let the games begin

Today we celebrated the opening ceremony of the new school term at Hatasho Junior High. Basically there were lots of speeches in japanese, lots of awards to atheletes in basketball, judo, and baseball, and an awkward japanese speech by yours truly (that didn't end in my falling down) that went pretty well considering that i don't speak Japanese and understood about 5% of what i was saying to the students. Then a nice san nen girl (9th grade) came to introduce herself to me and tell me of the students' excitement. She told me to teach with an open heart so they could learn alot and we'd all have fun together. Something tells me she didn't actually write the speech.

But the best part of the ceremony was the opening song, a resounding chorus of the HJHS Song. The lyrics, in english, are as follows:

The glory of the morning sun,
over Mt. Hatakawa
The sun pours light into our homes
making our hearts sing.
In spring, the green rice shoots are planted in the earth.
Fall brings a sea of wavy, dancing golden stalks.
Aaahh... how rich our hometown is
a town we call Hatasho.

So instead of a rousing "On, Wisconsin" or even a lovely harmonized "Fram Fram St Olaf" in 3/4 time, the students sang, about 15 times, "A town we call hatasho." It began with everyone together, then the torturous assigning of parts, first the ichi nin boys (7th graders singing in many different octaves), followed by all imaginable combos of boys only, girls only, etc. It was intense. And what other way is there to welcome a foreigner into your school than by singing the same song, in Japanese, about 24 times before 9 am. Gotta love it.

I don't have to love, however, that its a friday night and i'm exhausted and only 13 hours away from another full day of work. Honestly.