卒業式 - Graduation

This blog was written during the last week of February

Obedience

I stood shivering at the back of the school gym with my eyes slightly welling up with tears. Not once, but twice this week.The school band was tucked away in the back corner, playing “Pomp and Circumstance.”

It is graduation season, meaning students across Japan are now in the midst of graduation rehearsals. My school has often cancelled the last period of the day to hold these school-wide practices.

Anyways, that song reminds me of all the good and bad times from high school and university. It’s also a reminder that I’d like to be there when my brother graduates from good ol’ Carleton.

To tell you the truth, I don’t remember my middle school graduation. I know it was held in our own school gym. I wore a long black dress with ugly cream flowers, along with a crochet shawl. Fashionable, fashionable people. My kids will wear their formal uniforms.

Graduation rehearsals?!

After cleaning time, all of the Nichu students have been changing back into their formal winter uniforms. It’s a familiar sight to see them clutching their wooden chairs as they walk to the school gym for assemblies.

Walking two by two, they enter the gym and know where exactly they should be seated. The san-nensei (third-years) students are neatly seated in the front. The girls are on the left; the boys are the right. There’s a slight empty space; then, the ichi-nensei and ni-nensei students (first- and second-years) place their seats in similar fashion.

The assistant to the vice-principal is usually responsible for leading the “exercises.” Students bow when he says “Ichido - rei!” And when I say bow, it is deep bowing is involved. He’ll go over their process many times. Teachers walk around, and try to see which chairs are the creakiest. It’s a sight. Students’ posture is also scrutinized. If they’re caught slouching, one of the teachers will run over and straighten them up. The boys are taught to sit with their fists clenched, while the girls sit with their hands clasped in the laps. Such behaviour totally brings a new meaning to the importance of maintaining one's appearances.

My favorite part is the clapping practices. If you know me, I enjoy laughing. When I realized they were trying out different claps, I had to do my utmost to contain my laughter. Honestly?! HONESTLY!!

Left, right, left

Back at home, graduands just show up the morning of the ceremony. There’s an experienced team of people who are there to throw on your robe, neatly fold your hood, tell you where to sit and stand and even confirm the pronunciation of your name.

I am most surprised by the san-nensei students in their procession. The homeroom teacher majestically walks at the helm, while his/her third-years meekly follow in two lines divided between boys and girls. They snake their way to the back of the gym.

The music switches, and they use the middle aisle to walk back to their seats located near the front of the stage. It’s usually a boy-girl pairing that walk down the aisle together. First, the pair steps up from the genkan. Their eyes are glued to the floor, as they are staring at the feet of the couple in front of them. When that first pair steps across the painted green line on the gym floor, the new pair takes their first step. With their respective left feet. I’m serious.
Sing your heart out

Music is an important of any school assembly. For graduation, the school band plays a variety of songs. The entire student body sings the Japanese national anthem, and the school song. (My JTE is thoughtful, and wrote out both songs in romaji for me. I can read!)

I had jokingly asked my kocho-sensei (principal) to teach me the school song – he chuckled, and pointed at the kanji written on a large board near the gym’s stage. Thanks, kocho-sensei… he knows I can’t read kanji!

Parting thoughts

These rehearsals simply reinforced the notion that everything adheres to certain traditions in this country. Even in my elementary schools, all of the students have been practicing the school song and twirling their batons.

But what I don’t understand is the number of hours we’ve spent in the freezing cold gym, watching the students perfecting to their bows. I mean, they’ve been doing this for years. They probably learned to how to bow before they could walk. Those kids were shivering in the gym. I even started wearing a scarf to practices, because it was that cold.

In Japan, graduation is a major milestone for junior high school students. They’ve spent years growing up together. It’s often said that many students become attached not only to their peers, but also their homeroom teachers.

I’m not all that surprised, seeing as how they seem to spend every waking hour at school. On the weekends, I see some of them as they bike home from their various club activities. That’s dedication.

The following blog was written on March 12

Preparation for graduation
“Gum tape, gum tape… Gemma-sensei, gum tape, please!”

The ni-nensei students (second-years) and I were busy decorating the homeroom classes for the graduating students. It was the day before the actual graduation ceremony, so the graduands were resting at home… while the rest of the school spent the afternoon putting everything in its place.

The whole decorating process was interesting in itself. The students descended upon the gym. They put out the chairs, the banners and the tables. But it was unusual, in that they had to replicate photos that illustrated the graduation ceremony from previous years. They knew the piano had to be placed at an exact 30 degree angle at a certain spot, because they were provided with a photo. They knew each table needed to be draped with freshly-pressed white tablecloths, as illustrated by the model photo. You get the picture.

Same deal for the decorating of the san-nensei homerooms. We knew where to hang the paper chains, tissue flowers and blackboard display; model photos were always provided. I thought it was cute how the second-year girls were very particular in their tissue flower selection. The 3-1 class got pink flowers; 3-24 got orange; and 3-3 got red. All of these colours matched the headbands they wore during their sports festivals.

The following blog was written on March 13

The actual day - 卒業式

And so, the day of the real deal finally arrived. I spent the morning visiting each homeroom, and snapped photos with some of the students. They were so cute, with a little flower pinned to their chest pocket. The girls were eager to take photos, while the boys had to be coaxed into hamming up for the camera. Typical?

I was slightly late that morning, due to parking inconveniences. Every day, I drive my little kei-car to school. I'm spoiled, in that it only takes a minute to drive from my pink apartment to my designated parking spot in the lot. So, I drove to the parking lot as per usual. And it was completely empty. I was thrown off, because I'm always the last teacher to arrive. I finally noticed the cars were all parked in the soccer field. So, I had to make a detour so that I could drive on a road cutting through rice fields... and then I could reach the soccer field like everyone else. Thanks for the head's up. Typical!

Mariko-sensei, my Japanese Teacher of English, was gorgeous in her kimono. She said it took a full hour to get dressed that morning. The rest of the staff was dressed in black suits. (The day before, one of my JTEs told me: “You do have a black suit, right?! Right?!” As usual, I always receive last-minute notice… but luckily, I brought a black suit from home). Kocho-sensei was rocking a cool penguin jacket.

The ceremony was pretty standard. The parents filed in, and took their seats. We sang the national anthem and the school song. (I had the lyrics to both tucked inside my program, so I was able to sing along). At precisely 10 a.m., as it was on the schedule, the graduates started proceeding up to the stage to get their diplomas. There was even a little projection screen on stage left, so that you could see the students’ faces as they bowed in front of kocho-sensei (principal). He had to bow at least 97 times to present each graduand with their diploma. That doesn’t count all the additional bowing we had to do throughout the ceremony. So much bowing.

Oh! One of the ni-nensei boys fainted in the second-last row. As kocho-sensei was reading out the names, we heard a loud thud coming from the back. Some of the teachers and the school nurse quickly rushed over to help him. I guess he was fine, because I saw him walking around after the grad ceremony. My sempai has explained that it's common for kids to faint during assemblies. I'm not surprised - they have to sit in a rigid position for hours! And the gym is not heated well. We have two huge orange heaters that are supposed to emit lots of heat. But I never feel it! So wack.

There were speeches, too. I don’t know who they were, and I don’t what they were saying. I did notice each speaker unfolded his/her notes from a special envelope. And when they finished, they slipped their speaking text back into the envelop and placed it in a basket on the table. One of the speakers included the kind gray-haired, bespectacled fellow from the Board of Education. He’s the one who I saw in his drawers that night we all went to a traditional Japanese inn for our bonenkai (end-of-the-year bonenkai).

For the bajillionth time, the students sang Auld Lang Syne in Japanese. The students sang a song to the graduating class. Then, the third-years sang “Tegami,” their touching farewell song. (Find it on Youtube!) This is when a lot of the girls started bawling. And I mean, bawling! It was so sad. (Not gonna lie – my eyes welled up with tears during “Pomp and Circumstance" yet again. When the graduates did their final procession down the aisle, I started tearing up again. I didn’t think I was so attached to these kiddos!)

After the ceremony, the students congregated outside. Each graduate proudly clutched a yellow flower, the Nichu diploma and their old pair of indoor Nichu shoes with the trademark red stripes. And then, they were gone.