Where I Intended to Be

Elementary Graduation Shenanigans, Part II March 23, 2010

First of all, my apologies that this and the Weekend Recap are up later than I’d intended for them to be. I had a three-day weekend, and My Tricks lead me down the path to an all-out cooking marathon that started Friday and ended late Monday night.

I’ll leave the cooking anecdotes for another post, but in the meantime, let’s finish off the theme of Elementary School Graduations and recount a few tidbits from last Friday.

I am incredibly fond of the sixth year classes at both of my elementary schools, but I’m not going to lie – the class from Friday’s elementary school has a special place in my heart. These children, as I believe I have mentioned before, are just so incredibly LOUD AND ENTHUSIASTIC about everything and anything. At several points during my sojourn in this country, I have observed that these children are quite possibly the loudest children in Japan.

Still, this complete and utter disregard for vocal volume levels is one of their greatest charms, and it’s one of the reasons that I have been infatuated with them since around September of 2006. Given the intensity of my regard, it’s not surprising that I was really grateful for the opportunity to see them graduate.

Going to an elementary graduation ceremony was a little unusual for me. I work at the middle school that these sixth years are going to attend, and so their graduation wasn’t so much a “farewell” ceremony for me. This made things a little awkward, because any time that another teacher chose to share their grief with me, they would ultimately recall my (different) circumstances and that would become the focus of the conversation. On one hand, this focus was occasionally positive; I had more than one teacher ask me to keep an eye on the kids as they transitioned into the middle school. On the other hand, the elementary teachers are really going to miss this class, and so the thought of me continuing to work with them was a little … difficult.

Still, the teachers at Friday’s elementary school are wonderful, kind-hearted people. Once we made it through the ceremony and had a chance to calm our emotions, we were all able to come together and be proud of the students’ accomplishments.

There are two particular incidents from Friday that stand out in my mind. The first took place during the ceremony itself. After receiving his or her graduation diploma from the principal, each student then went to a podium and gave us a brief speech about what they were looking forward to in the future. Most of the students pledged to study hard and to do their best in their middle school clubs. Some students took the opportunity to tell us about their dreams for the far future.

I’m not sure how to relate the following without sounding as if I’m bragging, so I’ll just write what happened and assure you ahead of time that the tone I’m using is one of bemused pride and giddiness. Here you have it: out of twenty-one graduating students, thirteen of them said that they were looking forward to studying English in middle school. In addition to that, one student told us that she wants to be an English teacher when she grows up. In addition to that, no other subject was singled out in this fashion. Students either vowed to study hard in general or vowed to study hard in English.

My delight in this development was nothing short of pure joy. It brought a smile to my face that didn’t fade until well after I was home and tucked in bed for the evening. As I said in a recent post, I try not to focus too much on the “English teacher” part of my job, because it’s such a difficult task and there are still days when I don’t think that I’m very good at it. Yet, when I see the signs of having had success at this very task, I can’t help but be pleased.

So, that was the first golden memory of the day.

The second took place later on in the teacher’s room, sometime in the early afternoon. The students had already been sent home, and so all of the teachers were working on their own tasks. Around 3:30, everyone took a break so that they could have some cake that the sixth grade teacher brought in to celebrate the graduation.

It is no secret that I love cake. In particular, I love extremely dense, rich, and bitter chocolate cake. This is to say that I love the kind of cake that this teacher chose to bring in. Unfortunately, I love cake so much that it’s included in the List of Things I Give Up For Lent. I’m not a strict Catholic by any means, but I do try to observe major holidays and practices – Lent being one of them. Following Lent isn’t always easy to do in Japan, especially when you give up sweets and Lent takes place during graduation season. I’ve had to turn away a lot of cake this year, and each time has been wrought with difficulties.

The most stressful of these incidents took place last Thursday. To celebrate the graduation on Friday, every student in Thursday’s elementary school received a piece of strawberry shortcake with their lunch. My lunch tray is prepared in teacher’s room, and so I had to tell the lunch lady that I couldn’t eat the cake. I was hoping that she would quietly acknowledge my predicament and then give the extra cake to the graduating class (this is what happened at my middle school). Unfortunately, that was not what happened.

Instead, I got to enjoy this exchange:

Me: Excuse me, lunch lady? I’m so sorry, and I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t eat the cake today.

Lunch Lady: Oh, you’re on a diet?  (eyes me appraisingly)

Me: Ah, no. It’s something to do with my religion. I can’t eat sweets until the beginning of April. (This is a very simple way to explain my situation, but I figured that simplest is best.)

Lunch Lady: So, you’re on a diet.

Me: No… it’s a religious thing. A Christian thing. A Catholic thing.

Lunch Lady: Religious diet?

Me: No… no diet. Just religion.

Lunch Lady: But you’ve already lost a lot of weight. Surely you can eat it today.

Me: … … … Thank you. But this has nothing to do with my weight. It’s a religious choice. Can you please give the cake to the sixth year class? I don’t want it to go to waste.

Lunch Lady: If you don’t want anybody to see you eat the cake, why don’t you just take it home?

Me: … … … I can’t eat it at home. I can’t sweets until April.

Lunch Lady: Is that when you’ll go off your diet?

And so forth and so on. Eventually, it was only by invoking the frighteningly stern and foreboding aspects of my intensely religious father and grandmother (a white lie if there ever was one, but it served my purposes) that she finally backed off about my weight loss schemes. Unfortunately for me, whenever anybody in the teacher’s room asked why I wasn’t eating cake, she chose to tell them it was because I’m on a diet.

It’s incidents like this one that make me seriously question the idea that the world will ever know peace between all nations. I cannot, for the life of me, convince a lunch lady in the countryside of Japan that my abstinence from shortcake is rooted in religion and not a desire to slim my waist line. Yet, there are those who are striving to reconcile vastly divergent philosophies and schools of thought.

All I have to say to them is: “Good luck – you’re going to need it. In the meantime, I’m going to keep working on my shortcake situation.”

Anyway, I seem to have run off on a rather substantial tangent. Returning to our story, we were at the moment when the teachers at Friday’s elementary school were dividing up the cake into sixteen pieces – one for each of us. I was thus faced with the following dilemma: Do I hold fast to my vows of Lent and risk the curse of Unshakeable Preconceived Diet Notions, or do I eat the cake and try not to feel as though I’ve let myself down?

Sighing heavily, I chose Lent and braced myself for the onslaught of weight-related queries.

And to my delight, found none. Not a single one.

Unlike what took place at Thursday’s school, the teachers at Friday’s school actually listened to what I had to say and they were fascinated by the idea. Fasting and abstinence are not unheard of in the East, but I don’t suspect that my coworkers at Friday’s school have had many opportunities to interact with the Christian practice. They were polite, curious, and very respectful. The vice principal was so sensitive about eating the cake in front of me, that he took it upon himself to describe the taste to me. This eventually morphed into an intensely thorough critique of the cake, which left the sixth grade teacher bemused. I commented that the whole scenario reminded me of Iron Chef, and was thus rewarded with a room full of laughter.

And so, as far as shenanigans go, I do believe that I did well for myself on Friday.

And you wonder will I leave [my country], but how?
I cross over borders but I’m still there now