School started back, and because of the way the year is arranged, first semester reports were due 2 weeks into the new term. Another thing that happens at the beginning of the year is One World Day. This is a day where all the staff and students wear their national costume (you can wear one from another country if you don't like your own!) and there are acts from different areas by the students and a Parade of Nations. This means representatives from all the countries that students come from walk up onto the stage and greet the audience in their own language. The correct reply is projected onto a display behind them, and the students all chorus it in response. Some are cheesy (Australia - G'day mate), but it is a nice tradition.
Since we don't have a costume for the UK, and no-one really wanted to try and dress as Morris Dancers, we decided to get a group of us together and make costumes. Unfortunately, this coincided with the week the reports were due, so it was a bit of a rush job. Still, a group of 6 of us were Robin Hood, Sheriff of Nottingham, Will Scarlett (more maroon but we tried) and a few Merry Men. We all had tights on and a couple of bows and arrows finished off the look nicely. We got a round of applause in the staff room! Strange though, whenever we asked the kids what they thought we had come as, loads of them said Robin Hood and his 3 Musketeers! Not entirely sure where that came from.
Last Sunday we went to our first Sumo wrestling tournament. There were 12 of us going so we got really good seats and made a day of it. The seats are just little enclosures with 4 cushions inside for you to sit on the ground, and have little bars around the edge so nobady expands over their limited space (the bars all have bottle openers attached to, so you can just sit and drink all day!).
The auditorium has seats on all four sides, with a raised platform in the middle for the bouts. It started off with a display of Taiko drumming, and then the wrestlers were presented to the crowd. When they first come out they have a kind of thick apron on, very ornately embroidered with the details of their sponsors. On of the western men had the EU as his sponsor! (we found out later he was Bulgarian).
The day was divided into 2 competitions, to represent the different leagues of wrestlers. It was a one off charity day tournament, so we got to se the whole thing. When the first group of wrestlers came out and paraded around, we couldn't believe the size of them! Then we realised that this was the lower league - the others were even bigger! We all picked competitors at random and followed where they came, but none of our picks won anything - good job we didn't put any money in! The whole day was won by the No. 1 Wrestler, Asashoryu. He is a Mongolian wrestler who although huge, is solid, and sooo powerful. He won most of his bouts by picking the other guy up and walking to drop him outside the ring. He is often in the news here, so it was really cool to see him fight and win.
I auditioned for the British embassy choir recently, and got in. We are singing an all British programme to celebrate the 150th year of official relations between Britain and Japan. There is one japanese song which we are going to do as an encore, a traditional festival song about cherry blossoms. It is all written in Hiragana. I can read Katakana quite well now, but I still haven't really got the hang of hiragana, so at the moment I am kind of mumbling along to the tune until I can learn it. Still, it could be written in Kanji, then I would be really stuck! Why do they have to have so many alphabets!?
On friday night we had the February show. That is the middle of the year performance by the high school choir, orchestra and lots of smaller groups. A new drama teacher came last year, too late to really be involved, but this year he did loads of lighting and stage management stuff, and the girls had costumes - it was a real extravaganza! I am always so amazed at just how many of the students at this school are really talented. The orchestra only did one piece (and they had only had it since Christmas so they did really well), the Grieg piano concerto. A Grade 10 student played the piano, she is only 15, and she was incredible. I could see some of the younger students from my seat in the orchestra and they were stunned, just sitting open mouthed as they watched her play. And the really amazing thing is that she really doesn't think it's so special to do that. One of the music teachers asked her a few weeks ago if she was planning to study piano at university, and she said "no" as if she had asked the stupidest question in the world! She hasn't even decided if she will keep playing when she leaves school yet. I really hope she does.
A really good thing about the school is the connections people have to bring in outside speakers. In the past few months we have had 3 graduates come back and talk about their careers (a research genetic counsellor, a paediatrician in war zones and a diplomat), and today they Palestinian ambassador came in to give a talk to grade 9. It was the first ambassador's visit I had been free for, so I went along. He is a very interesting man to hear speak, and he answered some very difficult questions from the students. He is pragmatic about things that have happened in the past and hopeful for the future, but at the same time accepting that there is no easy answer and it could take generations to find true peace. It was so different to anything you see in the news, and he has had real experience of negotiations with both sides. One of the students asked him about Hamas in the Gaza strip (where he is from) and he explained the background to their existence, and said he really doesn't see them lasting much longer. He gave so much detail, and made it accessible to the kids too. There are more ambassadors coming through the year, so I hope I will be able to see them too.
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