First Day of School

   Yesterday was my first day of school here; it was basically all introductions. The new teachers were introduced to the second- and third-year students before the opening ceremony; the opening ceremony itself was basically an introduction of the new first-year students. After it ended, the teachers all filed back to the teachers' room and the students went to their respective homerooms for an hour or two of orientation.

   The introductions were actually kind of neat, though, since they gave me a chance to get a feel for the atmosphere and students. The students and teachers here seem to have absolutely fantastic relationships! When the homeroom teachers and club advisors were announced, the students were cheering quite loudly for most of the teachers... though not much at all for the new ones, understandably enough.

   The strange thing is, even though it was the first day of school, it didn't feel like one. Especially not for the first-year students -- they all came, sat for a ceremony, had an introduction, and then went home before lunch. The second- and third-year kids all went home or stayed for clubs; those who stayed ate packed lunches and then did their club activities for a few hours before going home.

   I took advantage of the time I had, though. I cleaned out (and off!) the desk, which my predecessor had left to me as a giant pile of clutter and dust. I also set up the computer, which I was thrilled to find is actually reasonably modern (Celeron, 2 GB RAM). Even better, I found that I had administrator rights, so I could set the theme the way I like it and install some things -- namely 7zip and Opera. It's great to be free!

   After I did all of that (it didn't take terribly long), I found that all of the teachers had ordered boxed lunches and nobody had thought to ask me if I wanted anything... so I got a ride from another English teacher to get some stuff for myself at the grocery store.

   Oh, well.

   After lunch, I browsed the internet for a bit and waited for the students to finish their lunches. There was really only one thing I was waiting for -- I wanted to go to see the kendo club at practice. The kendo club here is about the same size as the one at my old school, but they also practice more seriously and the teacher in charge of kendo is much more strict, from what little I've seen.

   I watched the kendo club practice for about three or four hours. The kendo advisor came about halfway through the practice and watched them; he occasionally yelled advice and came down on them pretty hard when they got sloppy. After general practice, they had a series of practice matches. By this time, most of them were tired out, and it showed; there weren't very many points scored and most of the matches ended in ties. After each match, the two participants ran straight to the advisor to listen to his advice. There was a lot of cheering and not a few fist bumps.

   First impression? Very respectful and polite... but a lot of camaraderie.

   I spent some time talking to the kendo advisor about kendo at this school and decided to bring my gear the next day (today). I'm a bit nervous, but we'll see how it goes. I haven't done kendo for about a week, so I feel rusty...