We Live Where We Are

Tomorrow my school is having entrance examinations, so the classrooms will be flooded with anxious junior high kids who would probably give up eating rice to get into one of Sendai's best high schools. The crazy thing is, during these exams the school goes into total, red-alert lockdown mode. No one can leave or enter the building after a certain time. All the teachers have special bento lunches brought in so they don't have to run out to the combini. And oh how mum is the word. The tests are kept so secretive that my supervisor only talks to me about them in whispers.

Secretness is a bit funny here. Last year Juli and I were both selected to be on a panel of judges that would interview potential Japanese teachers of English. We were both explicitly told that we could tell no one that we were selected--including one another. Of course we both spilled the beans the moment we got home and had a good laugh over it. I would say, though, that holding your cards close to your chest is about as Japanese as wabi sabi pottery and train fetishes--that is, very. I think that's part of what gives the Japanese people and culture an exotic quality in the west. They smile and bow and speak extremely politely, but you're never quite sure what they're thinking. And though it's sometimes massively frustrating, in work and social situations, quite often it saves them from the distinctly American syndrome of spouting off whatever unimportant opinions/emotions/nonsense that flash-bang into their brains. For that I am occasionally grateful.

On a different note, the principal of my school is retiring this year, so I've decided to make him a picture book (no, not a coloring book) composed of photographs I've taken of the school and students over the past two years. The teachers are having an overnight enkai for him at some onsen/ryokan resort, and I've been invited, but I think it might be a bit awkward for me to go. And massively expensive, which will sort of help when I have to explain why I'm not attending. I'll be sad to see him go, as he is an exceptionally kind and I'd-go-so-far-as-to-say classy man who speaks in elegant English and occasionally invites me to his office to simply chat. He even enjoys reading Keats, Byron, and Yeats. What a guy!