Goodbye party

The school-wide goodbye party was held the same day as the goodbye speeches. We held the party at Shimamoto, the same restaurant we use for our New Year's party and welcome party for new teachers. As such, the food has gotten kind of boring. The company is always entertaining, though, so I still look forward to it.

Luck of the draw had me between Yamazaki- and Masuda-sensei, with Matsushita- and Yoshihara-sensei across from me. Yamazaki-sensei teaches geography and helps coach the baseball team. We don't get to talk very often, but he sat across from me my first year, which means we'd had an occasional conversation. The party fell right after Japan won the World Baseball Classic, so he and I had a lot to talk about. (He and every other guy at the party also pointed this out to Kim, our visiting Korena teacher.) I made no excuses for my country's pitiful excuse for a team, with its unmotivated millionaires saving their best for the regular season. In fact, Yamazaki seemed to be a bigger fan of Team USA than I was: while he knew almost the entire roster, I could only name a few, like Chipper Jones and Alex Rodriguez.

Matsushita-sensei is a P.E. coach, and we spent the past year as fellow first-year teachers. He's terribly intimidating at school, and it's taken me the better part of my stay here to realize it's all an act. He's carefully cultivated an image of strictness, reinforced by his occasional yelling at unruly boys. After all, what better image is there for a P.E. coach than terrifying disciplinarian?

I wholly disagree with his shouting at the students, but I notice that each grade level seems to have one teacher who assumes the task of setting the students straight. The women employ the subtler (and, in my opinion, much more devastating) tactic of guilt trips, making offending students feel awful about whatever they've done. It's remarkable how different their strategies are: whereas those male teachers who make a show of disciplining do so by getting louder and shouting at the student, the female teachers tend to get deathly quiet, which seems to attract just as much attention. I need to learn how to do that.

Anyway, Matsushita's a completely different person outside of work. He's married with a couple of kids, and he makes a fool of himself around his little girl like dads do. At get-togethers, he's always laughing, and you can count on him to be one of the last to stay out partying.

Yoshihara-sensei is the art teacher and a good friend of Kamito-sensei. She sat in the same row as Kamito and me this past year, which meant I was privy to (and sometimes co-conspirator in) the pranks Kamito would play on her. Nothing horrible, of course--highlights last year included Kamito taking a foil-wrapped chocolate ball, eating the chocolate, re-wrapping the foil around a wad of paper, and presenting it to Yoshihara as a gift. She also stole a cute stuffed animal Yoshihara kept on her desk, and refused to give it back. Cute stuff like that.

Masuda is one of my favorite English teachers, but we seldom get the chance to talk at work. With Kamito, Satomi, and Kurokawa leaving, she's also the only one of the remaining English teachers with whom I've taught first-years both years here. In contrast with the more laissez-faire third-year program, the first-year Oral Communications class is much more rigorous, which creates a welcome challenge for the other teachers and me.

Masuda, along with Satomi, has consistently pushed me to make every lesson better. She always has a suggestion for fine-tuning a lesson, and is largely responsible for what modest teaching ability I have. As we were talking at the party, she told me that I'm the best ALT she's ever had. I find that hard to believe, since she's been teaching for about six years, but it's still nice to hear. She told me that she had requested to be a third-year teacher next year, which would mean we would only have the large commercial class together.

The departing teachers, as the guests of honor, were seated at a separate table. Takahira-sensei, the master of ceremonies, began the party with what was apparently a very impressive speech. (My Japanese is still only somewhat passable, which means I'm still pretty lost whenever people bust out flowery formal expressions.) This was followed by the toast, after which everyone tore into the food.

A fixture of parties like this is roaming around talking to everyone. To help break the ice, everyone has a beer glass, and large bottles of beer are distributed among the tables. When you want to make your rounds, you grab a bottle and approach someone. They see you coming, perhaps drain their glass to help you out, and you pour them another. Wham! Ice broken. This is the point in every party where I'm shocked to find some random teacher speaks excellent English. (Or other languages: Ikezaki, the first-year biology teacher, thanked me with "Grazi," and was pleased when I responded with a surprised "Prego.") It's amazing how much more relaxed everyone gets. Most of them are lightweights, so part of it might be genuine inebriation, but I think it's mostly the atmosphere: this is the designated time and place for people to let loose.

When I spoke to Kim-sensei, the Korean ALT, she pleaded with me not to go. Last week had been the goodbye party for the foreign language department; I hadn't been informed until after I'd resolved to go to Osaka, so I'd missed it. She told me that the teachers at the party had been talking about how much they would miss me. Even taking this with a grain of salt, it's still good to know I'm appreciated, y'know?

At farewell parties, everyone makes a special trip to talk to the departing teachers. Cushions are set up across the table from each teacher for just this purpose. I thanked each teacher in turn. Though we never had a serious class together--we taught the lowest-level third-year commercial class--I'm more familiar with him than I am with most of the other teachers. I shared Billy Joel songs with him; he expanded my embarrassingly meager knowledge of the Beatles; he taught me the basics of kyuudo; we sang Happy Xmas in class; and he had me over for dinner with his wife and kids. Of all the teachers who were leaving, he was perhaps the most torn up about it. He genuinely loved Tsushima, and had clearly enjoyed all six of his years here.

Satomi was next. She was my supervisor for my first year, which meant she saw me at my worst. On top of teaching English and Korean, she had to worry about teaching me how to be a teacher. It took me weeks to realize that she was a supervisor in name only: she was paid no more than any other teacher, and taught no fewer classes on account of taking care of me. Time has taught me to appreciate all that she did for me, and I did my best to convey this.

I talked to Kamito last. She was my supervisor this past year, and we pretty much had a blast. Seated in a row were me, then her, then Noguchi (another fun-loving teacher), and then Yoshihara. Yoshihara and I had talked earlier about Kamito's leaving. When I had said it'd be lonely without Kamito around, Yoshihara had scoffed and asked what I would miss about it--Kamito and me playing tricks on her? I related this to Kamito, which tickled her. She asked me to come visit her in Hirado, and asked me to take care of Yoshihara for her. Though she used the standard "yoroshiku onegaishimasu" line that everyone uses in polite speech, I know how feisty she is, so I understood just what she meant by "taking care of" Yoshihara: leave her weird notes, play harmless pranks on her, etc.

As the bottles were slowly drained, we moved on to the next order of business. Each departing teacher took the stage at the front of the room. They were joined by a teacher associated with them--a supervisor, a fellow department member, a dear friend--who read a prepared send-off speech. Some were sincere and straightforward; others, like Murahashi's dedication to Kurokawa, were full of jokes and reminiscing.

After the departing vice principal, Kitamura, received his dedication, Yoshihara stood and asked for everyone's attention. She had been trying to figure out how best to handle this for weeks now. Sometime in the past couple of years, Yoshihara had mentioned somewhere that she likes Tchaikovsky. Kitamura, hearing this, loaned her his Tchaikovsky CD. This was made awkward by the fact that most teachers didn't like Kitamura very much. To make matters worse, Yoshihara forgot about it for about a year, and after remembering was too embarrassed to bring it up.

With Kitamura leaving, this was her last chance to make amends. She politely but firmly asked for everyone's attention, and launched into a speech telling the story. From the beginning, those of us who were in on her predicament were cracking up; everyone else soon joined in due to the sheer absurdity of the situation. She apologized profusely, made the most formal of bows, and presented Kitamura with his CD. He got a kick out of the whole thing, thanked her, and took it.

After this, we joined hands and sang the school song. I still haven't gotten it down--it uses some archaic and local phrasing that confuses even the students--but Kim and I stuck it out. Following this, we did the traditional yell. I've talked about this before: the recipient of the yell stands and is approached by the person administering the yell. The yeller makes a loud call, then chants a three-syllable word or phrase (in this case, the recipient's name), and is joined by everyone else in cheering. Onizuka did the yell for Yokota (the guy who gave the long speech about cleaning), Murahashi did Kurokawa, and Takahira did it for Satomi.

This left only two English teachers who hadn't given one: Masuda and me. Masuda is ridiculously shy outside of class, so she and everyone else urged me to do it. I'd been expecting this for a few months, so I'd watched carefully each time someone performed a yell. Emboldened by all the liquid courage we'd been drinking, I launched into it. I really wanted to chant "Snoopy!" as the key word, but chickened out, settling on "Ka-mi-to." Everyone loved it and complimented me on it.

Everyone then made a sakuramachi--cherry blossom path--for the six of them. The male teachers gathered cushions in a pile, made a circle, and took turns tossing the departing guys into the air. The girls gathered to do the same for Kamito and Satomi.