The Final Wrap - School's Out!

Well... that's that! In a blink of an eye, somehow I am finished with teaching schools in Japan. Today, at my second school, a special needs school, I went to graduation. It was an interesting day, some happy faces, some nervous ones.

It is interesting to me that comparing the two, very very different schools, yet two very similar graduation ceremonies. Luckily, there are far less students at today's school, so the process of handing everyone a diploma took less time. Some of the students present with more severe intellectual disabilities struggled to stay still for the seventy-minute ceremony, but then again so did plenty of others! The heaters were more effective at least!
After the diplomas were done, it was time for the principal to give a speech, followed by a VIP who spoke loudly and from a non-speaker of Japanese, it seemed a little angrily. Oh well, passion is always good right?

A few more speeches, the school song (which includes clapping by the way) and we were done. Oh no, a few photos quickly. Lots of congratulations. I had a meeting with the English teachers after that and just like that, I walked away from the teachers' room for the last time.

Last week in my final classes there the students, a fellow teacher and I had a go at making some Australian 'food'. Meat pies - well you can find them out of Australia. Apart from a shortage of pastry they came up all right. See photos for references.









As for the lamingtons, well, they weren't quite as successful. I never realised how tricky they were to make. A lamington, for the non-Australian, is a very light sponge cake covered in chocolate sauce and finally dipped in coconut. The process of dipping the lamingtons was extremely... ummmm... let's say messy. I cleaned up afterwards and believe me there was a bit to clean up! And we ran short of coconut too. Plus there wasn't a lot of sponge cake so they were half-sized lamingtons. And I realised that we should have cut the crust off the sponge as well. But, once inside the mouth, little of this mattered!

So are the perils when you cook stuff you don't actually cook at home with an international audience. Certainly though, these types of lessons have always been a lot of fun. And now, well, who knows what the future will bring but for the foreseeable future, I won't be doing this sort of thing for a while.
Two years of teaching, oh and I received dozens of presents from the school too, lots of thank yous and the staff at both schools as I left stopped to applaud me which was really just awkward. Staff at special needs' schools world wide deserve applause for their patience, care and dedication. The school I was fortunate to work at once a week for two years is no exception.
And out into the wilderness. Suddenly, I am unemployed. End of the month sees my wife and I return to Yokohama for six weeks before heading back to Australia. I CAN work, but only being available for a short period is going to make it hard to employ me. We will see.

WATCH THIS SPACE - Short Journeys: Japan is coming either tomorrow or Saturday. I've spent a lot of time this week editing the first edition and it's almost ready. I have a cover too. This one will be released on Kindle, Payhip and Lulu at the same time. So many choices. It's the longest of all Short Journeys easily and has a special chapter on Iwate, the prefecture I've called my home these two years, and has more photos than ever as well. It will be a perfect introduction to Japan for someone considering a journey here.
Thanks as always for your support.

Thoughts on Graduation

I’m sure I am not the only Gaijin in Japan blogging today about their thoughts on graduation. Across Iwate at least, today was graduation at many high schools including my own, and it’s a very strange day in so many ways. For starters, we are saying a big goodbye to many students, students I have now taught for two years. A second year really builds an understanding of the different students, and that goes both ways. So I feel that I had a little more to do with the students graduating this year compared to last year. If I was staying for a third year, it would be even stronger for the group of students finishing second year right now.

And that’s my regret I guess, that I won’t get to see the students that started here when I did graduate. That’s quite disappointing for me. As for those who graduated today, well, when I first started teaching them, generally I found them to be the most troublesome of all the year levels, with the exception of the ‘B’ class.

The C, D and F classes I taught seemed to have little to no interest in English for the most part, bar a handful of students, and I really had to work hard to keep their attention in the class room. There were a number of students in different classes who were class ‘clowns’, for want of a better word. They were so easily distracted and even my fellow Japanese English teachers were at a bit of a loss.

However, that said, the more you work with students the more you understand them and connect. And slowly I could recognise there were a number of students interested in English and keen to progress and learn. Not only that, but I could identify students that struggled, and those who could do the work but couldn’t be bothered. And thus adapt and try different ways to reach them. And I must have reached some of them. Today I was signing year books and getting presents.

But also after a little bit of time it was clear that there were no ‘bad’ students, although I always believed that beforehand. Students have pressures and lives and different upbringings and they all lived through March 11^th, 2011, a year before I arrived to teach. I have heard people say that my school is low level, or even a ‘bad school’, but it simply isn’t true.

This year’s graduates are fine young people. I have heard of some pretty bad stuff going on in classrooms via other Gaijn teachers, but I had nothing too bad in mine other than the occasional all-boy class getting a bit loud here and there and… no that’s about it.

They are nuts about flowers in Japan. And pretty flowers about nuts too.

But this year’s graduates have so much character and life, it was almost bizarre to see them at the graduation ceremony to be honest. I think of them in the class room laughing and asking me questions, and clearly having an incredibly strong bond with each other. The ceremony was, well, what can I say?

It seems traditional first of all that everyone in the hall must be as cold as possible. The giant gas heaters are incredibly ineffective and probably should have been turned on yesterday and left on. The graduates walk in, blank faces, looking straight ahead and follow a strict line to get to their chairs at the front of the hall, it’s almost army like. Of course, some of the students cut a corner or two, but for the most part they were emotionless. In fact, the entire hall including the other students, teachers and parents had not a smile among them.

As the graduates walk the walk, everyone else claps in time to the music provided by the brass band, which incidentally was the same choice as last year. This takes ten minutes, ten minutes of clapping in time. Sounds like fun? Remember, not ONE smile.

Then every student gets their name read out, walks onto the stage and receives their diploma from the principal. That’s around 200 students and it took 40 minutes. Not a smile. They bow to the principal, with varying degrees of bowing. Some seem very orthodox and dip their head low, others it was barely a movement at all. Not a smile. 40 minutes. Did I mention? They reply ‘Hai!’ when their name is called, and occasionally one student shouts it really loud. One student from my 3F class does this, and I couldn’t help laughing a little. Luckily, the teacher next to me does too, she knows him well. Nevertheless we are still the only ones to crack a smile in nearly an hour.

Speech by the principal. No applause for speeches. Then a member of the PTA. Then another. Each are 5-7 minutes. Straight faces. Two students give speeches – one from a second grader wishing the graduates well, one from a graduate, I think the student council head. It ends in tears. We’re over 90 minutes now. I look around and there are teachers and parents asleep. There’s also an NHK crew (Japan’s main TV network) here today, one camera, filming bits and bobs of the day. Probably for a piece in the Iwate news.

Then it’s time for the school song. I’ve spent time going over the hiragana and know the tune. I do pretty well, it’s not perfect but at least I didn’t confuse the hiragana for ‘ra’ with the one for ‘chi’ which I keep doing and vice versa. There’s a few more words and thankyous. The teachers stand up and bow to the PTA, sit down again. Finally the music starts up again and to continuous applause and no smiles the graduates walk out of the hall, with a look on their faces saying they have just been through pure hell. Except – there was one student whom I never taught smiling! It’s a minor victory at least.

Kind message on a present from a student. I also got a bobble-head monkey.

Afterwards there are smiles and happiness, taking of photos and thanking teachers and the like.

おめでとう- that’s Japanese for congratulations, all round. ‘Thank goodness!’, I thought. The end of high school is something to feel happy about, to celebrate, yet the event honestly felt like a funeral. The teachers almost all wore back with white shirts. I had dark grey and didn’t stand out too much, I hope. One teacher had a light grey suit and another a blue suit that was 5 sizes too big for him.

And so a new chapter begins for 200-odd students at my school. I’m going to miss every single one. I hope with all my heart the future brings them nothing but happiness and security, and that they chase their dreams. They were a year full of colour, exuberance and character. Japan, and the world needs a bit more of that. 

Andrew Boland / World Journeys is a travel writer and blogger who has visited 69 countries. For more on his travel writing and books, please visit: World Journeys. 

One last class – what would you teach?

So, this week sees me in the home stretch of teaching in Japan. I’ve been teaching here for two years now and I’ve done lessons on all sorts of topics from favourite foods (and favourite this and that!) to ‘virtual water’, do google that if you’re interested. Once you start reading, you won’t be. So for my last lot of lessons I wanted to do something special to me and interesting to the students. Well I try to make every lesson interesting for the students. I have done a range of lessons on different travel-related topics which often involve an English grammar point, but this week I was given the topic of ‘your favourite character’ to make a lesson for the first years.

So yes, my friends will know where I went for that topic! I finally got to do a lesson about Doctor Who! Well, it’s not my first, I have used Doctor Who here and there in a couple of lessons, but never as the central theme of a lesson. And so I spent the weekend creating a short video about Doctor Who (none of my students have heard of Doctor Who except through me of course) introducing the character of the Doctor and choosing some choice bits. I wanted to explain why he is my favourite character – so I talked about his ability to change his face, about facing danger, being brave, funny and caring for his friends.

I kept the message simple – a must for all lesson plans here, not always the easiest though with some of the topics I get thrown (see ‘virtual water’). I included some scenes from Doctor Who featuring the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and ninth Doctors (unfortunately Adobe couldn’t handle the files from the tenth and eleventh because I had some moments in mind) and it was interesting to watch their reactions. Not a lot of dialogue of course. They laughed at Patrick Troughton posing for the camera as soldiers stormed past him, and went ‘awwwww’ in amazement as Tom Baker turned into Peter Davison. The Orgons they found particularly funny in ‘Day of the Daleks’ and then the video asked them – ‘who is YOUR favourite character?’ (well, it said favorite as we are using Ameriglish here).

Mickey Mouse has proved popular, I was expect a lot of Doraemon, according to the net the most popular character in Japan. Not one from the first class! Actually, in contrast to many of the typical ‘favourite’ exercises I’ve given my first graders, I had a surprisingly wide variety of answers. And no, none of the students can borrow my ‘Terror of the Zygons’ DVD. But I do hope one or two look ‘Doctor Who’ up on the net after that.

The white board awaits the students!

Imagine it’s your last class, what topic would you like to bring to your students that is important to you and who you are?

My final worksheet

Andrew is a travel blogger and the writer of the ebook series ‘Short Journeys’. Check out his travel writings at:

World Journeys

Life in Japan - an update

Howdy folks. I know recent blogs have been about Australia, so a good chance to blog about life in Japan I thought today. Today we are enjoying an extra long weekend. It's called 'Golden Week', a week that us celebrated around the start of May each year. It's a very very busy time in Japan, and exists because of a string of public holidays around this time.
In fact, it's kind of two weekends, rather than an actual week. Last weekend we had Monday off, this weekend it's Fridays and Monday. Yes, four-day weekend is nice.
Here in Ichinoseki it almost coincides with the Cherry Blossoms blooming, but not quite. Last year it was timed perfectly, but this year most of the cherry blossoms have been and gone. The weather has been cold, wet and windy too which doesn't help.

Thursday last week was a special day at my high school. It was a volunteer day. In 2012 I stayed at school all day and used the day to walk around the school chatting with students, as I'd only been at the school two weeks. Half the students, at a guess, spend the day pulling up weeds from the school grounds. Not a great way to spend the day in my opinion! Others head out around the town to pick up rubbish and help out in similar ways. This year I jumped on the coat tails of the brass band, who were playing at a nursing home ten minutes drive from the school.
I was surprised to find brass bands so big in Japan. Most high schools have one I think. Much of the music does seem to have an American influence, but that's brass bands for you. The brass band at my high school is pretty darned good, the girl who did the saxophone solo was brilliant. At the nursing home the cherry blossoms were blooming, and the elderly people there really appreciated the music. The brass band put on a show with some singing as well. It was a great day. And I got to help load and unload the instruments.

After this weekend, we will be in for some solid teaching. No public holidays for two months! Still, we are paid to work! I've uploaded a couple of pictures. Sorry there aren't more but we can't put students pictures on the web, and that's fair enough.

Also, please take the time to visit my Amazon Author page.
Andrew Boland's Amazon Author page.

Over the next four days, I am running a free promotion - on the Romanian chapter of my book, the eighth chapter over all and the second chapter in Europe (second) book.
Dhaka to Dakar. Book Two: Europe. Chapter Eight: Romania