Japanese Elementary School

The Japanese Elementary school was bizarre and familiar, as most things in Japan are. I shadowed my 4th grade host brother today, and it was quite interesting. I asked what I should wear to school, if there was a uniform and I should adhere or at least wear something similar. My host mother told me, “No uniform, anything’s good.” I took this to mean that there was no uniform, that like in American elementary schools, there’s no uniform and the kids generally wear whatever. Apparently the Japanese meaning of “no uniform” means that all the kids wear white t-shirts with the school logo on the breast and blue shorts with the school logo on the bottom. I can see what they mean, it's not a tie and jacket. I think they automatically associate uniform with tie and jacket.

So I left the house in my green shirt and brown shorts, and a good 80 feet above everyone else to walk the 25 minutes to school. Walking home at my own pace took me twelve, but they have short legs. When we got to school I had to change into my indoor shoes as always. For indoor shoes I took a wet towel and scrubbed all the dirt off my track shoes. I was surprised when I learned that this was allowed. I figured that indoor shoes had to be pure and never touch the outside, but I’m learning to not get surprised at anything in Japan. So I changed into my shoes and was led to my brother’s classroom. I felt like an animal at the zoo. Everyone stared at me. Everyone. I did stick out a little bit.

First period was Japanese where they had a kanji quiz. The teacher wrote words on the board in hiragana (phonetic alphabet) and the kids had to write down the kanji (picture words) on their quiz sheets. My version was to write down the words, and then hurriedly look them up in my dictionary. Now they’re safe in my pocket notebook and I memorized five new vocabulary words today including, fund, to bear weight, and concern. After Japanese came math and I promptly feel asleep. Despite my best efforts to stay awake, the heat has sucked my energy out these last few days, and the fact that it was boring math in a language I didn’t understand didn’t help. I tried memorizing words but I nodded off anyway. I need to get more sleep at night. I did notice them learning the distributive property with circles, squares and triangles. I looked those words up too. I think they're more advanced than we are, I don't remember learning the distributive property in 4th grade. And this was a normal class, not advanced math or anything.

I was awoken by one of the staff, who was walking around to check on the classrooms. He gave me a tour of the school, which was quite nice. It looked like most other Japanese schools, kind of run down, dilapidated poured concrete, with a dirt and rock field outside for recess. He returned me to my class shortly before lunch, which was an extremely surreal experience. I couldn’t help but notice a lack of a cafeteria in the school. This is because all the students eat lunch in their classrooms. They pushed all the desks together and pulled out their cloth napkins and chopsticks. Then other students, from where I don’t know, rolled in hot food on trays wearing cafeteria lady smocks and bonnets. The kids lined up by table and were served food by the oddly dressed students. I found the whole process very intriguing. After lunch instead of throwing away their milk cartons, they rinsed them, ripped them open, and put them in a basket to dry. It was super weird. I had a delicious lunch made by my host mother this one time. She told me just this once and that in the future I have to make my own.

After lunch came recess, before lunch too actually. They went outside and had an organized gym class with a quite hilarious three-legged relay race involving several classes. They were lots of kids falling down so I took lots of pictures. During recess I was dragged into a game that I think was tag but turned into chase Scott. Then I was dragged into a very long match of Rock Paper Scissors. They way the game works here is that many kids, like ten will stand in a circle and play. Everyone throws. People are eliminated in groups or individually if everyone only throws two of the options. It’s really popular. After recess came cleaning time where all the students cleaned the school. There’s not a lot of dirt because you change shoes when you go outside, but it was still funny to see 1st graders sweeping the halls. The students take on the roles of many of the paid positions at home.

After cleaning came a gym rehearsal that I can only describe as group cheerleading. It was massive, like 100 kids, and coordinated for some show. It involved a stead routine of simple balancing acts with two or three people. It was very bizarre and by the time I went back to the room for my camera, it was over. They practiced picking each other up on their shoulders and putting them down in smooth, rehearsed motions. Quite strange.

Then I walked home. Today I plan to figure out where to buy stationary, stamps, envelopes. I need to get some letters out in the mail. I’ve already gotten a package from home, a package from Luke, and a letter from Becky. I love snail mail, it's awesome, it’s time I sent some.