. Must be big, though, ‘cos last Tuesday was like Staffroom of the Dead. Lots of vacant eyes and lurching, and the weekly English meeting was delivered with all the enthusiasm of an unemployed sea cucumber. Must be tired, and I know the feeling. I mean, I saw the same deaths in the eyes of my junior high school around the time of our cultural festival.

Let’s talk about that. For the most part the day didn’t change much from the tried and tested formula used, I think, by all the schools in Kobe. The morning was open house, with kids’ work up on the walls of their classrooms. For English we had a first year display, where the kids wrote the simplest of self introductions and then said what their treasure was, with a little picture to go with it. I was disappointed to find that they’d been re-drafted from when I’d originally set them the work earlier in the year, so the kids that wrote things like ‘Onion is my treasure’ had switched to more acceptable things. I thought it was quite funny, actually. There was some pretty good stuff up, and I had the pleasure of seeing it as I had the morning free to wander around and see everything. My favourite was a set of third year posters which they’d started in second year, where they’d written what they were like then (year 2) and what they thought they’d be like in the future (year 3). As third years, they’d stuck on photos of themselves from the three years of middle school, and it was great to see how much they’d changed. Some of them were practically unrecognisable. The science room also had some cool stuff, like little heart-shaped tubes with coloured liquid that moved around when you held it in your hand. Something about body warmth I think, but I dunno. Also had a great moment at the front gates when a family came in with a little two year old, who practically bellowed out a konnichiwa at me when his parents said hello. The same kid came wandering out of one of the classrooms as I passed, and on seeing me shouted out to nobody at all, ‘Oh, it’s that guy from before!’ As I passed, his father came out to see what all the fuss was about, and when he did I heard the kid say, ‘He must have come from real far away. Look at his skin!’ Ah, to be young again. But really there wasn’t a whole lot to see that morning, and I quickly got a bit bored. Ended up seeking out kids from my elementary schools to talk to, preferably in the presence of their middle school older siblings so I could earn a few cool points. See? Your little sister thinks I’m cool!

The afternoon was the big presentation in the main hall, which I obviously sat in on. I’d avoided watching the rehearsals this year, to keep it all a surprise. First they had the winners of the chorus competition from the week before sing their chosen songs, which was fairly impressive. Then there were a couple of speeches, and then the health club kids gave a Powerpoint presentation about sugar in drinks. They dropped the ball last year by making it about sleeping habits, and showing it in a dark room – I’d been ready to nod off then and there by the end. But this year was actually pretty interesting, and I learned a few things to boot. Like, non-alcoholic drinks actually have alcohol in them, it just has to be under a certain level. Saw a few parents’ faces pale at that, parents who’d probably let their kids break the law because they thought they were just giving them glorified soft drinks. And no calorie drinks are the same. Not that they have alcohol, that they just have to have under a certain level of calories. I knew that sugarless drinks are pumped full of additives to give them taste, but the rest was news to me. So yeah, good job health club.

The two big events for the afternoon were the third year play and the wind band concert. The morning before, the kids from the newly-established drama club had stood out in the rain with paper fliers to hand out to the other students. In the privacy of the staffroom, the teacher in charge had explained that this was because the story was very difficult to follow, and the audience might need a bit of help with it. This got a laugh; weird, confusing plots are a trademark of middle school productions. But in the end I was very pleasantly surprised by how the play turned out. It was much better than that bizarre Romeo and Juliet 2 Except Juliet Somehow Survived And Romeo’s Ghost Is Trying To Get His Younger Brother To Go Out With Her thing from my first year in Kobe. The premise was that a highschool girl was asleep, and was visited in her dreams by something called a Life Advisor, who informed her that she was taking too long in choosing what she wanted to be in the future. Like, what stereotype you fit into, rather than what job. The Advisors showed her a selection of archetypes she could pick, that she would magically become in the morning if she chose them. Things like sports enthusiasts, bullies, pop culture fanatics, prefects and two different types of nerd. Y’know, one who studies a lot and one who locks himself in his room listening to europop and assembling plastic models of underage girls. They have a word for that in Japan but not in English, I think. Anyway, all these archetypes were massive exaggerations of what it meant to be fit into such and such a category, and the girl rightly argues that they’re all weirdoes and she doesn’t want to be any of them. The Advisors then make the deal even less desirable by saying that if she doesn’t pick one then and there they will pick for her, and then inform her that the procedure for making her choice involves putting her hand on one of the characters’ shoulder and jamming a knife into her own heart. Naturally, she kicks up quite a fuss about this. So the Advisors make the choice for her, and the cross-dresser characters chase the girl around the gym before eventually cornering her and making her stab herself with the knife. Cut to black. Then the lights come up and everyone congratulates each other on making a great rehearsal for the cultural festival, and start having a meeting about what they could improve. See, it’s like Inception or something. But it turns out the actors are slightly more realistic, but still very single-minded versions of their own characters, and one by one they dump their responsibilities to the play and run off to do other stuff, leaving the protagonist alone. She complains to the directors of the play that she doesn’t like the ending, that she thinks the girl should have the right to choose her own path. To which she receives a shrug and a ‘that’s life’, before the directors make their own way home. The girl, alone, soliloquises that life is more complicated than that, and that she wants to choose a new path, her own. Then the play ends on a pointless, cheesy ‘Saki went on to start a bakery and lived happily ever after’ narration. So yeah, for a bunch of middle schoolers surprisingly deep. I was impressed. They also worked together really well, and it sounded like they really enjoyed themselves. Good job them.

The wind band was last, and once again they were incredible. I’m always blown away by those kids and their music, and it boggles my mind that they’re not even that good on a national or even city-wide level. They totally nailed the Pirates of the Caribbean theme, and deserved every round of applause they got. The one thing I will say, and I say this with all the tact I can muster, is that the solo bits got a bit much. It’s customary for the third years who’ll be leaving at the end of the year to stand up and do part of the melody solo, so everyone can see them and think about their personal contributions to the club. Great. When they’re done, they bow, and everyone claps. But the thing is, they tend to string a few solos together, one after another. And the accepted clapping time to be polite is about four seconds. Which means one third year gets their solo, and everyone claps, only to drown out the next kid’s solo which barely gets heard at all. I see why they did it, and it must be hard to find good places for support instruments like tubas to get centre-stage moment, but it doesn’t quite work. Y’know? So, overall it was a cracking day, and the kids really excelled themselves. And everyone breathed a big sigh of relief when it was over. That night was the customary staff party, which... could have gone better. The company was fantastic; each time I go out drinking with these teachers I end up feeling even closer to them, and they really go to great lengths to keep me feeling like one of them. Only... the restaurant was traditional Japanese food, which means I got served more of my favourite Severed Fish Head in Oil. I mean, different cultural tastes and all that, but uuuuuurgghhrhghhgh. And the boiled eggs had runny yolks that looked suspiciously red. Urgh, I feel bad just thinking about it. And the whole thing was rounded off with a barbeque on a stone platter in the middle of the table, which smelled just foul. Say what you will about meat being great, you set that stuff on fire and it reeks. Forcing down so much food I didn’t want made me royally sick the next day, just in time for not church. No sir, not that Sunday. I’d barely have left the house before depositing oily fish head from my stomach on to the ‘Yama pavement. Posh food. Do not understand. Apparently some secret council of ALT supporters is organising a joint JH-ES party in honour of me and Steph getting married, and that’s just the kindest thing I’ve ever had the pleasure to receive. But... if it could not be at some high-class eastern-style restaurant, that’d be grand. Pizza Hut, if you please.

I’d better sign off there. I can write again after the SDC, ‘cos I’ll have plenty to say about that. Thanks for reading.