April 8th-Ikou ka? (行こうか？) [Shall we
go?]
When I woke up this
morning I was quite cold. I’d left the
window open to keep things cool and the night air had been pleasant, but by the
morning, it was very chilly in my room.
I didn’t want to get out of bed and I felt didn’t feel rested at all
after only 5 hours of sleep. I really
had had trouble getting to sleep…so I don’t think I actually lost consciousness
until around 1am or so. At any rate, I
was awakened to the opening chords of the William Tell Overture from my phone
and that was nice. It kind of got my
heart going in the morning. I wasn’t sure
weather to eat breakfast or get dressed or brush my teeth or do any of that
stuff before anything else, so I just got dressed and went to breakfast. My stomach, that was already tightly wrapped
up in a little ball because of the cold was not pleased when I tentatively
began spooning mushy rice, eggs, and duck left over from the previous night’s
dinner. I think that was a big mistake…my already sensitive digestive system
was rendered entirely inoperable and I started feeling pretty queasy as Eri ate
her breakfast and began to get dressed.
I would have left as soon as I was ready to go (you know how I always
like to have MORE than enough time to do things—especially when it’s my first
time doing it). We ended up leaving the
house at 7:40 (to get to school by 8:15).
The morning air, a bit
heavy from the rain the night before, whipped through my hair and played with
the straps and flags on my backpack as we sped down the long hill from Ikimedai
towards the middle of town. Everyone
seemed to be up. Little kids with their
strapped on red hats and matching leather backpacks, businessmen on their
bikes, people waiting at bus stops, dogs going for their morning walks, and kids
from all parts of town heading to school on their bikes or on foot in
their. The sun sparkled through the
trees and glittered off the drops of water left on the leaves, grass, and
cars. The hill took about 10 minutes to
get down…that’s coasting. Then there
was a long part where we went through town and made our way past stores, gas
stations, car washes, and shopping centers until we got to the bridge to cross
the Ooyodogawa (river). There are a few
bridges that cross the river. The river
isn’t a small little drip either. It’s
about 350 feet wide and moves slowly through town and out to sea. The bridge is pretty flat after you get up
onto it. There’s a nice view of the
town and the morning sun as you cross the bridge and there’s even a bike
path! On the opposite slide, we coasted
along a path alongside the river underneath rows of cherry trees losing their
blossoms for green leaves. The only
kinda of scary part was a bridge that we had to go through with very little
room on either side of the road for bicycles and pedestrians. Eri turned around and yelled back to me, “車気を付けて!” [kuruma
ki o tsukete!] (watch out for cars!)….thanks for the tip, Eri…that’s great...I’ll
try not to die. Well, I made it to
school in one piece. One thing I was
really worried about is that I came all this way and waited all this time and I
was only minutes away from starting school and if I got hurt on my way to
school, it would be horrible. Like…if
my bike slipped off the curb and I broke my legs or if I hit a pole and I was catapulted
into a river or something like that.
Thankfully nothing happened though.
I parked my bicycle, went inside, put on some slippers, and headed to
meet Hidaka Sensei.
I waited in his office for a while while
some people walked around and occasionally poked their heads inside the door to
say good morning or hello to me. I
decided to check my pulse because I was very on edge, using my watch, I was at
about 150 beats per minute. I tried to
take some deep breaths and calm down, but it didn’t do too much for me. So, to preoccupy myself I rehearsed my
little speech a couple of times. Then I
met Sam. He’s a 30 year old Canadian (with
Guatemalan parents) who’s been in Japan since last summer as an English
teacher. He’s a very nice guy and
although he had some trouble explaining some of the things that he was trying
to explain about Japanese culture (he drew some perplexing graphs to illustrate
his ideas that just made things worse), he seems like a pretty smart guy and he
and I talked for a while. He even
invited me to have dinner at his place with him and his girlfriend. So that was nice and I’ll probably do that
at some point. Then he took my around
the school and showed my all the places and every time someone would walk by
(staring at me) he’d grab them and say in boisterously, “Good morning! Do you know Mike? Introduce yourself!
English!” It was kind of funny
but I felt a little sorry for the kids because they were so nervous and every
other word was Japanese. After I saw
the school, we went back to the office and waited there until the opening
ceremonies began at 9:30am.
When we got into the gymnasium (where the
ceremonies were), the place was packed.
All the students sat on the floor in rows by homeroom and the teachers
were on one side in chairs. That’s when
it really started getting bad. I sat in
one of the chairs—to my left, the president of the student body, to my left, an
English teacher and all around me: teachers and administration types. I wish I could have taken a picture. It was really impressive. All those hundreds and hundreds of little
black heads lines up in rows from one size of the gym to the other. It was like an ocean and I was able to go to
the front of it and part the water with my words like Moses. Ok, sorry, I’m getting a little silly hear,
but this was REALLY scary and the way I thought about this, if I messed it up,
I would mess up my 4 months here, embarrass myself, embarrass the reputation of
exchange students, and shame my country.
No…no pressure!!!!!!! There was
a lot of talking for the sake of talking and they introduced the new teachers
(of whom there were quite a few) and the new principal gave a long speech about
god only knows what (and everyone else but me in the gym knew too). It was finally my turn. I stood up, went up to the stage behind the
podium with Hidaka sensei, and the English teacher that had been sitting next
to me read some information about it (only parts of which I understood) and the
students looked at her, me, and each other between “oooohs” and “ehhhhs?!?” and “woaaahs!” I guess she was saying good or surprising things. Then she gave me a nod, I took a breath,
glanced at my speech, and began [the italicized words are a translation from
Japanese]:
Good morning, everyone. I’m very glad to meet all of you. My name is Michael Joyce. This is my first day at Miyazaki Commercial high school. I am very happy to be here, but I’m pretty nervous right now.
Good
morning everyone. It’s nice to meet
you. My name is Michael Joyce. Today is my first day at Miyazaki Commercial
High School. I’m very happy to be here,
but I’m really nervous right now. I’m
18 years old. I’m from Short Hills, New
Jersey. From my town to New York takes
about 40 minutes by train. At my school
in America, there isn’t any Japanese language class, so I studied by myself for
about 2 years. The truth is that my
Japanese really isn’t any good, but with your help, I think my Japanese will
quickly improve. If you want to talk to
me, please do so. The first time I came
to Japan was a year and a half ago.
From then on, it has been my dream to attend a Japanese high school. From now until summer vacation, I’ll be
living that dream. I want to thank
those who helped me get to Miyazaki. I
would also like to thank my support, teachers, new friends, and those who will
help me at this school. I’m very glad
to meet you.
And that
was it! I bowed at the beginning and
the end. I just missed my spot one time
but I noticed my mistake and excused myself quickly and got back on track. We decided that it’d be effective if I
started in English and then paused for a few seconds between the English and
the Japanese. That way, when I began in
English, I would be fulfilling everyone’s expectations for the American to only
speak English, and then I would blow their minds by starting again in
Japanese. Heheheh…I think it
worked.
After the assembly,
we went to our homerooms (mine’s 28) and our homeroom and assistant homeroom
teachers spoke to us for a while. Ok,
before I go any further, let me first explain something about the way a
Japanese school works. Everyone has a
homeroom. Homeroom is very different in
Japan than it is in the US. In the US,
you go there for like 5 minutes, attendance is taken, announcements are made,
etc etc. In Japan, your homeroom IS
your class. You’re with the same
students all day (unless you eat with other kids during lunch) and the same
students throughout your 3 years of high school. You stay in the same room (except for gym) and it’s the teachers
that move around. Each homeroom has a
main teacher called the Tan’nin sensei and the assistant homeroom
teacher is called the Fuku-tan’nin sensei. You do have other teachers, but those two are the ones that run
most things for your class. When the
class begins (in the morning, but also after a break or after lunch) and the teacher
comes in he tells everyone to stand up and everyone stands up and then the
students bow to the teacher and the teacher bows to the students and they both
say “Onegai shimasu” (it’s like… “If you please…”) and then when the
class is over (or before a break or lunch) everyone stands up again and bows
again and they say “Arigatou gozaimashita” (“Thank you for what you did”). Anyway, when we got into the homeroom we all
took our seats and then I was asked to introduce myself again. So I did so briefly and then each student
was given a paper with information about me, my picture, the NWSE logo, and a
section of the letter I wrote on it. I
was pretty impressed. The students
asked me a couple odd questions that I won’t repeat hear as this is for a
GENERAL audience but they also asked silly little things like what kinds of
foods I like etc etc. They seemed shy
and I heard a couple of questions mumbled but I couldn’t hear them so I said, “Shitsumon
kiita? Ookii koe de kudasai!” (Did
I hear a question? In a big voice
please!). Everyone, including the
teachers, thought that was very funny.
A little later we went to the other gymnasium and had a meeting online
for second year students (that’s me!).
I didn’t understand any of it, but I was asked to introduce myself again
so I did and I hadn’t prepared anything, so I just said that I’m already having
fun hear and that everyone seems nice and friendly and then I sat down. The second assembly was like a bar mitzvah
in that there was a lot of standing up, sitting down, bowing, bouncing around,
and a lot of lengthy drawn out talking in a language that I don’t
understand!!!! Yeah, that’s a pretty
good parallel…a bar mitzvah. After that
we went back to the classroom and did some more organizational
starting-the-year kind of stuff.
After
school I waited at the bike storage place for Eri and she finally showed
up. We talked a little bit more on the
way home about the school day. When I
asked her, she told me that I didn’t make any mistakes in my little speech, so
that made me happy. When we were going
home, the weather was beautiful, but the wind was absolutely incredible. It was blowing SOOO hard and there wasn’t a
cloud in the sky. I wouldn’t have
minded it if it hadn’t been blowing in the opposite direction as the way we
were trying to ride our bikes. It got
especially fun when we got to the hill—the hill that took 10 minutes to COAST
down we had to ride up. Oh!!! Did I mention….?….my bike has no GEARS! I’m going old school, baby! Just one big gear. Ugh…by the time we got home I thought I was going to die. Well, if nothing else, I’ll have really
strong legs when I’m done with these 4 months.
When I got home, even though we hadn’t had lunch, I wasn’t even
hungry. I was too tired to be
hungry. I changed my clothes and ended
up taking a nap for about 3 hours waking up and falling back asleep again. When I finally got up we had dinner
together. Eri took a nap too. I don’t know what is more tiring…being at
school or getting to and from it! Well,
I’m having fun and this is what I want to be doing, so I will just chalk these
things up as being part of the experience and chalk them up as being more
spiritually and mentally fulfilling than what I’d probably be doing otherwise…no
offense to what I’d be doing otherwise, but you know what I mean.
-Maikeru