Sho mo nai!

Most Boring Day Ever (maybe)

Yesterday and today have largely been preparation for the graduation ceremonies tomorrow. Transforming the gym, cleaning the school, practicing songs for the ceremonies, and doing two or three practice runs. This year there are going to be at least FIVE long speeches. In order: Principal, Head of the Board of Education, Mayor, some other guy (another BoE guy or maybe a member of the town council? not sure what his title means), and the head of the PTA. The middle three of those are going to seriously suck. The principal is a good speaker, and the PTA head knows some of the graduating students really well, so that speach is generally touching or funny or both. But the five speeches could well take up almost an hour! Gaaaaah! At least the dry runs just skip that bit.

I'm sick of the ceremony already. But there are some things to look forward to:
• the speech from the valedictorian-like-student
• the grade seven and eight kids singing "sakura" to the grade nines
• the grade niners all crying to hard to properly sing "March 9th" back to the seventh and eighth graders

And then after all the main formalities, we (teachers, students, honoured guests, parents) line up in the halls and the various club members have gifts for them (signed baseballs, volleyballs, table tennis racquets and forth, depending on the club they were in) and they walk walk through the hall between us and we all applaud them and the students pass out the gifts. It's a really cool moment.

Then there might be some kind of snack provided by the parents for the third years (grade niners) to eat with the teachers. A last time to hang out and chat et cetera. [Every teacher will probably say something to the students, so I've got to think of something to say and then get a translation ready so I can say what I want to in English and then say it in Japanese so they can understand it all.]

And then in the evening is the enkai (feast party) with the third years' parents. I missed the one last year because my sister was visiting and we were in Osaka, but the one two years ago was really good and I'm looking forward to this year's.

And yes, graduation is on a Saturday morning.
Tomorrow is a suit and white tie day!

posted by Fletcher @ 9:34 p.m.