Day 1

When you play adventure games they are always structured like this: In order to get enough money to buy a spade you must wait till the chef leaves the kitchen of Scum Bar so that you can steal the fish, to give it to the troll, to let you over the bridge so that you can go to the circus and get paid to practice the cannon trick.

Ignoring the troll real life is exactly like this. For me, freshly arrived at Cairns airport I had two missions:

Mission 1. Find where the bus was to the town centre.
Mission 2. Phone Yang.

In order to phone Yang I had to find a shop, buy something to get change for a payphone, find a phone and work out how to use it.

So with a Bounty bar in one hand and some coins in the other I called Yang. The phone rang and he answered but then it cut off immediately. I didn’t understand why so I called him a few more times only for the same thing to happen. I figured out that I only had enough money to text him and not call him, so I sent him a text to say that I had arrived and then got on the bus.

It was about 7am. Yang and me had arranged to meet at the Central Shopping Area in Cairns which is next to the train station. The bus dropped me off at the station where it was painfully obvious that there was no one around. I tried to reassure the bus driver that I was meeting a friend and knew exactly what I was doing but he drove away looking a bit concerned about me. Alone in the car park to the station it was unnervingly quiet. The bus ride had shown me that the central shopping area was rather large and was going to be closed until 9am, meeting anyone in such a vague area was not going to be easy.

As I wondered what to do a man in a uniform of some kind appeared out of the station and looked surprised to see me. I told him that I was meeting a friend and he showed the same kind of concern as the bus driver, “I think you had better call your friend and make sure he is coming.” I asked him where the nearest phone was, fully aware that I didn’t have enough change to actually use one, and he pointed inside the station. Not wanting to appear completely helpless I went over to the phone and looked in my wallet. I was considering pretending to make a call but the man disappeared somewhere and I made my escape onto the main street, taking a tourist map of Cairns with me as I did so.

It was really hot, especially since I was still wearing jeans and lots of other clothes. The streets were empty except for a few people walking slowly and seemingly without purpose up the road. I made my way towards where I thought the front of the shopping centre was. In the heat and not knowing what I was doing it seemed like a long way but I found the big entrance to the mall. Still nothing was open for me to get change to call Yang again. I walked down the side of the Mall for about five minutes and found a coffee shop with an illuminated sign saying, “Open.” Enthusiastically I walked up to the shop and opened the door.

Inside it was cool and humbling but there was no one behind the counter. I eyed the cold water in the fridge cabinet and a man appeared saying, “It’s early” like I had somehow put him out. I wondered for a moment whether the practice in Cairns was for shops to not lock their doors or turn their signs off and people just politely wait outside until 9AM. “I can serve you but my boss hasn’t come in yet so I can’t give you any change,” he said, making me weep a little inside.

So I left that shop and went back out into the heat and people walking aimlessly. I found a row of taxis and decided to ask one of the drivers for change, it went like this:
“Excuse me…”
“It’s early.”
“Yes…but I don’t need a taxi, I was just wondering if you could change a note for some coins.”

I showed him a five-dollar note and he thought about my proposition. He accepted and a minute later I was calling Yang, “Today is a holiday so there are no buses yet,” he told me. Since I had a map and he lived about 40 minutes walk from the centre we agreed to start walking towards each other and meet sort of half way. I couldn’t believe that the phone needed 5 dollars, like £2.50, just to make a call but the call did seem to last for a while.

With this new plan in mind I needed to work out which road I was on. The roads were so long, however, that even finding a road sign takes some effort, and it wasn’t on my map anyway. I walked down another street looking for signs and then asked a large man for directions. He thought carefully about which way I should go. He thought so carefully that he concluded I shouldn’t go there, “You might get lost yourself, better for you to stay here if your friend knows where he’s going.” This was not the advice I was expecting. “There’s a McDonalds open down this road and lots of young people are there.” I thanked him and we parted.

I knew he was giving good advice so I decided to follow it, but only after I had tried not following it for a while. After a few more roads I worked out where I was and started to make my way along a short looking road on my map that would take me to the really long road that Yang must have been walking down. I was feeling pretty exhausted and frustrated at that time. In order to work out where I was I had to keep changing directions and comparing road signs and this meant walking passed people who were idly sitting there watching me. Also it takes ages for the pedestrian crossings to let you cross the road and standing in the blazing sunshine with my heavy backpack was pretty tiring. After walking for about twenty minutes I decided it was time to start following the man’s advice. The map I had was clearly not very good and even the road that I was so certain must be the right one was refusing to have the right name.

I walked back into town, passed the same people who had seen me a dozen times before. I needed to call Yang again but I didn’t have any change left. I went back to the coffee shop, the “open” sign was still blazing but this time the door was locked. The taxi driver I had spoken to before was watching me from his cab, which hadn’t moved at all. I soldiered on and found a little café serving food and drinks. Exhaustedly I bought the only water they had which was nasty tonic stuff that exploded on opening. With the change I called Yang again and realised that I had completely misunderstood Australian money.

I think I just assume that the bigger the coin the more expensive it is. I know that in sterling the 50p is bigger than the pound but the pound is at least thicker. In Australia the two dollar coin is tiny, the 50 and 20-cent coins are enormous and a dollar coin looks much the same as the pound. The phone box did not need 5 dollars like I had thought, it actually just needed 50 cents. I had been making life much much harder for myself. I called Yang and asked him to meet me in the train station, “I’m there,” he said.

I dragged myself back to the station, which was another 10 minutes walk from where I was. He wasn’t there. The station person I had met before saw me and came over:
“Are you ok?”
“Yeah, I’m waiting for my friend.”
“You said that an hour ago.”

He suggested that Yang might be on the other platform so I crossed the bridge and looked for him. Predictably he wasn’t there and so I called him again. There was an obvious communication problem going on; he thought he was where I was, but he definitely wasn’t. “I can see a clock,” he said. I asked the station man who was listening where the clock was, he shrugged at me. “Ok,” said Yang, “just wait.”

I sat down in the station and closed my eyes, it was 9:15AM. “Where you from?” said a voice outside of my head. “The UK,” I replied to the owner of the voice, an old but childlike man who was standing to my left. “Where abouts?” he asked. The old man also turned out to be English but told me that he had been living in Australia for a long time, he had come over on the last boat in 1977. He told me how much he loved Australia, where he had lived and how the sun was good for his skin. I asked him what the holiday was for today and he said, “It’s Easter Monday.” I felt like such an idiot.

“I used to do ballroom dancing till my knee packed in,” he told me with a little jig, “I got lots of medals from it, two gold, one silver, three bronze.” He told me about his professions too, “I do plumbing, acting, builder, electrician, ballroom dancing teacher, car mechanic.”
“You must be busy,” I said.
“No. My son went to Japan.”
“Oh really, what he did do there?”
“He got a scholarship but he went to Canada. He got eight scholarships, two from America, one from Japan and the rest from London. He’s a qualified lawyer now, he’s only twenty three.”

The station person appeared again and asked me if I wanted to lock my bag away while I waited, I nodded enthusiastically. He led me down the platform saying; “I saw that crazy old man was bothering you so I just wondered how to get rid of him. But you can leave your bag in here if you want to.” I hadn’t believed everything the old man had said but I was still quite taken aback but the description of him as, “crazy.” I left my bag in the room and asked the guy for his name in case I needed to find him again. He had a name badge but it was hidden in his pocket because he didn’t, “want the local nuts” knowing his name.

More time passed, more phone calls were made, the old man disappeared and eventually Yang came to rescue me. He had been in the central shopping area, not the central station.

As we walked away Cairns woke up into a normal town that finally made sense to me. Once the doors to the mall slid open from the station I realised that in the light of the working day it is not a ten-minute walk between the mall and the train station, they are actually right next to each other. Outside there were now newsagents, restaurants and shops with open doors and air conditioning. The streets were occupied by cars, buses and taxis driving up and down expectantly. People were walking purposefully now: carrying baskets, pushing trolleys, with their hands swinging idly or resting in each other’s palms.

Welcome to Cairns.

Australia

To get to Australia from where I live in Japan you go out of the guesthouse and turn right. At the end of the road you walk through the park towards Gyotoku station. Get the train to Nishi Funabashi station and then catch the Sobu line to Funabashi. Exit the train station and cross the bridge into the shopping mall on the other side. At the back of the mall is Keisei Funabashi station, where you can catch the Keisei limited express to Narita airport. Once at the airport ride the escalators up to floor 3 and then proceed to the appropriate check in desk - prebooking is essential.

At the appointed time head to the waiting area next to your gate and then board the plane. Now you can read a book, watch a film, talk to the person sitting next to you or optimistically attempt to sleep. About eight hours later you will find yourself either in Australia, an unscheduled other country or whichever version of the afterlife most appropriate to what you wrote in the Religion box on the last census. Once the seatbelt sign is extinguished and you have removed your belongings from the overhead locker, which may have moved during the flight, the real story begins.

It was hot in Cairns at 7:30AM on Monday the 24^th of March. It was hot even from the moment I stepped out of the plane and into one of those umbilical corridor things that takes you into the airport. Since my plane had just come from Japan it was full of Japanese people and I stood out somewhat in the immigration line for, “Foreign Passports.” When it was my turn I went up to the counter to show my passport, a freshly filled out immigration card and proof that I had purchased a visa to visit the country. The friendly looking man behind the counter eyed all this, and my face, with great suspicion. The conversation went something like this:

“What are you doing in Australia?”

“Just travelling.”

“Where are you going to go?”

“I am travelling from Cairns down to Sydney and then flying back Japan.”

“On your own?”

“With a friend…he’s already living in Cairns.”

“Have you bought a rail card?”

“Not yet no.”

He made some tactical gesture with his hand, smiled and let me through only to be immediately intercepted by another man. This new man spoke to me with an almost professionally relaxed manner, like we had just me at the party of a mutual friend. He asked me about Japan; where I live, what I do, whether teaching is hard, have I learnt much Japanese, is Japanese hard to understand. I couldn’t work out whether he wanted me to say something in Japanese, like what kind of proof was he looking for. He mentioned how hard kanji is to read and I agreed and tried to say something knowledgeable about it. The questions went on for another few minutes, changing from Japan to Australia, my plans and the friend I was travelling with. Just when I was about to say something else he said, “ok” and walked away. Bemused I made my way to the next stage.

Australia has very strict rules on what you can bring into the country. If you are carrying wooden souvenirs, dirty shoes or any kind of food you have to declare it. I was aware of this before I left Japan because I had been asked to take lots of instant food and so on for Yang, by his girlfriend. This was the part of going to Australia that I was most worried about, since the websites say things like, “If the instant food has more than 10% meat visible it must be destroyed,” and I can’t even understand the front of the packaging let alone the specific details on the back.

When it was my turn for customs inspection a man gestured me forward and I tried to be as helpful and compliant as I could be. “Hello,” I said, “I have some instant food I’d like to declare.” He nodded and led me to a desk where I unpacked all the various things I was carrying. He eyed the instant food packets, shook them a bit and said, “Ok.” Next I showed him a packet of chocolate nuts that I also had with me, “We’ll have to retain these I’m afraid” he said gravely. “Ok.” I said retaining my air of helpfulness. He laughed at me, “I’m joking.” I smiled and looked at his protruding gut, which I think was the real punch line to the joke. He let me through with all my food intact. The sliding doors opened into the brightly lit Arrivals Lobby where lots of people with signs looked at me disappointedly. Outside I could see a vast blue sky, mountains rising in the distance and palm trees doting the roads.

Welcome to Australia.

My job 2

Well the interview I went to on Thursday (see below) seemed to go ok. The company still will not know until the 14^th of April (four days after the interview) whether they have definitely got the contract for the school I was applying for anyway.

Today I visited my school just to tell them that I still want to work there, and have changed companies in order to do that. I was really surprised how many teachers the BOE decided to move to other schools, at least twenty members of the staff. The secretary was reeling off names of the teachers that have been posted elsewhere, it was quite sad to hear. I don’t understand the system but I suppose it makes sense to someone.
Apparently if I do get the job it will not start until May, so I have lots of time on my hands now.

My job

On Thursday of this week I am going to an interview for the job I was already doing. Does that sound strange? I think so too, allow me to explain.

In Japan you can’t just get a job in an elementary or high school as an English teacher. Each area belongs to a Board of Education (BOE) and these boards hire one of the many English teacher recruitment companies to find their teachers for them. Hopeful English teachers apply to one of these companies, and if they are successful then they get to work in a school.

In reality most of these companies don’t offer much support to the teachers, like training or materials for example. They do help with visas, show you where your school is and introduce you to the other teachers, but that is all. From my company, for example, I got a book of English teaching games, a CD and a three-hour talk about teaching. Then they sent me off to my school with a collection of time sheets to be rigorously filled in and stamped every day so that they could pay me only for each minute I was actually in school. There are no sick days, if I don’t go in I don’t get paid. There is no health insurance and definitely no pension. What’s more, because the BOE pays the companies, and the companies then pay the teachers, they are free to take about 40% of our earnings for themselves.

It must be great business, a real monopoly. Once a teacher is assigned to a school and doing their job, the company doesn’t have to do anything else for them, beyond processing tax and salary information.

This still does not explain why I am going for an interview though does it. Every year the BOE rethinks which company they want to hire. The different English teacher recruitment companies offer contracts for various amounts of money and the BOEs sit back and consider them. Sometimes a company may have let down the BOE by not providing enough teachers. This is what has happened to me, the BOE for the area where my school is has been let down by my company and so has chosen a different one. On Thursday my interview is with the new English teacher recruitment company for the area my school is in.

Even if the interview goes well they cannot guarantee that I will be sent to the same school I was working in previously. The fact that I know the school, the teachers and the kids does not seem to mean much. Nor does it matter that the school actually wants me to stay, as the BOE likes to move teachers around for some reason.

There are some mystical BOEs out there though which do employ English teachers directly. These contracts are very hard to come by as the teachers rarely leave such positions. The pay is much higher, they can leave early if they have nothing to do and there are even sick days. For the rest of us though we have to put up with getting thrown around by the decisions of the big bosses and the flow of money between governments and companies.

Just when I was fitting in and feeling part of the school I might get tossed aside for a cheaper model. I can but try though, and saying that I had better go dry-clean my suit.

One small death for man, one giant loss for mankind

My favourite author, Arthur C. Clarke died today. Doubtless many people across the world are reading their papers this morning and thinking, “Oh he was still alive?” He is one of those figures that has been so well known for such a long time that people just sort of assume they must be dead by now. However, today was the day. He was 90.

There is only one set of books that has ever made me cry, and that is Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama series. Onions aside, it takes quite a lot to make me cry. However, after following protagonists to the depths of space and back, through generations and circumstances changing in even more incredible ways, yet still told through that human perspective, crying was the least I could do.

Mr Clarke had an incredible ability to imagine, powered by great curiosity and with an accompanying skill for explanation. His books often have appendices in the back where he will reference what his curiosity led him to read, what science journal article became the inspiration for some of his imagination’s fantastic seeming ideas. For example, he wrote a book in the late eighties, but set in 2020 or so, where one character achieves great fortune by solving the millennium bug. The actual bug part is just part of the character’s history and is not an important event in the story itself, but it shows just what foresight and attention Arthur C. Clarke had. However, his main claim to prophesising is satellites. He wrote a paper outlining satellites no less than 25 years before they were actually constructed and as a result no company could copyright them once they were up and running. Out of respect for his achievement the geostationary orbit that satellites orbit the Earth in is called the Clarke Belt.

So he died today but did you know that he left a goodbye message for his friends and fans, recorded back in December. The man who was born in 1917 had even the foresight to predict his own death and the dexterity of mind to be able to use anything the modern world could throw at him. He left his goodbye message on Youtube. I truly think when humans reach the edge of the universe the mind of Arthur C Clarke will be there waiting for them, wondering what took us so long.

If you will allow me to call Arthur C Clarke a hero of mine then permit me to say that I have two more. One of them is Douglas Adams whose fame and popularity is so widespread that to say that I like him sounds almost like a cliché. That fact does not stop me from saying that he is a hero of mine; it just removes the need to explain it.

The third hero is Rod Serling. This is him.

He was an American science fiction writer and is best known for being the man behind The Twilight Zone. Serling did not just come up with the concept for the show but also narrated the opening and conclusions to all of its episodes, and himself wrote 92 of the 156 episodes made between 1959 to 1964. He also has a great sense of humour and hosted television quiz shows, but the good kind. He is also remembered as being a humanitarian, for example he would often cast African American actors at a time when many studios refused to. For these reasons his home town even has a holiday to celebrate his memory.

The success of the Twilight Zone itself is so great that it has the only television theme tune that actually carries semantic meaning. People will hum the theme to express the idea of a strange situation or event. Even people with no knowledge of the show will do this because it has become so prominent in our culture. The phrase, The Twilight Zone, is used without a thought to the programme, just to express something weird happening. Even now nearly 50 years after it first aired they are still making new episodes of, though they are very different of course.

Aside from the fact that they are all men, and all now sadly dead, the similarity between these three people is rather obvious; they are all wrote Science Fiction. I have heard many an English teacher sigh when I told them that this was my favourite genre. There is a perception that such books are just about three legged men fighting two legged men with rayguns or robots. However, Science Fiction, and Fantasy too, have the flexibility to incorporate all the other genres. Science Fiction books can easily contain romance, horror, mystery and comedy but they do it in a different way. Science Fiction is not even really a genre at all; it is a disclaimer for, “This book can be about anything.”

An SF book can have you drifting through space as a baby, or feeling the raging fires of Io as they burn away into space. You can be sitting in the infinite comfort of God’s lap or riving in the agony of an infinitely chaotic universe. Without the walls that other genres put up there is an incredible stage by which we can teach, or learn, a lesson. If you want people to think then take them outside of what they know already. Did you know that the core of Jupiter might be a vast diamond far bigger than the Earth? Mr Clarke taught me that.

Umbrellas

The first time I went outside in the rain in Japan I was stunned at how Everyone has an umbrella. Personally, I never used an umbrella while I was in the UK (22 out of the 23 years of my life) for two reasons. The first is because it didn’t seem socially acceptable for young males to carry brollies. We are supposed to be hardy and not care about our appearance in that masculine kind of Don’t-be-at-all-feminine way, despite using water-soluble hair products. The second reason is because it rains everyday anyway so in the end you stop thinking of it as, “rain” and instead just as, “life” and there is no umbrella to protect you from that.

However, in Japan if you are a human being outside whilst it is raining then by law you should have an umbrella. It is not a written law but an obvious one nevertheless because not having an umbrella can actually be quite a hazard. Imagine the scene, a busy crossing intersection in downtown Tokyo, massive numbers of people build up on either side ready to cross the road. When they do cross both groups compete for the same bit of striped road and have to pass through each other as seamlessly as possible. On a rainy day these people are more like armies of umbrellas that hit and scrape against each other as they pass. Umbrellas don't just protect you from the rain, they actually protect you from everybody else's umbrellas which otherwise you have to duck and weave under.

The standard umbrella in Japan looks like this.

Available from about 50p, it has a white plastic handle but the actual cover is see-through. This design is ideal for letting you see the people you are about to collide with and the poles and walls you should avoid.

The problem with everyone having this standard umbrella is that frequently people will just pick yours up and take it when you leave it in the stands outside shops and restaurants on a rainy day. It seems to be acceptable in Japan to see life as an umbrella swap shop and I have done this myself with the massive array of umbrellas standing by the door of my guesthouse. I once took an umbrella only for someone else to take it from me later that day when I was in a café.

However, you can protect your umbrella in a very easy and animalistic way, you just have to mark your territory. Any permanent mark will do, it can be your name written on the cover of the umbrella or something more abstract. This is mine.

As you can see it is a happy fish. The choice of a happy fish has no meaning or relevance to me but its simple smiling face protects my umbrella indefinitely. I can safely leave it outside shops and cafes or with all the others in my guesthouse certain that it will be there waiting for me when I need it next. If I leave it on a train no one will take it, the guard will hand it in to the lost property office at the end of the day, and from there it will be sent to the main lost property centre in Tokyo. Since my umbrella will have a distinguishable mark they will not sell it on through private auction after two weeks with all the other white, see-through umbrellas. Instead they will keep it for up to six months and if I go to collect it and say I am looking for the umbrella with the happy fish on it they will say, “Ohhhh, so you’re the one!” Within seconds they will dig it out from the hundreds of thousands of other umbrellas and will tell me, “We’ve been wondering who owns this, we even had a sweepstake, are you by chance a retired cartographer?” or something.

So there you have it, a happy fish keeps me dry.

Year 6 Graduation

In Japan the school year goes from Apil to the end of March and in two weeks time the current Year 6 of my school will enter Junior High School. This is a big occasion for them as Junior High is quite different to Elementary School, the work is harder and they have to wear a uniform. Also, since many of these kids went to the kindergarten attached to our school they have been coming to the same place for eight years, a long time especially when you are twelve.

The importance of this event is recognised by the whole school and so on Wednesday of this week there was a big Year 6 Graduation event. I knew of this event because it was on my timetable and a few weeks ago something appeared in my tray. It was a song, all written in Japanese, which after asking the right people I found out was the song that all the teachers were going to sing for the graduation. The people I asked made it sound like it was entirely optional whether to sing or not and it seemed like many of the teachers were not going to. Then, there was a rehearsal for the song at 4:30 the exact time I am allowed to go home. I got a bit nervous when I saw that all the teachers had left the Teacher’s Room and had gone to rehearse in the music room. As I walked home I wondered whether I would be the only one not singing at the Graduation.

Nothing much happened until the day before the graduation where there was another rehearsal. Whenever there is a meeting in the Teacher’s Room I try to escape to somewhere else to do my work since it is so hard to stay awake during those meetings and there is no point my being there. However, I never know when the meetings will be and the worst thing is for me to be doing something at my desk and then suddenly a meeting starts up and I know I am trapped there for an hour. So now I have learnt to sense when there is going to be a meeting; there are a number of phenomena foreshadowing a meeting. For example, an unusually large amount of staff at their desks along with the principal, and also the moody guy looking especially moody. I detected such a stirring on the day before graduation and I asked the teacher next to me if there was going to be a meeting, she explained that there was going to be a rehearsal and that we should go to the gym together. So off we went.

In the gym the teachers were standing around until one of them started ordering us around with a microphone, moving us into the centre of the room were it seemed everyone had their own place to stand. My place was next to the principal and among the teaching assistants. We were standing right in the middle of the room facing the stage, all squeezing into an unexplainably narrow area. The teacher who had taken me to the gym walked to the front of the room and read a poem. Then another teacher walked forward and gave a speech towards the stage, where there was currently no one to hear it. The piano started up and I clutched my song lyrics nervously.

The singing began, I tried to sing the bits that I could understand but it was hard going. The chorus to the song was in English, it was, “Dreams come true together,” and during this line I looked up and realised that we were all being conducted. This was the first time I have ever been conducted and I don’t understand how it works and certainly had no concentration left to understand now. It was even more confusing because some of the teachers seemed to be singing the backing to the song, and I wasn’t sure which bit I should be singing. At the end of the song everyone left the gym and we made our way back to our desks in the teachers room. I felt my usual sense of annoyance at how nobody really explained anything to me. They had given me the lyrics but they know I cannot read kanji and no one had offered to translate it to the Japanese that I can read, which would not have taken long at all. Also they had put the only previous rehearsal time exactly when I go home and I wondered whether anyone would have told me to go to the gym if I had not asked about the meeting. That night I went home asked my friend Yoko (Hello) to translate it for me which she kindly and neatly did.

The next day at 10:30am I walked to the gym with a line of kids that was surprised to see me suddenly in their midst. I found a place to stand at the edge of the gym near the year 5 students who were playing music. As the rest of the kids came in I realised why we had all crammed ourselves into the middle of the room for the rehearsal the day before. It was because all the year groups were sitting around the edge of the room and leaving a big space in the middle. I looked around the room checking which years were there. All but year 6 were present.

When everyone else had arrived a girl with a microphone, the compere for the event, greeted us and gave out some instructions like, “please be quiet” and “let’s have a good time.” The staff and children shouted “hai” as in yes, helpfully and there was a real sense of co-operation. Meanwhile some of the year 5 students were arranging themselves in the middle of the room with long flexible colourful poles. They looked a bit like those Hawaiian flower necklaces stereotypically hung around the necks of anyone who visits Hawaii. The kids stood in pairs about four metres apart and arranged the poles into what turned out to be a tunnel. The music began to play again, everyone clapped and year 6 entered the room in pairs, walking under the flowery tunnel and sitting down on the stage.

Once they were all in the year 5 packed away their tunnel and resumed their places. The girl with the microphone introduced the principle who gave a short speech whilst standing on a box. The girl took over again, and introduced the fourth years. I was standing next to the fourth years and was a bit surprised when they all stood up and faced the front of the room like they were suddenly one organism. One of the fourth year teachers stood facing them with two drum sticks in her hand, she banged them together playing the metronome and someone hidden behind the year 6 started to play the piano. The fourth years began to sing a pleasant but rather boring song. After a minute or so, though, the drumstick metronome speeded up, the piano became more funky and the song became much more lively.

At the end of the song the room was unexpectedly filled with the voice of an annoying sounding American girl talking to a man. I can’t remember what she was talking about, some kind of complaint I think. I was totally confused but then it all explained itself when the beat started and I realised this was some Japanese techno sampling some random American girl probably from a film. The year four all swarmed into the middle of the room, found their assigned places and stood like a rigid army facing the front of the room. Then the dance began.

This dance was exactly right for the song, but it was the kind of dance that no one over 11 years old would feel comfortable doing. It involved spinning around, slapping their thighs and arses and that kind of pre-teen Dance Dance Revolution dancing. Yet together, as a 150 strong 10 year old dancing group they were incredible. I realised that different sets of kids were doing different movements at the same time in a brilliant choreographed fashion. Then they all ran around the room again reshuffling themselves like a giant swarm of birds changing direction. The song changed tempo and they all started drumming their thighs along to the beat making a massive noise that echoed around the gym. During the breakdown of the song they made weird floating movements like they were falling slowly through space then did quirk jerky movements to what looked like random poses. This went on for a bit longer getting more and more impressive and then they ran back to their places and sat down. One child stood and shouted at the year 6 a good luck and we’ll miss you message, then everyone clapped.

I was stunned. Firstly I was stunned because I realised that every year group was going to perform for the year 6. Each year had made a big effort to prepare their own goodbye, thank you and good luck for their departing schoolmates. What’s more the year 4 had just performed something perfectly suited to their age group, it was in between childlike and teenage, it was fun and embarrassing but together they pulled it off amazingly. Another thing that surprised me was that they had been allowed to do that show at all. The year 4 teachers must have taught it to them, or at least helped them to co-ordinate it and I have every respect for them, both for the time and effort required but also for needing to be so childlike and fun themselves as to want to teach something like that. In my dusty old overly religious primary school the teachers would have never ever got involved in such a thing. That is not to say they didn’t have a sense of humour but they were not anywhere near that fun and there was no emphasis on allowing kids to be kids. I have never seen children perform so professionally and yet with such big smiles on their faces, especially when it is not even for themselves or for their parents but for a group of people whose only similarity is that they go to the same school. But for them going to the same school actually means something.

Please understand my affection, my own story is that I loathed my primary school so much that I deliberately frowned as deeply as I could on the end of year 6 photo as an eternal reminder to myself of how I actually felt about it. I am honestly still thankful that those days are over.

Anyway.

The First Years performed next, a show called “Ojiisan no kasa” meaning Grandfather’s Umbrella. For this performance some of the kids had umbrellas and raincoatss while the others sang. About twenty kids did an umbrella dance before Ojiisan appeared and delivered his lines to the year 6. The rest of the kids sang the next bit of the story while Ojiisan walked around unhappily. Then they performed a dance to the song Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head. Finally they sang Singing in The Rain and it was all very good. One particularly loud kid stood up to represent the First Years and delivered their message of appreciation and good luck. Incidentally the Year 6 and First Years ate school lunch together on Tuesday, I was there too and it was sort of surreal but sweet.

The Second Years had been making fish hats all week; I had seen them at the backs of the classrooms. Their story was about some fish happily swimming and singing until some sharks appeared and they all swam away into hiding. Next came some kind of plankton and then the fish all came out again happily. There was lots of running around, singing and a grand finale of long pieces of paper being pushed over the balcony running along the edge of the gym. When fully unveiled they made up an enormous picture of a big fish made up of little fishes. It was awesome, and quite a surprise to the year 5 sitting below the balcony.

The Third Years performed a strange and aboriginal seeming story. It involved about twenty kids in costume each delivering a line accompanied by some weird movement, while the rest of the kids sang the next bit of the story. I couldn’t understand the story but it was a strangely captivating story telling method I thought.

The Fifth Years had done something very different. As well as providing the music for the start and end of the show they had drawn a picture of everyone member of Year 6. These pictures had been put on large pieces of paper in the shape of hot air balloons around the room. One by one these balloons were unveiled and the names, and predicted occupations, of each of the kids pictured was read out. The Year 6 found this very amusing and were pointing and laughing throughout.

Finally, it was the teachers’ turn. Everyone gasped in amazement when the compere girl announced what was next. Just like the day before we all squeezed into our places, the poem was read, the speech given but today it all made sense. I had my special lyrics with me and we all began to sing. It was a really sweet song, there are some very good voices amongst my colleagues and I felt moved to be delivering this message along with them. I could see a few of the year 6 wiping their eyes and at the end of the song we all bowed and everyone clapped. I walked back to my place and some of the Fourth Years were enthusiastically giving me the thumbs up.

In that moment, when everything came together I no longer felt any resentment towards my colleagues. The fact that they had given me the lyrics and had included me in that song at all was a testament that really do consider me one of their colleagues, that I really am part of the school and had as much right to say goodbye to the year 6 as they. To be a new, foreign and strange teacher like the school has never had before and yet be included is a meaningful thing indeed. It is up to me to make it easier for myself, by asking for help when I need it and taking the time to understand the replies.

Finally, it was the Year 6’s turn to say goodbye. A member of each of the five classes stood and made a speech and then they sang a song. More pairs of eyes amongst them were being wiped and there was a real sense of sadness and goodbye in the room. This sense was so strong it made two first year girls start crying. One girl was crying really really loudly, so much that it hampered being able to hear the speeches. This then set off the girl sitting next to her, but she cried quietly. I have to say I didn’t have much sympathy for the loud girl, I wanted her to shut up as they sounded like attention seeking tears to me. The teacher of that class is rather young and unprofessional and seemed to find it more funny than a need to go and comfort the girl, or take her out of the room.

Eventually it was time to leave, the music started up and the year 6 made their way out again under the re-erected flower tunnel. Out of their own accord some of the other years waved them goodbye and some of the year 6 waved back. After them the other years made their way out and I noticed that the loudly sobbing girl was now smiling happily but the girl she had been sitting next to was still crying. I think shallow tears are cried loudly, but deep ones need make no sound at all.

I realise that my view of the school I work in is skewed. I am not present in any lessons by my own and don’t know what it is like to be disciplined by these fun seeming teachers. In the other school I teach in I met an America girl who hates her school, she says the lessons are boring and they just learn by rote. She wants to go back to America and does not speak Japanese particularly fluently so her opinion is skewed also. I have met a year 6 girl in my school who, when I asked her if she likes the school, said that she hates it. Adult eyes see things differently too. When the first year girl was crying her eyes out I saw her classmates trying to comfort her, I can imagine their responses being either sympathy or annoyance, certainly not amusement which was her teacher’s response. An adult standing outside the event can think it is funny or sweet that this girl is upset because she has no real reason to be, she doesn’t really know the year 6 and she is not leaving the school herself. For the kids wrapped up in the event it makes sense that she is crying, but not at that volume.

Working at the school gives me more faith in schools in general. It also reinforces to me just why I loathed my own primary school so much but it does make me re-think my definition that all schools are essentially day prisons. Yet I will never get over this opinion, there is always going to be the frowning kid on a dusty photo behind my bookcase to remind me of my own experience. All I can do is say bravo to Japanese elementary schools and understand that some kids will always hate school. Most importantly though I have to learn from my own experiences of school and be the kind of teacher that even frowning kids feel happy to smile at.