They Grow Up So Fast

It's been a couple weeks since the enormous earthquake and tsunami which fortunately has not affected me directly at all.  At some point I hope to gather some thoughts about my experience of it to post on the blog, but for now I'd like to quickly recap what I was doing the day after the earthquake, which was watching my third year students graduate.

On Friday, we turned the TVs on to see scenes of unimaginable devastation, but on Saturday one of the biggest events of the year and in our students' lives thus far had to go on.  

Last year I wasn't emotional during the ceremony at all and I assumed it would be the same, but it was very different for me.  Even though I don't see my students as much as I'd like, as they walked up to get their diplomas I flashed through an amazing array of memories of the past year and a half with them, from the mundane to the hilarious to the profound.

I remembered when Kimura came up to me after class and apologized for the loud, aggressive girl who disrupted the whole class and said "She is a bully."  Later, he brought his grandfather's WWII binoculars to class for show and tell.

I remembered how annoyed I was with Shimura, leaning back in his chair and disdainful of anything I said, who came alive during the school play and showed real genius in his acting.  He was focused, inventive, and involved in every aspect of the production.

I remembered Ai, the extremely disabled girl, giving a speech in class.  I believe she has a form of palsy and has difficulty speaking at all, Japanese or English, but she worked on her speech for several hours with her mother and most of it was coherent and clear.  She was always smiling and laughing and never failed to happily say hello to me when I passed in the halls.

I remembered Hasse, who wasn't a good student but I felt became a real friend--always up for a conversation and shouting hello with expansive, awkward gestures born of being 15 and exuberant.  The third year teachers did a skit on the Thursday before graduation, acting like some of the most memorable students, and I participated in the role of Hasse.  I think I'll miss him the most.

I remembered the quiet stocky girl who played some of the tightest drums I've ever heard, the emotional and determined captain of the Yellow Team, the terrible delinquent students and the nerdy, awkward overachievers; the ones who fell asleep and the ones who couldn't wait to talk to me; the girls who giggled at me and the boys who mocked my pronunciation.  They had become so much of the fabric of my life at school, and I only really noticed the profundity of that as they walked up to the stage, with an instrumental version of the German national anthem playing (seriously; I guess it was just classical music that sounded majestic to whoever chose it, but I wonder if I was the only one in the gym who noticed?)

This blog exists so that I can talk about my Japan experience, which is ostensibly different and somehow alien to my readers across the Pacific.  That may be true at some points, but it's so clear to me as I think back to all the cliques, outliers, jocks, dorks, drama, clubs, and classes, that so much more is the same between America and Japan than is different.

For a bit more about the particulars of what graduation entails, see my post from last year.

I love this picture.  Ai is front and center, with my supervisor and good friend Mr. Kondo behind her.

The boy next to me is going to a special school for soccer in a neighboring prefecture next year.  Next to him is Minami, one of a pair of disinterested but good-hearted twins.  Then comes Hasse, and next to him is Sakano, who in one of my favorite moments of last year shouted back irreverently at the scary disciplinarian kendo teacher and made the whole school laugh after the chorus contest.

The third year teachers and I pose for a picture.  I absolutely love how elegant kimonos are.

お目でとございます、三年生！(Congratulations, 3rd years!)