When Pigs Fly

***Important: I don't know that you would do this anyway, but it's very important to keep any pictures of my kids from being disseminated online.  I could, theoretically, lose my job for that.  Anything else is fine, but photos of kids publicly online in any way are a breach of contract and dealt with pretty harshly.  In case you want to send one of my pictures to someone you know, please check carefully to make sure there aren't kids in the photo.  And definitely no Facebook.  Thanks!***

The past couple weeks have seen special events at both of my schools taking place against the backdrop of that rending, slavering, beady-eyed monster, the swine flu.

A few weeks ago the announcements about protecting against H1N1 started, then some of my classes were canceled because of low numbers of students.  This has been happening all over the prefecture, and all over Japan.  I know it's happening to a degree in the US, but I don't really know how it's affecting schools there.  Frankly, actual infection rates haven't seemed that bad, and I know the kids are being sent home/held out of class for almost nothing.  Several times whole homerooms were kept away from school because one student was sick.

I think the reaction to swine flu is absolutely ridiculous and horrendously overblown by media hysteria, and I thought that before I came.  However, the Japanese hair-trigger sensitivity to it and alarmism have taken my disdain for pig flu madness to a new level.  Exhibit A is The Mask.

Ever since flu season started, some of my teachers have been wearing masks all day, and some students come to school with them as well.  The big problem here is that most of the people wearing masks aren't sick.  If you have the flu, great, wear a mask to keep all your phlegm in, but then you should also be at home anyway.

For healthy people, the little flusies have many more orifices to choose from than just the two (poorly) covered by the mask.  Also, if you wear a cheap surgical mask for a day, it gets hot and sweaty and disgusting--a resort for infectious germs.  Still, despite scientific evidence everywhere that masks aren't effective when used in this way, the Japanese swear by them.  I think soap in all the bathrooms is far more important than the dumb masks, but I don't make the rules.  I really, really, really don't make the rules.  This is another example of Japanese people deciding on one course of action and totally sticking to it without question, which is fantastic when that course of action works and isn't insane.  (Another great instance is the lack of insulation in the houses, but that's a rant for another time.)

I was supposed to go on a 15km walk with some of the 3rd years (9th graders) for a school excursion a couple Fridays ago, but they canceled the trip for the whole grade because one student came down with flu.  As consolation, I got to walk around Kanazawa with the 2nd years and go to the art museum, which was a really good time.

Awesome scooter thing in the Art Museum.

 

Back at my base school, the cultural festival took place October 31st.  I worked for a week and a half with the 2nd years on their play (Crime and Punishment, which seems impossibly long and emotional for kids that age) and rehearsed to play violin in the scene breaks of the 3rd years play.  This meant staying till 6 every day, but it was worth it even though I couldn't understand the vast majority of the dialogue in the play.  I feel like 8th graders in America would never be allowed to perform a play with two murders, two deaths, a suicide, and constant drinking--I love that they can do that here.

Dinner scene from C&P

 

Final scene.  The music was epic, the grasp of perspective on the backdrop not as much.

The day of the cultural festival was the first day that everyone was required to wear a mask.  I'm not sure when my life turned into an apocalyptic disease movie, but there you go:

The kids knocked Crime and Punishment out of the park, and the whole thing was really fun.  It was, of course, almost canceled because a few of the kids were out with flu.  There were music performances, three plays, and artwork lined the walls.  And I defy you to find an audience of American middle schoolers who would sit through an hour-long drama without a peep like these kids did.

Maybe it was the masks.