It was a little anticlimactic. My Independent Contractor had taken me to the Board of Education, where I met the people that had hired Unnamed Company and asked for me to be their ALT—not me specifically, but they’d wanted a girl and I wasn’t picky about my placement. Then I was taken around to each of my schools and introduced to the principals, vice principals, and Japanese teachers. It was an unnerving experience, and my nervousness was obvious by the rigidity of my posture, because the only thing I could remember from training was my trainer saying, “Make sure you sit up straight, no slouching!”
My first day at my middle school I had to give a brief introduction to the teaching staff in the morning, and then I was shown my desk and told to sit and wait. I had received no schedule—little did I know this would become normal for this school—telling me what I would be doing that day, and so had no idea what to expect. I went through the desk, which was full of stuff the previous ALT had collected, and the lesson plan books made specifically by Unnamed Company. Then I was rushed out to the gym for the welcoming ceremony.
The welcoming ceremony was just that. It was to welcome all the students back from their spring break—in Japan school is year round, so the last term ends at the end of March, and the next school years starts early April—and also to welcome the new ichi nensei, first years or seventh graders. The teachers were introduced by the students, and while it was all in Japanese and I couldn’t understand any of it, I caught enough of the mood to know that they were making fun of the teachers and that it was fairly lighthearted. This was after the formal welcoming, where everyone sang the school song and the principal gave a speech on proper behavior.
Then I was expected to give a speech. To the entire student body. I was in speech and drama in high school, taught tae kwon do to children and adults alike, have stood in front of a crowd of strangers and been able to function properly if stiffly. This was different. This was five hundred teenagers with eyes on me, half of whom didn’t speak my language and the other half only a little. I smiled. My biggest brightest I love the world smile, spoke slowly and with gestures, and then bowed with a proper “yoroshiku onegaishimas” at the end. They clapped and cheered my bad Japanese, and I melted into a puddle of relief that it was over.
Not the ceremony, that went on for another hour and a half of stuff I didn’t understand but thought was each club introducing itself to the new students. My mind went elsewhere, as it does when I get bored, and after the ceremony I went back to my desk. I was told that I had no classes that day or the next, and that people would be too busy to really talk to me. I was shown where the coffee and tea was, and told I could help myself. I had about six cups of coffee that first day, and read through all three textbooks and all three lesson plan books. Twice. Slowly. To kill time. Because I had seven hours of nothing to do except kill people in my head for not letting me go home when there was no work for me.
I eventually started bringing a journal, within which I could write down my vengeful thoughts of destruction and mayhem. You would be surprised at how well the average Japanese adult can read written English. My handwriting has had to degenerate in self defense.
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