The end of the year

Well, March 20th has come and gone, and so has the end of my first school year here. Lets rewind a bit, because I've been lazy, to March 1st, when the 3rd years graduated. I had dim recollections of my own graduations, first from Japanese school and second from high school, but I don't think they were as initially boring as this one was.

Japanese ceremonies seem to all be made of standing, bowing, sitting, speech-making, all in that order repeated ad nauseum. Add to that the fact that the gymnasium isn't heated. It's a wonder everyone wasn't falling asleep. Still, the latter half was as emotionally charged as a graduation ought to be. I was a little misty-eyed, but I'll be honest and say I almost lost it when the 3rd Year rep broke down in tears during her thank you speech. In the aftermath, I think it was a pretty touching ceremony.

Fast-forward to last week. Class match, where the kids from each class squared-off against each other in various sports. Sadly, the weather was uncooperative, and it was raining all day. It was truly cold and miserably, and in the end all the sports were cancelled and replaced with table-tennis. In the end, I think the kids enjoyed it, or at least, enjoyed not being out in the rain. Some of them I'm sure had rebounds of colds or influenza, which has been kicking the shit out of the students for at least 3 weeks now.

Yesterday was the last day of school, coupled with the revealing of who got in and who didn't to Genkai High School. A little bit of explanation here is in order. First, entrance into high school, any high school in Japan, rests on an entrance exam. It is this exam that kids spend at least a year, and for some the entire 3 years of Junior High School, preparing for.

Students can take 2 exams. The first is for a private high school, which is less desirable as the tuition costs are higher and are thought to offer a lower level of education. Which this is not true, it's hard to break out of that preconception. All of these private school exams take place on the same day, and are usually fairly easy, so as to almost ensure success. The reason for this is the other exam.

Prefectural (or public) high schools are the other exam. Thought to be more prestigious and offer a higher level of education, the primary consideration is it's lower tuition costs. These too are held all on the same day (but on a different, later day than the private school exams), and are intentionally harder to weed out the students.

Of course all students know this, so virtually all students study like maniacs in their last year to prepare for this. All schools offer a limited number of spots (for Genkai, for example, we had 320 regular spots open, and 40 International Culture Course spots open), so competition is fierce. The private school exams are held before so as to shift expectations, so that if you do well or poorly on that exam, you can adjust which public school exam you can go. Genkai is a mid-academic school, where as some place like Fukuoka high school is a high academic, and the exams given reflect this.

This year, we had 595 regular course applicants, and 49 ICC applicants. Around 9am, most of the students converged on the signboards displaying the student numbers of those who succeeded. Screams of joy abounded, as well as I'm sure shocked kids who slinked away in tears. What happened to them? Were they the stupid kids? Just unlucky that day? Somehow I don't think so. It's a tragedy inherent in the Japanese education system that puts 15 year old kids through a pressure cooker. Those kids that didn't make it failed to get in because they might have lost a single point somewhere on their exam, or scored the same but failed the interview portion because they didn't participate in club activities in JHS, perhaps ironically because they were preparing to get into high school. Most of the more forward thinking teachers seem to feel that this is something that needs to be addressed, but ultimately, save for a complete revamping of the system, any changes would be merely cosmetic. Still, this is something that all Japanese kids know and understand, and oddly, I think any other system would feel strange to them.

Back to the last day of school, the closing ceremony had it's requisite bows, but was over pretty quickly. The rest of the day was a sort of dreamy day, as those teachers getting transfered or leaving the profession cleared out their desks. It was a good chance for me to do a little spring cleaning on my desk.

Later than night, we had our 2nd Year Teachers End of the Year Enkai. It was, as always loads of fun, but ended badly for me when I discovered I had left my wallet somewhere. I knew were I had left it, checkout register #4 at the Kinokuniya bookstore nearby. Unfortunately, the store was closed. Oddly, knowing that I had left it there, I wasn't really flapping or anything. The most dominant feeling in my gut was that I didn't want to have to bother coming all the way back to Hakata to get my wallet. Luckily, an employee checking the doors came by. I knocked hard, probably scaring him, and he told us (my supervisor, bless his heart, was with me) that the wallet had been taken to the building security office. We went down, talked to the security guards, identified my wallet and left a happy man.

Nothing like a little bit of drama on a Tuesday night.