Swapping Cards and Spotting Ferns
According to the Junten school schedule, I officially began work last Friday. In reality that means I spent every day of last week at work, doing various crazy and exciting things as planning sample lessons for new students, sitting in my office and something that I have called “Progressive Time Management”, which means sitting in my office staring at a clock.
One thing that was fun, however, was the walk on Saturday morning. It was planned to start at around 8.30am, but I was told to arrive at Junten a bit earlier than that to prepare the students for the day ahead. This means it was a very bad thing when I accidentally set my alarm clock to go off at 7pm, and had to run to school at 8.06. Once there I pretended I had planned to get in at 8.15 looking like I’d just been drinking and quickly hid amongst the teachers so as not to draw attention to myself. This would have worked had it not been for my height, blonde hair and English voice.
We were set to walk from Junten School to Tokyo University, via a few little parks and sites of interest on the way. Joining us would be all the first year junior students, brand new and scared and yet to be forever scarred by the Junten discipline council. They were very excited at the prospect of being in school but not being in uniform. I’d make some elitist comment about them being easily excited here but Wahoo! I’m in school in a shirt and jeans!
The weather couldn’t have been nicer, which was somewhat of a blessing as we’d had a freak rainstorm with snow just a few days before. Proudly we set off to the first destination on our journey - the nearby park where the cherry blossoms were still in bloom. I was quite upset by this because I had not brought my camera with me. Permission for anyone and everyone reading this to be very angry with me granted. The park itself is very small and kind of boring, and it doesn’t hold a candle to the other stuff we walked past, so I’ll stop writing about it. A lot more interesting was the next thing we arrived at. I was told it was a National Park, albeit the smallest National Park in the entire universe. It was still quite big, but I think you could have comfortably walked around the entire thing in an hour or two. The place itself was stunning, and I spent the whole time either kicking myself for leaving the camera at home, and being asked to swap business cards with the new students. All the students and teachers had been asked to make a few business cards, with their name, class and a message for the receiver. Everyone else got away with writing about six, but I was instructed to make forty. Originally I had complained because writing messages in Japanese takes a long time, but in the end it turned out that forty was not nearly enough. Quite a few heartbroken students were turned away cardless towards the end of the day. The early first year gets the worm, kids!
The kids spent the time in the park playing Nature Bingo. Quite a few of them asked me to help them find some random plant or flower or something, but I politely refused, insisting they had to complete the game by themselves. Actually, I just really wanted to play as well but nobody invited me, and there was no way I was helping another team to complete their task! I secretly managed to find all the different ferns, animals and trees without even using a sheet. That’ll show them. After everyone had finished, we made our way from the park towards the university, stopping on the way at some famous author’s house who’s name escapes me.
Finally, we arrived at Tokyo University. What can I say? I’ll have to head back there at some point and take some photos of this place. A huge Kyoto shrine would not really have looked out of place in this thing’s garden. A garden that is perfectly maintained and financed, for a load of drunken students to throw up on. I think. I almost felt like pulling out a few bottles of Vodka and getting into the spirit of things myself. Instead I decided it would be more diplomatic to follow the rest of the group downstairs, into the underground cafeteria.
That’s right. Underground Cafeteria. About the size of two football fields, the cafeteria is a huge circular room which can fit hundreds of people in at the same time. The food itself is great, although there are no windows and I couldn’t help but feel a little claustrophobic. The students enjoyed it too, and I had to fend off a few more with “I have no more cards” so I could actually eat my meal.
The walk itself was a great experience and I had a nice time, it was only 8km, so it wasn’t really that tiring at all. This term I will be an assistant homeroom (form teacher) for the first year juniors, which I am really looking forward to because they seem like a lively bunch. Feel free to point me to this article when I write a huge update complaining about them next month, though…
