A mass confusion of slippers (Fire drill)
Prior to Christmas I was fortunate enough to experience my first Japanese junior highschool fire drill. I'm actually really lucky in that my English teachers go out of their way to inform me of changes to the daily schedule - many JETs frequently find themselves stranded in ignorance when they rock up to school and the staff room is completely empty, with all the students running around outside in gardening gloves.
My kind senior English teacher kindly informed me that we'd be having a practice for fire, and that all the students and staff would be meeting in the gym. Never one to imply obligation, she added 'If you want you can stay here [in the staffroom], but maybe you'll burn'. Not wanting to be hypothetically cremated, I thus joined the sea of students flooding into the gym when the alarm went.
Of course, fire drills don't always go smoothly (that's to be expected in any situation involving 400 teenagers), but we had major holdups at every doorway due to the Slipper Dilemma. Most people are familiar with Japan's no-shoes-inside policy. Upon reaching school in the morning, students change their runners for a pair of indoor slippers (often colour-coded by year level), which can also be worn within an extended boundary outside of the school, including the inner courtyard and front of the school (off, considering that's where they change into their slippers in the first place). The sports yard and the gym, however, are new areas entirely - you can't wear slippers, but you can't wear your outside shoes either. The students either need to bring a designated pair of gym shoes, or remove their slippers and hold them in their hands (noting that by this point, the freezing floor is alredy turning their legs blue). These rules are so forcefully ingrained into children's brains that disobeying them could very well induce sepukku. So you can imagine the confusion involved in telling hundreds of teenagers to forget about their slippers and just go into the gym. Many attempted to break away to fetch their gym shoes, but were herded back by teachers, scolding 'this is a fire! There's no time for shoes!'. Failing this, the flow of students just bottle-necked at the gym door as they all stopped to remove their slippers. Personally, I just gaijin-smashed and walked my non-gym-shoes all over that freezing floor.
Once they finally had all the students in the gym (and the delinquent students on one-to-ones with staff to keep their distruptions to a minimum), the vice principal congratulated everyone on their efforts. My assumption was that we'd then return to our classrooms, but the principal seized the opportunity, grabbed the microphone and launched into a sppech. Given this is Japan, the Mighty Land of Long and Pointless Speeches, and given how infrequent it was for the whole school to be suddenly assembled like this, I probably should have expected it.
So, he spoke. And spoke. For half an hour. Not bad for an opportunistic speech. Or perhaps he'd been planning this all along. Finally the bell went to signal the end of the period, and the principal was forced to resign the microphone. I wish I had a better closing for this, but it's cleaning time and I need to go have my regular broom-duels with the ichinensei boys.
My kind senior English teacher kindly informed me that we'd be having a practice for fire, and that all the students and staff would be meeting in the gym. Never one to imply obligation, she added 'If you want you can stay here [in the staffroom], but maybe you'll burn'. Not wanting to be hypothetically cremated, I thus joined the sea of students flooding into the gym when the alarm went.
Of course, fire drills don't always go smoothly (that's to be expected in any situation involving 400 teenagers), but we had major holdups at every doorway due to the Slipper Dilemma. Most people are familiar with Japan's no-shoes-inside policy. Upon reaching school in the morning, students change their runners for a pair of indoor slippers (often colour-coded by year level), which can also be worn within an extended boundary outside of the school, including the inner courtyard and front of the school (off, considering that's where they change into their slippers in the first place). The sports yard and the gym, however, are new areas entirely - you can't wear slippers, but you can't wear your outside shoes either. The students either need to bring a designated pair of gym shoes, or remove their slippers and hold them in their hands (noting that by this point, the freezing floor is alredy turning their legs blue). These rules are so forcefully ingrained into children's brains that disobeying them could very well induce sepukku. So you can imagine the confusion involved in telling hundreds of teenagers to forget about their slippers and just go into the gym. Many attempted to break away to fetch their gym shoes, but were herded back by teachers, scolding 'this is a fire! There's no time for shoes!'. Failing this, the flow of students just bottle-necked at the gym door as they all stopped to remove their slippers. Personally, I just gaijin-smashed and walked my non-gym-shoes all over that freezing floor.
Once they finally had all the students in the gym (and the delinquent students on one-to-ones with staff to keep their distruptions to a minimum), the vice principal congratulated everyone on their efforts. My assumption was that we'd then return to our classrooms, but the principal seized the opportunity, grabbed the microphone and launched into a sppech. Given this is Japan, the Mighty Land of Long and Pointless Speeches, and given how infrequent it was for the whole school to be suddenly assembled like this, I probably should have expected it.
So, he spoke. And spoke. For half an hour. Not bad for an opportunistic speech. Or perhaps he'd been planning this all along. Finally the bell went to signal the end of the period, and the principal was forced to resign the microphone. I wish I had a better closing for this, but it's cleaning time and I need to go have my regular broom-duels with the ichinensei boys.
