Sign at Entrance ceremony

Entrance Ceremony

I went to school today rather early and since I haven’t done this in a long while, it felt strange. I got up when I wanted to get up, but it took some time for me to get into the swing of things. I got up when I wanted to and started getting ready faster than I usually do. I finished faster than usual too so I decided to try to get some breakfast so I wouldn’t be hungry during the very quiet ceremony. It was good to get a good start, but somehow I ended up leaving later than I wanted to because I was going too slowly with packing up my laptop to take to work.

I was out the door by about 7:15am, and got to the station around 7:30am, which is pretty fast. I should have taken a coat today since it was pretty cold outside today, but I didn’t think much about it since I was in a rush just to get out of the house. I was on a fairly crowded train. I don’t think that it was very crowded like when I get on the 8:03am train from Hongodai to Yokohama. That train is packed.

I got to school a bit earlier than I wanted to be and I met up with a very senior member of the math department. We had a little conversation in Japanese. He was impressed with how much I have improved since I first moved to Japan. It wasn’t very good today either and I should have done better. That was something that I was disappointed with myself. He used fairly easy to understand Japanese with me, so I should have been able to reply without a problem, but I thought it was problem-filled.

I stuck around the full-time teacher’s office for a little bit, but since everyone was very busy and fussing around, I decided to walk over to the part-time teacher’s office. It was very packed since all or most of the members attended today. I got to meet the rest of the new teachers that I didn’t meet at the Hakone trip. I am actually part of the part-time office, so that’s why I stayed with them. The thing didn’t start till 10am, so I had some time to hang out in the office and talk to the teachers. It was pretty cool and it was nice to see them again.

We went to the gym promptly at 10am and it started on time, like usual. The problem with the ceremony was that about 10 minutes into it, I started getting hungry and my stomach would make noise. I think that the other teachers could hear me, but it only started to make noise when someone was speaking or walking or something, so maybe they didn’t. I haven’t gotten to the point where my stomach would make a lot of noise, so it was weird for me since it hasn’t happened in a long time. The ceremony was nice and quiet. It is much faster than the graduation ceremony, although it is essentially the same. The names of all the new first year students are called. Then there are the headmaster’s speech and top students from 12th grade and 10th grade who give a speech. There’s the national anthem, and the school song and there are a few other speeches squeezed in there. At the end, the new homeroom teachers are announced to the students and introduced to the parents.

From there, we went to the Language Laboratory where we had bento lunches waiting for me. I was waiting and sitting with Mrs. Shimamura, who I absolutely think is hot. She’s a bit older than me, married and has two daughters, and is amazingly beautiful. She gave me some bad news today though. She will only work on Saturday, a day which I have no classes. So I won’t get to see her much in my last semester at Yakumo. That makes me a bit sad, but we had a good conversation today. At the end of the lunch, I was talking with the new teachers and learning their names. They were planning out what they will do on Monday for the new teacher’s welcoming party. They decided on singing a song called Haru yo, koi. It means spring is coming. It is a very good song that I have been hearing a lot lately. I think that they play it a lot when spring comes and arrives.

After that, I got started with all the paperwork I wanted to get finished. I started with the printouts that I wanted to give to my assisting teachers. Then I was working on the textbook for the global issues booklet. I thought that I had finished that to a certain point and then I started working on a new booklet for going abroad. Right now, everything is a bit scattered, but I think I am making good progress with all of the work. I think I should have it all finished by this week, which is good since school starts this week. I was in the part-time teacher’s office working on it since no one was there except for three English teachers. Actually everyone in the full-time teacher’s office was gone too since there was a Myanmar exhibit that the VP forced everyone to go to. I actually said no to her since I went last year and had some work to do. I did and got most of it finished too. I was really happy about that.

Then I went to have tea with CHda, and MKni at freshness burger. We stayed there for about 3 hours just talking. It was really cool. We talked a lot about various things, but mostly about work and what has been going on. You know, its a little gossip group. It was fun and I learned a lot. During the middle of it, I got a call from a co-worker and he told me to come to school because the headmaster is going to take all the male teachers to get a custom-tailor made suit. The female teachers that I was with believe I will get a new Burberry suit. So that was really cool for me. I’m really looking forward to it. After a few hours, we left to go home. I was getting a bit hungry at this point, but knew that I had food at home that I had already made, so I should just get home to warm it up.

I got home and started making Pork Mayonnaise, which turned out to be very delicious. So I was happy with the result. I was watching a little baseball and then when that finished, I remembered that Music Station is usually on at 8:30pm, but tonight there was another show that was showing talents singing karaoke and if they could sing the whole song, they would get $20,000. I only saw a few people get it, which was pretty cool and I heard a lot of the songs that I like. Then I found more songs that I could find online too. Then I came into this room and started typing up my entries. It’s almost midnight now, so I should get some shut eye now.