Ohayo. Ohayo. New Jersey.

March 1^st was the official graduation date for all public high schools in Hokkaido.  I put on my suit and made my way to the high school at my usual time, on a Sunday morning…wasn’t entirely thrilled about that, but I knew students would be looking for me.  Everyone’s in their suits, even the PE teachers, and the female graduating homeroom teachers don their regal kimonos.  It’s a big deal.  We make our way into the gym and I really have no idea what to expect, except I know that there’ll be speeches and I won’t understand them.  I was certainly right about the speeches.  They were there, and there were several of them, and I didn’t understand them.  There was also a LOT of bowing—bowing to flags, bowing to the audience, bowing to the teachers, and bowing to the special guests.  And this formal regimentation did not go by quickly. 

I have to say though, that I did enjoy watching the students come up to get their diplomas.  It was like clockwork.  Your name was called.  You walked to the center of the stage and bowed.  You received your diploma.  You stepped back.  Another name was called.  That other person joins you.  Then, both of you bow.  You leave the stage and the other person steps forward to receive his diploma… so on and so forth.  The students here don’t wear special graduation gowns or uniforms.  They just wear their standard uniform plus some special graduation brooch of sorts.  Following the speeches and presentations of unknown awards came my favorite part—the singing!  My schools are big on singing here.  First they sang their catchy school anthem.  Then they sang some poppy song that everyone seemed to know.  And then the tears began!  What a contrast to all the dry ceremony that preceded this!  Each homeroom class made their way to the center of the gym and faced the audience of their peers and their parents.  The classroom speaker would shout out a line of thanks then the class would bow and make their triumphant way out of the gym. 

It’s not over just yet.  Each class makes its way to their homeroom for their final “class.”  Students are given an opportunity to share something with the class with their parents looking on.  It’s all very emotional.  These kids have been in the same class together with the same primary teacher for three years.  And with the amount of time they spend at school each day, it’s no wonder many of them get a little choked up.  Even the big burly male teachers would start crying.  It’s certainly refreshing to see this in a society that tends to hide emotions.  I admire the homeroom system they’ve got here.  The students and their teacher develop a very unique relationship that is very different from the teacher-student relationships of back in the day when I was in high school (although not the kind that ends up as a Lifetime television movie…).  Granted, it would suck to have a terrible homeroom teacher.  But it seems that every homeroom class I’ve witnessed here has a truly genuine mutual affinity between the students and the teacher.

I am going to miss this group of kids.  They were very outgoing and would come and visit me in the teachers’ office.  Yeah, they slept and talked through classes every once in a while, but they were still loads of fun.  I liked them, and they liked me.  I could certainly tell of the latter as I spent half an hour posing with students for pictures.  Since it was a commercial high school, most of these students are entering the workforce come the start of the new business year in April rather than entering college.  One student is working for the main airport in Chitose, another working for a gas company, and one other that’ll work at a prison in Sapporo.  The whole process of how they get one job over another is a mystery to me…although it probably involves some testing like most things here in Japan.  おめでとうand good luck!