Bad Day + Karaoke = Good Day!

Okay, woke up Thursday morning and looked outside, and it looked miserable. Completely miserable. Combine that with the fact that I was getting a bit homesick, and you come up with the fact that Thursday was simply not looking good. At all. But I always find junior high schools interesting, so I was certain it would pick up.

Wrong.

It started off interestingly enough. Actually, it was almost freaky. We had a welcoming ceremony in the gym. When we got inside, there were around 400 students kneeling on the ground. It was EXTREMELY quiet (those of you with junior high teaching experience know that this is a rarity), and the students were in straight rows. One row of boys, then girls, boys, girls, etc. We were led around them to the stage. There was a row of chairs for us on the stage, but I am not sure what purpose they served because we never used them. We just stood. At a command, the students all stood at the same time and bowed to us. One of our teachers gave a really long speech, and then at another command, a student came to the stage and gave a formal speech welcoming us to the school. I thought I had died and stumbled into some weird junior high alternate universe. I had never seen such disciplined kids! Today I would certainly see the regimented schools for which Japan is so well known.

Wrong.

Today's school visit was not good. The building itself looked *this* close to being condemned, and probably would have been if I had been in the U.S. We met with the principal, who was an extremely nice guy. He welcomed us to his building and asked if we had any questions. It's at this point that the day started to get a little interesting. People's personalities were in definite conflict. Maybe everyone was feeling a little cranky and homesick, but one thing was certain: everyone's personal agendas started to come out and show themselves. I understand that everyone has a follow-on plan, but taking up other people's time to get your own questions answered is a tad bit ridiculous. When it cuts down on time for the principal to give us a tour of the building, it's just plain rude. Finally we were able to get out in the building and see the school, instead of sitting around and comparing/contrasting Japanese and American schools. That's something you can do on yoru own time, you know? Anyway, I was just glad to get out into the building. Lot of good it did me though...

It seems to me (and to several others in the group) that these teachers didn't really want us there. One teacher even reported seeing a teacher draw a picture of a person holding a camera on the board, which he then labeled "American" and then said "annoying". It was about that time that the teacher cleared her throat, and he quickly erased it. But that should give you a pretty good idea about how that school day went! Needless to say, I didn't get much out of it. After lunch (which was a bizarre affair...I sat by myself on a platform and ate my lunch while being laughed at by the students making fun of my chopstick skills and listening to Madonna's Greatest Hits...oddly enough, most of them don't know who she is), we had a meeting with teachers. I don't think that they wanted to be there, and it was dreadfully dull, so I kept myself occupied by counting passing Shinkansen trains...I counted 14. We then had a group meeting on our final presentation that we are supposed to give. Here again everyone's personal agendas came out. For my students, you guys know that I do get serious at times, but I like to have fun while teaching. The rest of you know that I like to do things with a bit of humor. Well, some of the people in this group are wanting to give this huge formal (read: boring) presentation that I think will bore others endlessly. That's not my style. I voiced including things like culture, since that is the chief reason why I came to Japan. A lot of people said no, that we needed to just focus on schools. I was definitely upset. I think that we should include school, community and culture, and have some fun with it, but I think I am going to get outvoted. Whatever. I am getting a little tired of some attitudes in my group because they only think about themselves and it is very frustrating. One person even asked me to not walk into a classroom when he was in it because he wanted a picture with just him in it, so he would look good, I guess. I'm just not for being in a big group all of the time, and I need some space.

My plans for the night were to come home after school and blog a little, and then go to bed. But, things changed, and I am glad they did because the evening turned out to be one of the best nights in Japan so far! Kenji, our ever trusty city official, wanted to go out and do karaoke with a group of us. So, Anastasia, Chris, Debi, LeeAnne, Sam and I all hopped into Kenji's minivan and it was off to the karaoke bar! We stopped at 7-11 first because Kenji told us that we could take our own refreshments in. Yes! I had a Diet Coke and a Snickers...are you surprised? We were in there a little over two hours. My voice today is very sore, and I hurt something in my neck while headbanging, but it was a blast! I have pictures, and I will post them when I get back to Tokyo (can't post here for some reason). I don't have one of me headbanging (as I was busy), but I am sure that I can get a copy. It has been ages since I laughed as hard as I did last night.

After that, we did as promised and went back to the rotating sushi bar. We were horribly afraid that Baskin Robbins would be closed by the time we left the sushi bar, so we ate dessert first...makes sense, after all...what if you die during your meal and you never get dessert? Better safe than sorry, I say. I had pumpkin ice cream. Pretty tasty! Sushi bar was a riot. We were the only ones there, so we had to order each time we wanted something. That was hard as our Japanese is still bad. We finally did get enough food though, so it's all good! You should have seen me trying to act out calamari (fried + squid...quite funny). My jaws still hurt this morning from laughing so much!!!