And oh hey - a surprise almond!
Today was the graduation ceremony for my base school, Takahashi Senior High school. It was quite different than high school graduations in the states; for one, it's in March since that's when the school year starts and finishes. Everyone else is still taking exams (or grading exams, in my case). The entire school (which is only 3 grades) attends the ceremony, and it's given the proper respect due to any ceremony in Japan. Moreso, since there were even rehearsals for this yesterday (which it was "suggested" I go to by some teachers and not by others).
To be brief, since I have to leave for a year end party pretty soon, here's a summary of the major differences I found between American, public high school graduations and Japanese public school graduations (with n=1):
1. No cap and gown for Japanese school kids. They wore corsages with their uniforms. Then again, we don't have uniforms.
2. Holy decorum batman. Everything had a ceremonial sort of order to it.
3. Bowing. If you went up to speak, you bowed at least 4 times: to the official people from the prefecture/PTA, to the official school people (principal, VP), to the flag of Japan, and to the audience. This of course, meant that as an audience member you could NOT sleep your way through the ceremony, because it requiring constant bowing and standing.
4. No diploma awarding. Graduates' names were read off and then one representative (from the academic classes, and one from the home ec class) went up and got something from the principal. That was it. No one else had to walk up to the stage.
5. Everyone else (the other students) had to attend the ceremony as well, and participated in singing stuff.
6. Auld Lang Sang was sung. In addition to being the "we're closing" song for department stores and supermarkets, it's also the graduation song. It has lyrics in Japanese. You should wiki it if you want to find out more. It's called "Hotaru no Hikari" or the Firefly's light. I almost laughed so hard when I heard them playing it the first time.
7. The audience members also wore corsages.
Afterwards, the students milled about and stuff, and I went back to grade more papers (I'm bustin' through these things baby). But like, afterwards, as I was grading and stuff, a couple graduating students came up to me with their yearbooks and asked me to sign it. X) I was super touched by this, since I only had one class (3-1) and some of the students weren't from that class. Some were though, and I was still super pleased that they came around to say bye and ask me to sign their yearbook. ^_^ This made me ridiculously happy, and I'm not sure why. I even took a couple pictures with some of the students. There were two students whose name I remembered (lols) and I wrote extra long for theirs. :D
The most surprising though, I think, was this one boy who came up to ask me to sign his. So this kid right. Every time I ran into him at school, he was always kinda jokey and stuff. The last time I ran into him, he had his bike and he was like, "you want to ride?" and he motioned to the back of his bicycle (where the little rack thing is). I kind of lol'd and made some sort of excuse on why I couldn't (they weren't untrue, either, but yeaaaah lol, riding on the back of a student's bicycle... yeaaaaaaaah. No.) But yeah. That pretty much sums up the kind of interactions I've had with him. Mostly I just laugh it off, but he asked me to sign his yearbook still and I was like "aww :)"
It makes me kind of sad that I'm not planning on staying a third year, since then I'd get to see the first years I taught this year graduate. I will get to see them as third years though, I guess. But it still makes me a little sad inside knowing that I won't be able to see this group off. Three years is a little too long for me. Places to be, and all that. Like grad school. Hopefully.
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