Notes from the inaka.

Three little things that are going on around school.

I hope my supervisor is okay.

I just marked the students' answer sheets for a test my supervisor set them. It was a simple 'fill in the word' type test with about 50 answers. It was a little dark. A selection of the correct answers are:

dead
turn off
sick
accident
empty
unknown
angry
said to myself
death
boring
injured
pain
judge
damage
less than
suffering
ill
weak
took away
voice
sickness
turned down
bombs
say hello to
least
failed

There you've got violence, sadness, death and a clear reference to Scarface. I hope he's okay.

Behind the scenes at a small school enkai

Last week we had the welcome/farewell enkai, which is to say hello and goodbye to the incoming and outgoing members of staff attend (every April, teacher's locations can change, it's like being in the army or something and being posted to different places.) They all make speeches, and it's quite emotional. My Japanese still isn't good enough to understand the speeches properly, but I have got that they always seem to pick some random theme and go on about it. They're pretty interesting this way. For example, the incoming maths teacher talked about bentos (Japanese packed lunch) for the entire speech, and whilst I'm sure he was making a clever metaphor for life as a teacher or something, it did really seem like he was just talking about how much he likes bentos.




Afterwards, cutely all the teachers sang the school song acapella (I play it on the piano at ceremonies so I had to sing the intro for them, as I was less drunk than most of them it was slightly embarrassing) with the departing teachers getting really into it.

I can't get over how cute and innocent my little school is. A few beers and various parts of chicken on a stick in a little yakitori place, and you're seeing sides of teachers that you never saw before. Then hanging around in the carpark with 3 of the other teachers waiting for Takahashi Sensei's mum to come and pick us up! Oh man. Work dos in the middle of nowhere in Japan are fun.



Hosomi Sensei did have a point about the bentos though.

Is there anything better to eat at lunchtime than Hello Bento? No. There is nothing better to eat at lunchtime than Hello Bento.



This is my life for a while whilst I try to stay in and study Japanese more. Small things.