Aomori City Furukawa Junior High

Good morning everyone. I apologize for lack of post last night, but I went out for a little while with some JFMFers and I was simply too tired when I got back.

Yesterday we spent the day at Aomori City Furukawa Junior High. In Japan junior high runs from 7th grade (1st year) to 9th grade (3rd year). High school is not mandatory in Japan, though well over 90% of Japanese students attend high school. I think the statistic is something like 98%. I will verify today. A lot of people in the united states are shocked by a lack of mandatory high school here, however, when you think about it, this system is not so different from ours which allows students to drop out when they are 16 (10th grade). Since high school here begins at 10th grade this is really not terribly different in my opinion.

Like the elementary school, we started off the day with a meeting with the school administration and then an assembly with the entire student body took place. Two students welcomed us initially and then the student body sang to us (their school song I think) and we had to get up on stage and introduce ourselves in Japanese to the entire student body. Ian made a speech on our behalf to the student body. One thing I noticed about the students here, even before I sat down, was that they were all incredibly tall! They made me feel very short :p We found out later that kids in Aomori City are among the tallest in Japan. I cannot wait to see how large they are at the high school!

The students at the middle school, like the elementary school, were VERY interested in meeting us! Many of them would run up and say, “hello” in English. Throughout the day some would ask us to sign paper for them. After the assembly was over we went back and met with administration and then went to visit classes. The classes were not all as dynamic as yesterday’s but it was a real pleasure to see how interested in learning the students were. We walked into one math class at first and the students stayed VERY focused on math. I think this teacher had incredible classroom management, as in later classes the kids were so excited to see us they were all over the place!

Some classes had direct instruction, such as the math course, and then others had kids working in groups. We went into a Japanese (?) class where kids were working with Japanese poetry (similar to haiku but 5-7-5-7-7). They were playing some sort of game. It looked really interesting.

We then went into a calligraphy class, where I got to try my hand at calligraphy again. I am so bad at it!!! After calligraphy we visited several more classes, including an English class a music class, a way too brief visit to a science and a PE class.

After visiting classes we were divided into groups of one or two to eat with kids. I may not have mentioned this in my earlier post, but in Japan students eat in their classroom, NOT in a cafeteria. The meals are brought in and served by students. Lunch was FANTASTIC! We had udon noodles as well as some type of fried vegetarian patty with duck sauce. I wish we ate like this at IRHS!

The class I ate with had very limited English, but we managed to communicate just fine with my limited Japanese and my dictionary. I was also able to share a lot about my life here with a scrapbook I made before I left. I was able to show them pictures of each of my classes and they were quite interested in my students. A bunch of girls were also enamored by my pets and were saying, “kawaiiiiiiiiiiiii”, repeatedly (kawaii = cute). They also found Matt intriguing! So Matt… I think it is fair to say you are loved in Japan :p

After lunch we visited more classes, where I got to try calligraphy again. Alas, I am still terrible at it :p We went to several more classrooms including a room where students learn traditional Japanese music and later learn tea ceremony (in a club).

Like the elementary school, students take time every day to clean the school. There are no janitors. It is very refreshing to see students take part in keeping their school nice. I think this method allows them to maintain a lot more pride in their building. There was not quite as much enthusiasm for cleaning as in the elementary school (some students were goofing off a bit), but for the most part all students were involved.

There was an assembly today where all of the sports clubs reported their results to the school. Unlike the United States, all sports are played through clubs. The assembly was fun though we were a bit lost a times as to what was being said. Luckily Miki (our translator) went around and translated bits and pieces for us individually.

After the assembly we got to visit a number of clubs. My favorites were when we got to visit the tea ceremony club, where we were served tea and the kendo club! I will post some photos of both later once I get my space issue resolved.

After we left the school we went to a place where they build the floats for the Nebuta Festival. It was really interesting to see the floats in progress.  We also got to take a little time to stroll by the ocean. It is amazingly beautiful here.

Many of the JFMFers took the bus back to the hotel, we (Allison, Cassie, Debbie and I) opted to stay where we were to investigate a Japanese thrift store. They had a TON of American clothing there. I think if we took all of our old clothes and sold them in Japan we would make a fortune :p After shopping Debbie and I went back to the hotel to change into comfy clothes and then we ventured back out. Before we got back to the hotel we found an incredibly cool Buddhist shrine. It was closing when we arrived, so we intend to visit again later today. We found an amazing traditional Japanese restaurant where we had a great tempura dinner. mmmMMmmm! After dinner we ran into Sandy, Ian and Randy. We went out with them to a local club and then went home, where I proceeded to fall right asleep!

This morning we are headed over to the local high school, and then all of us are planning a big night out for our last night together in Aomori. Tomorrow we head out individually to our host family’s houses for two days and one night. On Sunday evening we will be heading over to a ryokan, which is a traditional  Japanese inn. I suspect you will not hear from me for a few days while I am doing these things. I DO expect I will post once more before I leave to see my host family.

I hope you guys are still enjoying this blog. I will attempt to get more photos up as soon as time and hard drive space allow.