Great Teacher A-Chan

Today was the annual school sports festival.

It’s difficult to understand how significant that very statement is without being here and experiencing it for yourself. This kids has been training since school started. For the last week, almost all classes were canceled in favour of rehearsals; practicing the parades, the ceremonies, the warm-ups, the contests – I don’t know how the kids could still be so excited by this seeing as they’d already done the entire festival four or five times before the actual day rolled around. But these are Japanese Junior Highschool students, who have some secret well of untapped enthusiasm reserved for insane school traditions, and when they meet you in the supermarket.

Being a major school event, everyone was there – the students, staff, parents, the PTA, representatives from the Board of Education, and the Mayor. I saw this as a great chance to gain some insight into what goes into making these kids so messed up. Most of the parents were the typical polite, conservative mother figures, but of course, there have to be exceptions, otherwise it just wouldn’t uphold the ongoing anime stereotype I seem to be living in.

One of the more popular sannensei bad girls is hanging out with her parental – Gothic Aristocrat Mum. This woman is wearing an elaborately ruffled lace-lined blouse, cravat, slim black dress-slacks, elegant pointed boots, black embroidered evening gloves, her long hair pulled gracefully atop her head and held with a pearl hat-pin, while she shelters under a black lace parasol. Of course, she’s carrying the same basket of tea, bento boxes and snacks that all the parents have prepared, but she’s doing it with style.

Queen Yamamba’s mum is rearranging the bonnet on her daschund. I’m sure you can guess the rest. Then I spot the yankee boy from my ninensei class. I’m really interested to see what deranged lunatics spawned that kid. But he hasn’t brought his parents. He’s brought his posse. Five bleach-haired yankee adolescents, donning their Sunday best (no long coats this time), loitering about making trouble while rooting for their little bro on the side. Their very presence was clearly making the other parents uneasy. Towards the end of the day I actually watched them being escorted off the grounds for some mysterious (though I’m sure entirely justified) reason.

But enough with the stereotypes for now. As I already stated, this was an important event for the whole school. In Japan, that can only mean one thing – speeches. Long, dry, agonizing speeches. The kids stand in the blistering sun and listen to the same message from 6 different people, while I look on and wonder how this nation ever gets anything done when the people spend 80% of their lives delivering and listening to speeches. We then watch as the Japanese flag is raised, and listen to 2 more speeches, just in case anyone was threatening to stay awake. Finally, the festival starts.

The whole event is arranged into sections, all pitting Red Team against Blue Team. Every club has jumped on board to set this up. The band club plays music for the opening ceremonies. The art club have made banners and billboards of majestic birds violently killing each other. The sports club captains have choreographed a series of complicated chants and dances that the whole team must execute on demand. There are sprints, relays, tug-of-wars, jump-rope-rallies, three- five- or seven-legged races and other assorted challenges designed to humiliate the students and entertain the crowd. Unfortunately, I didn’t see most of it, because I couldn’t stay awake. Something about my constant lack of sleep and having watched it all 4 times already, combined with the 30°C heat just conked me out over and over.

That is, of course, until it was time for the teacher’s baton relay. This involved a team of 6 teachers, competing against two teams of students. This was a chance for the pupils to sit back and laugh at us for a change.

Now I know what you’re thinking, and everyone that knows me said the exact same thing when I told them I’d be running.

You’re going to trip.

But I didn’t want to trip. A group of us had even trained beforehand to prevent any such mishaps. It was only 100 metres. No matter what, I was not going to trip in front of the whole school.

You know how some people exaggerate stories to make them more interesting? That’s not necessary at Kumiyama Junior High. Ever.

I’m ready for this relay. I watch each member make their dash, then, heart pounding, I line up for my own 15 seconds of fame. I can see my teammate looming up behind me. The pass is the most difficult moment. But I can do this. I’ve practiced.

Running sideways, I feel the baton thud soundly into the centre of my palm. I wrench my body around and extend my legs into a mighty leap to open my sprint. I’ve done it. I’ve got the baton, and there’s nothing before me but open track.

Then I trip. No wait, I don’t trip. I get tripped.

This was just one of those beautiful, tragic, pure-anime-esque moments. You know when some people finish a race, they’re so spent they literally throw themselves over the line? This is what my young, bespectacled teammate did. Exhausted and having finally relieved himself of the great burden of the baton, he threw himself forward onto the track. Unfortunately, at that particular point in time, the track was full of little Australian AET. This clumsy maneuver caught me mid-turn, knocking me down onto my side while he fell on top of me, hands planted either side of my face, in true manga there’s-no-way-they’d-fall-like-that style. Aaaah, my life, the stereotype.

My flustered coworker began apologizing immediately, but I didn’t have time for the patented anime-girl blush. THIS WAS A RACE. I scrambled out from beneath him, grabbed for the baton and belted down the track, leaving him behind in a cloud of panicked ‘Sumimasen!’s.

Thanks to that little episode, the teachers lost the relay, but I didn’t stick around to hear the kids jeering and asking if we wanted to kiss now (actually, most of them were polite enough to give me a thumbs up and a ‘Good run!’). I jogged back to the teachers tent, where clumsy-sensei was apologizing to everyone for his shameful display – the other teachers, the principal, the PTA, the mayor, the Emperor… ok well not the Emperor, but I swear this guy was two seconds away from committing seppuku. Thankfully, Kumiyama Chugakko doesn’t keep swords handy. I’m sure if he was desperate he could have asked one of the yankee posse, who were no doubt sporting some kind of weapons, but he settled on limping to the school nurse to have his wounds treated. Yes, wounds, apparently. He must have pulled a muscle when he was ramming his knee into my thigh.

Some PTA members spotted me and started madly brushing down my dusty form, then freaking out at the bloody grazes on my wrist, arms and waist. I assured them it was fine. She’ll be right mate. I’m OSTRAYAN. Poor little clumsy-sensei went white as a sheet when he saw me, springing to his feet to apologise and bow some more. I insisted that it was fine. Really. I’m ok. Sure, we lost the race and brought shame to Kumiyama, the Emperor and all of Japan, but it’s no big deal. Please stop bowing. 48 times is enough. Seriously.

Posted by a-chan on Friday, September 15, 2006 at 5:39 PM | Permalink