Shaseika – Drawing Day at Meiwa JHS

Last Thursday was Drawing Day at Meiwa. Instead of going to school, teachers and students alike went to allocated areas – the second years went to Kimiidera Temple, the third years went to Wakaura Port and I don’t know where the first years went. They spent the morning drawing, essentially 2 1/2 hrs, once roll call was completed at the beginning and end. I met the Wakaura Port group first, then rode over to the temple to see the second years as well. However, for some reason I thought it was the second years at the Port and the third years at the temple. When I saw all the third year teachers at the port, I was surprised but decided that they must mix up the teachers a bit for excursions. *slaps forehead* What was I thinking? This is Japan…no breaking out of boxes, or partnering teachers of one year level with students of another. (Here, as the students progress through the yr levels so do the teachers, meaning that the students have the same teachers every year. Great if you get good teachers, really sucky if you get bad teachers). It wasn’t until I saw a student at the temple, who I knew for sure was a second year student, that I finally twigged to my mistake. If you needed any illustration as to how little I know my students, I think this would be a good one! I can’t even tell the year levels apart! *shakes head regretfully*

Roll call for the third years

Roll call over, students are sent to complete three drawings in the short time given.

More students than seagulls!

The two new teachers fresh out of uni – the one in the grey tracksuit is the PE teacher who all the girls are going ga-ga over. It’s so amusing! The other teacher is a science teacher…I haven’t really talked to him much but he seems nice and it looks like he’s developed a good rapport with at least some of the students so far.

The teacher with these students is Hirano sensei – I quite like her, she usually tells me that I can go home early when meetings are on.

This is Bagus – the beach bar I so love. It was hit badly by a typhoon last autumn and is currently undergoing lots of construction work. Hopefully it will still be opening this weekend *fingers crossed* (It’s the small balconey type area under the white building, where the blue tarpolin is)

On to Kimiidera Temple, these are some of the second years.

On the left is Nishioka sensei – one of the three teachers I admire the most. Interestingly enough, two of the three teachers I respect the most have been abroad to study. He does however have a bit of an obsession about other people being fat. Always when he talks about any friend or colleague of his, he will always mention how the friend has let himself go, or gotten too fat recently, or is incredibly fit and active and slim. He has asked me why don’t I exercise, join a gym or something. I told him I ride everyday, everywhere and I do dancing as my choice of exercise because I find it much more enjoyable than the gym. That’s all he’s ever been game to say to me, but I know exactly what he’ll be saying to my replacement next year! *shrug*

When I asked if I could take their photo, these five girls asked if they could pull funny faces. I told them “yes, please!” and this is what emerged. Even their funny faces are almost identical! They then asked if I would be showing anyone the photo, and I said yes, probably friends back home. They all paniced and asked me not to, but then upon inspecting the photo themselves, they decided it was okay. However, I shall leave it off the cd I give to Meiwa next week 😉 I chatted with them for a while, and discovered that people who couldn’t, or didn’t want to draw, got their friends to do it instead! There are very different concepts of cheating here.

Roll call for the second years, just before hometime. (I’m including the roll call photos to convey an idea of the number of students I teach…I’ve worked it out to be around 2000 between all the schools, and Meiwa is definitely the biggest school with 800 odd students)

Going home, this group of girls were playing janken (rock, paper, scissors) to go down the stairs – whoever won got to go down one stair, whoever lost had to go up one stair. I imagine it took them quite a while to leave the temple as there are a lot of stairs.

I was really glad that they had a group there as I have never been to that temple before and it is beautiful. I hadn’t been, partially due to being pretty templed out, and partially because I knew about the steps – given that one flight of stairs at work can set my head throbbing, I’d never felt the urge to go up 200+ steps on a day off! It was worth it though, and I’ll definitely go back.

When we got back to school, there were special lunches waiting for us teachers (all the students went home or had a packed lunch at the temple and came to school for clubs). Yippee!! Special lunches occur about three times a year as far as I can figure: Drawing Day, Sports Festival and Graduation. To appreciate the scale of the lunch box, in the background is an A4 notebook on top of A3 size posters.

The new PE teacher couldn’t eat anything but the rice – he doesn’t like raw food, or vegies, or fried food…. we were all trying to find out exactly what he does eat (though he’s so skinny I wouldn’t be suprised if he doesn’t). He got much ribbing by the other teachers because the non-Japanese person sitting next to him was able to eat everything and he wasn’t. I kinda felt sorry for him, I mean it must be hard to be Japanese and not like sushi, right. More so with the way everyone here will react with disbelief bordering on horror,”what you don’t like raw fish? But how can that be??!!??”
I’m glad I like raw fish 🙂