Last days at Makuhari Nishi

Last week was my final week at 幕張西中学校 (Makuhari Nishi JHS). I was there for 7 weeks, however unfortunately my contract requires me to work at another school for the next 7 weeks. It's terrible, because just once I was starting to get to know the students well, was working so well with the teachers etc, I now have to start all over again at a new school But oh well, that's how life works, I guess. You get to know people and eventually have to say goodbye to them.

On my second last day (Thursday) I had lunch with my favourite class 1B. The students eat lunch in their classroom, and are served lunch by their classmates, as you can (kinda) see in this picture. The kids in the lab coats are those serving that day, a different group of kids serves each day.

I had to take a photo of the boy in the front wearing glasses in this shot because he's so tiny, the hat he's wearing almost completely covers his head (although you can't really see it here). Also, the boy on the left (Agashi) has his mouth wide open and eyes closed in almost every picture I took the other day! The boy on the far right, Tsubasa, is so friendly, on one of my first days at the school he ran up to me as I was walking into the school in the morning just to say hello. Every time he would see me around the school he would say hello with a big grin on his face, and ask how I was.
The students eat at their desks in small groups. The menu on Thursday was soup, fish (see the fish head sticking out of Agashi's mouth?), a bread roll and tinned fruit, along with milk with is included everyday. I eat the same lunch as the students - it's very cheap, and means I get to eat Japanese food everyday! This is the table I sat at - the boy at the back on the right is Kengo, he's one of those students you just know is going to grow up as a leader. He's very intelligent, and stayed in Australia for 2 weeks when he was in 6th grade as part of an exchange program.

I sat with this table last time I ate with 1B. The first year students, although they are only just beginning to learn English, are really not scared to try to speak to me in the little English they know. When they get stuck I try to speak to them in Japanese - so it's good practice for both of us!

See? In the next photo Agashi has his mouth wide open again. Takayuki, the boy directly behind me, is extremely confident, which also means he is the loudest boy in class, and sometimes gets in trouble for this. But the first time I ate with 1B I sat with his group. Lunch that day included natto, which is a bit like Vegemite in that it is an acquired taste, and liked mostly by the occupants of a single region (in this case the Kanto are of Japan). Many Japanese have it on rice for breakfast, the same way we eat Vegemite on toast. I think it's pretty foul, and so gave my packet of natto to Shishido-kun (Shishido is his last name - boys are referred to in class as [last name]-kun, whereas girls are referred to as [last name]-chan or [last name]-san). Almost everyone else at the table also gave their natto to Shishido-kun, and so he ended up with a huge pile of smelly natto on his rice, which he ate with great relish (and also some difficulty, as strings from the natto kept going everywhere.

Shishido-kun tried to take a photo of me with Kunigami-sensei (possibly the cheeriest teacher I've ever met), while also trying to appear in the shot at the same time. Didn't quite work.

After lunch I got some photos from other classes. These students are from 1A.

On the right: Miki and Rika from 1A. On Friday Miki brought me the most adorable letter, written all in English.

Ayaka and Ayaka from 1C. Ayaka (on the right) played me a song she liked after she asked me what the song title meant - it was called Gimmick Game, so I had to first of all try to explain what a "gimmick" is. This had to go through Nakamura-sensei, who explained in Japanese. Then I had to figure out what "Gimmick Game" means - I don't think it means anything. To try to get a better idea I asked if she had the lyrics - it turns out the whole song is in Japanese anyway :P So I just explained that it was bad English. To thank her for playing the song for me I made a CD of some of my favourite music for both of them. (You do know how I love to share my love of music!)
Eriko (1E) and Emiko (1D) in the back, I'm not sure who that is in the front.
Murakami-kun (Shoutarou - pronounced Shoh-ta-roh, I can't get the accent code to work properly) (second from the right) from 1C is another very confident boy with such a personality, and very friendly - to me at least! The first time I ate with 1C, he lost the game of janken (Japanese paper-scissors-rock - they use this to decide everything, seriously) that decided who I sat with, and so I was sitting with Akira's group (Akira is the boy on the left in the photo below), on the other side of the room. About three or four times during lunch Shoutarou stood up and waved to me with a big smile. He's a bit cheeky to Miss Nakamura though - if I'm not in class and it's just her teaching, he says to her "oh it's just you today?".

The boy in the middle (Yoshiki) has to be the most adorable student I've ever taught - he's so tiny, is always smiling and has such a spark in his eyes.

Shoichirou from 1B and Fujii-kun from 2C. The first time I met Shoichirou he told me his favourite food was poison gyoza (there was a poison gyoza scandal in Japan, involving gyoza imported from China), so I always remember him as "poison gyoza", which he's happy about.

Shoichirou takes a self-shot.


Poison Gyoza on the drums.


Later that afternoon after cleaning time (every day for around 15 minutes the students clean the school, I help as well) 1B called me up to their classroom, and I found they'd decorated the board and were waiting to take a huge group photo with me! On the board they've written some of the lyrics from the song Sing by the Carpenters, as they sing it at the start of every English lesson (as I mentioned in this post). The line is "Don't worry that it's not good enough", the most difficult part of the song, but the part they sing the loudest.

When I got home on Thursday night and was looking through the photos on my computer (I also printed most of them out and took them in to school as a present the next day), I already started to miss them, and I hadn't even had my last day there yet!
So Friday was my last day, however I had no lessons as the students had tests all day. In the afternoon after their tests, I had to give my farewell speech over the school broadcast system (It was videoed, and the students watched on the TVs in their classrooms - scary!). I was able to give my speech in English and (with the help of Mrs Matsunaga, the very friendly school librarian, who lived in the US for three years) Japanese, stumbling only once or twice in the Japanese. A third year student then read out a speech in English, and presented me with some flowers (this photo was obviously taken at home).

That afternoon, after the exams were finished, I was called up to 1B one last time. When I got there, they sang Sing for me one last time. I couldn't have stopped smiling if I'd wanted to.



Afterwards, Shishido-kun presented me with a card with a picture of the decorated blackboard on one side, and one of the group photos from the previous day (taken by Kunigami-sensei) surrounded by messages from the students on the other side. Afterwards, I presented him with a certificate proclaiming him "Best Singer", because his is the only voice you can actually pick out when the class sings!



That night I went out for drinks and dinner with many of the teachers from Makuhari Nishi. Most of them I'd never really spoken to, as 1) my Japanese isn't that great, 2) their English isn't that great (except for the English teachers), and mainly 3) we'd never really had the opportunity to talk. I was a bit worried when I found out the two main English teachers I worked with everyday and was quite friendly with weren't able to attend dinner, but I couldn't really NOT go as the drinks were to celebrate my last day. Well, I'm so glad I went - not only did I get to know some of the teachers a bit better, it was also an interesting look at Japanese social interactions, especially between coworkers, despite the fact it was officially outside work. Also, I was the only non-Japanese there (the first time I've been in a social situation like that!), so my Japanese got quite a workout! The 3rd year English teacher was sitting at my table, so I was able to go through him when I really got stuck, but I didn't want to ruin his night by using him as a translator all night, so used him only as a very last resort (and in fact when possible I spoke to him in Japanese as well). Anyway, I had some really great conversations with some of the teachers (a few of them my age), and have organised to go have ramen at some time in the future with them. The whole night just reinforced my love for this country and its people.

Thus marked my last day at Makuhari Nishi JHS. While I was only at the school for 7 weeks, leaving was tremendously difficult, and everytime I hear the Carpenters I'll be fondly reminded of the little class of first years I taught at a little school in Japan.