A Busy Tuesday

So, this afternoon I had lunch with Kae, my JTE. Beforehand, she showed me around Nakatomi Junior High, the school I’ll primarily be working at. The school is on a mountain overlooking the town. The view is incredible. The school itself is three stories. It’s a lot more friendly looking than American junior high schools (Beck certainly doesn’t come to mind). Except for science, music, and PE, the kids stay in their homeroom all day and the teachers come to them. Without lockers, it kind of feels more like an elementary school. One interesting feature to the school was the abundance of helmets in all the classrooms. You know, for earthquakes. They apparently strike about once every two months.

The kids are now on summer break, which means they don’t go to classes but instead participate in clubs everyday. The dedication of these kids is unbelievable. Kae took me to the gym where the badminton team was practicing. The badminton team, by the way, is all girls (the boys play baseball), and they could flat out ruin me in badminton. I’ve never seen anyone (let alone a thirteen year old Japanese girl) hit a birdie so hard. They were crushing that freaking thing. Our junior high has the first and third best badminton players in Yamanashi.

I met the music/band teacher, whose name I have since forgotten. Since I put it on my JET application, everyone in the school knows that I play saxophone – especially the band teacher. She wants me to play in some sort of school festival. I told her I didn’t have my horn with me. She said they had extra ones at school. I tried to tell her that I was really rusty, but she didn’t seem to care. She gave me the sheet music. Great… If the girls in brass band (its all girls, I guess ALL of boys are busy with baseball) are anywhere near as good as the ones on the badminton team, this is going to be really embarrassing…
After showing me around the school, Kae had to go to the local firestation to visit some students who were learning about what its like to be a fireman for a day (or something… I’m still not really clear on what we were doing there). When we walked in, the kids were busy performing CPR on a dummy, so we started chatting with one of the head fireman. After finding out that I was from Philadelphia, the guy kept saying “Rocky!” to me and punching the air. After the kids finished their lesson, the firefighters took it upon themselves to enthusiastically show me every piece of equipment in the station. They took me into the ambulance and took my blood pressure and monitored how much oxygen was getting to my fingers (?!). Apparently not enough – I was six points below average. Then, they insisted on having me try on all of their firefighting equipment. I tried on the fireproof jacket (even though it was like 95 degrees out). Then they strapped an oxygen tank to my back and put this giant, face-covering mask on my head and had me breathe through it for a minute (though there was enough air in the tank to last another twelve). Kae just sort of stood by and acted as my translator through the whole thing. I’m still not sure why we went there in the first place. Kae barely talked to the kids. I think the Japanese are on a mission to humiliate me.