Junior High Scenery

   Today's my first day of classes at the junior high and, appropriately enough, the scenery is changing. Since it's spring and finally starting to warm up a bit, flowers are blooming, the cherry blossoms are finally all coming out, and of course, my allergies are acting up.

   The scenery inside the school is changing too; students are a lot more active now that they're out of the seemingly endless tedium of orientation. Hand-drawn posters are going up around the school, advertising various club activities -- all of the clubs want to attract new first-year members to replace the third-year members that will retire, come August.

   Some of these posters are really good!

   Obviously, the art club's poster is pretty good. It looks like it was done with acrylics and Copic markers, but it's much better than the posters that the art club at my old junior high school used to do every spring.

   The soccer club's poster wasn't as well-drawn, obviously, but it has other entertainment value in the text. The main bit of text says "It doesn't matter how good you are. If you're interested in soccer, please come!"

   The best part, though, is the Dragon Ball Z-esque picture, no doubt inspired by Inazuma Eleven, a popular soccer manga/anime. Even better, there are little captions near the two more fantastic-looking parts that read "dramatization."

   I don't know about you, but that makes me crack up.

   These posters are posted in a lot of places, but most of them seem to be concentrated in the third floor walkway connecting the two parts of the school. Since the weather's really nice and clear today, I took two pictures from that walkway, which is also one of the highest points that I have access to.

   This school's campus is amazingly huge, and I hope these two pictures help get the point across. It's more like a small community college than anything else, considering that it actually has a campus.

   For example, there are 16 (sixteen!!) tennis courts across the street from the school itself.



   Sixteen!

   And beyond those courts is (apparently) a pool.

   Note the lines, though... I don't think any school in America would allow lines like that to run through its campus, let alone over the building itself. Cancer fears and all. The kids here seem fine, if not healthier than their American counterparts, though.

   From the other side of the walkway, you can see the rest of the school buildings on either side plus more of the gorgeous Gunma mountains that I love.

   These houses are really spread out by Japanese standards -- a lot of people actually have yards! And fields between the houses and yards. It's hard to explain how weird it feels to be up here where there's a ton of space between houses and stuff -- usually houses are something like a few feet apart, if that.

   I guess I'm still adjusting to the change.