school lockdown

"They're here!"

The Vice Principal ducks down, and peeps through the blinds to see a number of legs walk past the window. He signals to the other teachers to prepare themselves for what's going to happen.

The new teachers, sitting at their desks they were just allocated the previous day, look around nervously, not knowing what to expect, or for how long it will go for. They sheepishly grin at each other, hoping that it will pass soon enough.

BANG BANG BANG!

The windows that span the whole length of one side of the staffroom reverberate the sound. All the blinds have been closed in preparation for this too, so only the slightest ray of sunshine comes into the staffroom. After each bang, the blinds sway little bit more each time.

"It's okay," the Vice Principal reassures everyone. "Just ignore them, they'll be gone soon enough." The banging continues for another few minutes, getting louder and louder, and moving in a wave from one side of the room to the other. "The main entrance doors are locked, right?"

I look at my watch. It's 4:47. If only I had left right on the dot at 4:30, as my contract says, and not wasted any time leaving, now I just have to wait patiently till this is all over. At least it won't happen again next week, when school starts.

At the moment, it's the school break. Just last week we had the last day of school. But unlike schools back in Australia, the last day of school is shrouded in secrecy. Teachers in Japan are employed by the prefecture, not by the school directly, meaning that once they become a teacher, they have little to no choice about which school they'll be teaching at, and they don't know how long they'll be there. All the placements are decided by the prefectures. So, teachers can find themselves working in a school 2 hours away from their home, in the middle of nowhere, and having to move without a single complaint.

It's usually the younger, less experienced teachers that get the short end of the stick though. Initially, as a qualified teacher, you're expected to work at a school for 3 years, before moving you to another school As they get more senior, they can request if you want to stay at the school for another year or not, and also request what area you want to teach in. To top it all off though, teachers only find out during the last week of school where they'll be going. So, theoretically, you might be asked to move to the middle of nowhere, find a place to live, and get ready for work within a week.

The secrecy though continues on til the very last day of school. Teachers aren't allowed to tell the students if they're leaving or not (despite how traumatising it may be) and students are kept in the dark until the last assembly, where they sit and wait in the hall for the doors to swing open, and see the parade of teachers who are leaving enter the assembly hall. It almost seems like a Japanese reality TV show aiming to toy with kids' emotions by giving them no sense of stability whatsoever.

Once school is over, and the teachers clear their desks and leave, the following day, new teachers come, and are kept up to date with the processes in the school and everything else. once they're officially welcomed with the first staff meeting, it's back to work, preparing for the new school year at their desks in the staffroom.

In the meantime, since the new teachers haven't been introduced yet, the school is now completely locked, and the blinds are drawn to stop any students from seeing the new teachers before they should.

Which is why I'm still at my desk at 4:58. I'm waiting for my new 2nd year students (who we just had a meeting about yesterday to fill in the new teachers) to stop banging on the windows and trying to take a peek at the new teachers before the new school year starts. Why are kids who hate school so much hanging around school on the last day of spring vacation anyway? I kinda feel sorry for the new teachers. To me, the banging comes from the little brats that I've been used to seeing for the past year, but for them, they're just faceless unknown attackers trying to smash all the windows at school.

oshiri kajiri mushi...

So, it's been two full weekends since my last blog, and What do I have to show for it?

• A scarf, and two pairs of gloves - I realised after riding my bike to school one wet, sub 5˚ morning that I really needed to buy more winter weather accessories. And, never seeing the snow much in Melbourne, decided I needed to make my first ever purchase of a scarf. The only one I had beforehand was a Footscray Bulldogs scarf, which was rarely used because:
  a) It's never really scarf-worthy weather in Melbourne,
  b) Surprisingly, I never really felt an urge to show everyone which AFL team I barracked for, or even let people know that I actually, at one point in time, did follow the AFL, albeit superficially and purely because I liked dogs and the colours red and blue when I actually did follow the AFL, and
  c) I'm not a bogan.
  I also ended up with two pairs of gloves - not because I felt the need to have options to coordinate with what I wore each day, but since I didn't expect to find any gloves I liked and bought a cheap arse pair that I thought I were okay. That was, until I found a cooler, more expensive pair of leather gloves in another store 10 minutes later.
  
• A Paper Doll - "Meh, I've done origami before, a paper doll can't be that hard!"
  One deflated ego, and two hours later, resulted in this: Turns out paper doll, not as origamiy as I thought. And, I found out that I have issues differentiating an inch from a centimetre, which doesn't make the art of making paper dolls any easier.
• A Japanese song stuck in my head. After Karaoke last week (yes, I went again, and please don't judge me - I got tricked into doing all these things! stupid Japan!) Our usual trip was a little different this time since we went with a Japanese guy who didn't speak that much English. Not wanting him to feel out of the loop, I tried to sing a Japanese song, and turns out, I don't know that many. The only ones I do know happen to be both kid's songs - one from 2000, and the other one, a huge hit at the moment... So much so that it's now even got it's own dance. You know how when you don't know all the words to a song, only the few words you know play through your head, which eventually drives you insane? Well, it seems to happen a lot in Japan, since I can't understand most of the words, and this song just feels like I should know more to the song, but what I know is pretty much it.... "Oshiri kajiri mushi...." dammit!
  
• A butt groove on my kotatsu chair. Due to a lack of central heating in Japan and my paranoia about using a kerosene heater, my saviour is my trusty ol' kotatsu. It's like a coffee table, with a blanket underneath the top table bit that drapes over the edges and underneath the table top and blanket is a mini heater, so as you sit underneath the table, your feet stay warm, and the heat stays in thanks to the blankets. Mmm.... toasty... I so am not looking forward to my next electricity bill.
  
• Resentment towards TV networks. If it weren't for the Writer's Strikes, I wouldn't have sat through a season-long Heroes marathon. It only would have been an 10 episode marathan of Heroes instead. Now not only am I more yay-Heroes, but I'm annoyed that this next episode that's only meant to tie up the current storyline is now serving as the season finale. Booo.
  

matrix date

Aah, Japanese TV - you never disappoint. If it isn't a wacky gameshow where people are punished for wrong answers by being farted on bare-butted (which evidently can lead to pink eye), human tetris, or a dancing tree and weird sperm-dude singing a song for curry, then it's a cool live action matrix-esque date.



While I am doing the going to Japan freak out thing, this at least gives me something to be excited about...