Fire drills and intruder defense

Thanks to all the rain, and the schools' utter lack of powered ventilation, most of the walls and floors in school were damp for most of June. In fact, we went about half of the month with shallow puddles in the halls. The main thoroughfares would get an occasional toweling-down, but for the most part, everyone let it go. After all, what was the point? We averaged five-day stretches of nonstop rainfall, and about one sunny day a week. The resulting humidity meant that any moisture we mopped up would return in an hour.

The standing water in the hallways provided a steady source of amusement. The only thing funnier than watching people nearly wipe out was for those people to be teachers, most of whom affect a look of brusque disdain when interacting with students. Nobody was hurt and, as best as I can tell, very few people actually fell.

However, toward the end of June, we had a scheduled fire drill. When everyone was supposed to be walking briskly as they were evacuated to the gym, the dank halls stopped being as funny. Nobody got hurt, but there were several spills. I'm sure the biggest concern for the students was a bruised ego, as the entire student body was filing through the same two corridors.

A week or two later, all the students were gathered for an assembly. I think it was for a speech from representatives of a nearby university. Whatever the reason, all the teachers were left with no students to worry about for an hour or two. Of course, the administration capitalized on this. We all filed into the smaller of the school's two gyms, and were met by the chief of police.

He was there to teach us now to respond to intruders at school. I couldn't catch a lot of his speech, though I think the beginning was about how to approach visitors to the school, what to keep an eye out for, etc. He then took volunteers for a demonstration. The head teacher chose two of us, and one was designated the intruder. The other teacher was to approach the intruder, greet them, and try to bar his entry. Predictably, the intruder ran right past the teacher.

The chief then made the scenario more realistic: he set up sidelines, simulating a narrow school corridor. Running the scenario again, the teacher had an easier time stopping the intruder. They scuffled for a few seconds (the chief had instructed the intruder to do get past the teacher), and he once again got through. The chief then taught us some basic hand-to-hand techniques for subduing intruders.

He then gave us a demonstration of the weapon we're supposed to use for handling intruders: a seven-foot-long aluminum bar with a U-shaped fork at the end. The idea is to get the intruder within the fork and pin him to a wall or the ground. The weapons also work beautifully when used together. Apart from the simple advantage of surrounding them, the chief demonstrated us how one bar pushing from behind at the knees while one pushes at the chest from the front will easily force someone to the ground. It was all beautifully simple physics.

He then had us participate in a few more demonstrations, each time making it more realistic: adding teachers, having them start with the weapons, making them run to a closet to retrieve the weapons after recognizing the intruder, adding props (desks, chairs) to the corridor, etc. He used the same teacher--the band conductor--as the intruder the whole time, and by the end of it, Nagao-sensei was really getting into it. He was leaping over desks, hurling chairs in the path of approaching teachers, and struggling valiantly with the weapons.

Since I'm retarded and broke my camera, I don't have pictures of any of this. Sigh...