Freshman orientation

The first-year students go through a lengthy orientation. I don't just mean the ceremony with lots of speeches. That was more for the parents' benefit than the students'. Every day since then, the freshmen have done at least one thing that has nothing to do with academic pursuits and everything to do with group bonding.

For example, last week all the freshmen were gathered in the gym. While the second- and third-years were going on with class as usual, the newbies learned and practiced the school song. Nagao-sensei, the music teacher, stood at the front of the gym and addressed the group. They all had the lyrics in their orientation packets, and he gave a lengthy speech the content of which I couldn't entirely understand, but the gist of which sounded like "all students must learn this song." It didn't take me long to think of Lean On Me, and Morgan Freeman requiring the kids to sing "Fair Eastside" on demand.

Nagao played a recorded version of the song a few times for them to listen, then had the students sing along with that. He ended by having them sing without accompaniment. Though they still needed to look at the lyrics--it's hard to memorize a song from scratch in 45 minutes, and I'm told the lyrics are hard to understand even for native Japanese--they made a lot of progress by the end.

Another example is homeroom activities. Next to the school's soft tennis courts is the seminar house, which is used for things like extra classes in the summer. Each of the freshman homeroom classes has been spending a full day in the seminar house. I'm told they introduce themselves, listen to music, have low-intensity classes, and generally just spend time with each other.

The seminar house contains a full kitchen. In the afternoon, the homeroom class using the seminar house has cooked curry and rice. Given the raw materials, the students have prepared the curry, the rice, and the place settings for all forty of their classmates, plus their homeroom teacher, plus a few extra. After finishing, they work together to clean up the place, from washing dishes to scrubbing the pots to breaking down the tables.

I was invited to join the 1-1 class for lunch today. Having been secretly hoping this would happen, I was thrilled: I never got the chance to do this last year. After my fourth-period class, I hussled over to the seminar house to find everyone seated and waiting, presumably for me. I sheepishly darted over to my seat amid giggles from the students. The homeroom teacher, Yakabe, was joined by the head first-year teacher, Ontsuka, my supervisor, Kanemoto, and the vice principal, Kusano. Nobody seemed the least bit upset with me: they hadn't been waiting long.

The curry and rice was delicious. I talked a good bit with Shiho, the girl sitting next to me, and thanked my lucky stars that I'd been invited to join the group with the best English ability. Just as I almost cleared my plate, one of the students hopped up and offered to get me more. He was on his way to get seconds for himself, so I accepted. I think I had thirds, too.

After we finished, the students divided up, with roughly half each taking the kitchen or the tables. Cleanup took about twenty minutes, during which Kanemoto showed me around the seminar house. He explained that last year's freshmen had slumber parties in the seminar house, using the large tatami rooms upstairs. Sure enough, the place is equipped with enough bathroom and shower facilities for a large group of people, and even has bedding for everyone.

After cleanup, we played games, and they invited me to join. First, Yakabe had everyone order themselves by birthdays, from January 1 to December 31, without speaking. This was, of course, brilliant, with lots of frantic gestures and suppressed giggles. Using that order, he broke us into six-person teams for the next game. I was teamed with five girls.

For this game, two people were given the task of drawing something. The other four people had to go outside the room, look at a picture, come back to their team, and describe the picture. The people drawing would then recreate the picture based on the description. After ten minutes, each group presented their picture, and we voted on the best. I drew, and, thanks to some awesome descriptions containing bits of English, ours was voted the best. We played again, with two new people drawing. It was a lot of fun.

We next arranged ourselves by date of birth--from 1st to 31st, irrespective of month--without speaking, and used that to make different teams. I was teamed with boys this time, and we played a board game with dice. Each space contained a question or conversation topic, and according to Yakabe's instructions, we had to speak for at least twenty seconds. It wasn't nearly as much fun as the drawing game, but it was a good bonding experience.

By the time we headed back to school for sixth period, everyone was talking to me. I had learned about half their names, and was chomping at the bit to learn the other half. Man, I love these kids.