The junior high students had exams for three days, which meant that I spent half a week in the teacher’s room with nothing to do. Eventually, I gave up all pretense of working or studying and just settled down with a trashy novel. I got to page 346.

The students finished their exams with their last period of Friday set aside for marching practice. They put all the students and teachers in the gym. They made the students line up in a predetermined order according to height (girls on one side, boys on the other) and made the teachers inspect them. This is one of those moments when I felt so much sympathy for the students. I’m young and still confuse myself for a student. I’m used to being the one inspected and corrected, not the one doing the inspecting and correcting. Luckily, I wasn’t asked to help with any of that, and even if they had wanted me to, I would have feigned complete incomprehension. (Actually, it probably wouldn’t have been feigned.) There’s just something that feels wrong about looking and behaving exactly like everyone else. From uniforms to lockstep movements. This is always creepy. Well maybe not if you’re in a marching band, and even that’s probably questionable.

Even though the activity was about as dull as a rubber ball, the students were remarkably well behaved. I know how this story ends in the US. The students resist and try to make everything as sneakily chaotic as possible. The teachers escalate in threats and fury. The students get angry and get more out of hand until everything finally winds down. The teachers give up trying to make the students look good and the students capitulate to some miserable level of cooperation just to get the process over with.

At my high school, they couldn’t even get us to make an orderly stroll for graduation. They certainly never would have tried to make a few hundred kids march military style together in perfect control. The Japanese style of marching here is pretty bizarre. The most marching anyone ever got out of me was in my sweet tempered elementary school years, maybe in girl scouts. They had us line up and stand at attention. Then off we went, left, right, left, right. Swinging our arms just slightly and stiffly at our side. And being curious elementary-aged kids, we were happy to oblige.

They ordered the Japanese junior high students to stand at attention. Then measure at least an arms length from the person in front of them. Then march to the timed bleeping of a whistle. But the students were just marching in place, because the entire student body filled the gym. They STOMPED in time together. Bleep, bleep. BOOM, BOOM! Bleep, bleep. BOOM, BOOM!. And they swung their arms back and forth like crazed pendulums. I had the brilliant idea to hook the kids up to power generators like windmills. But apparently, the students were not swinging their arms wildly enough. Ms. T went around with a very intense look on her face, swinging her arms nearly out of their sockets back and forth, encouraging the students to do just the same.

I don’t know what it is about gym teachers, but it seems like there’s a universal rule that they have to be old-ish and they have to be mean. I don’t know too much about the male gym teacher, but the female gym teacher at this school is the sweetest person here. At the going away party for former teachers, she sobbed harder than anyone else. She’s always the one who takes the extra rice left over from school lunch, makes little rice balls, and gives them to other teachers to snack on. But when she’s being a gym teacher she has a look of strict disappointment and displeasure on her face. She and the male gym teacher barked into bullhorns at the students to clean up their sloppy marching.

Then, after the marching, the music teacher took the stage and lead the students in the school song. Suddenly, all the students put three fingers up to their faces as if they were mimicking putting a gun in their mouth, but with one extra finger.

“What are they doing?!” I asked the English teacher next to me.

“She told them to open their mouths as wide as three fingers when they sing. Do you think this activity is strange? It is a little odd for me too. They did not do this sort of thing at my old school.”

After the song, the music teacher gave a speech telling the students they needed to sing more earnestly. People would be watching them and she wanted this school to look sharp and proud. We needed to show we were the best school in the area.

What was this all about? Afterwards, I asked the same JTE. Apparently the students will be marching for the opening ceremony of the city-wide junior high sports competition.

Today, the students were to practice marching outside, but it rained, as it is wont to do in the rainy season. Back in the gym. Same song. Second verse. A little bit faster (Ha! Hardly!) and a little be worse. This time they had the student band playing along. (Why is the band all girls?) And they were given dumb white baseball caps to add to their uniforms. In order to get the kids moving, the boys sat down to give the girls room to march and then the girls sat while the boys marched. I don’t know who was more horrible. But I certainly wouldn’t have put any effort into it. Ms. T went from row to row holding her arm level with her chest and asking the students to swing their arms that high when they marched.

EDIT 7/4/07:

The kids practiced marching during their gym classes today. 5th period was canceled for marching practice and tomorrow will be the same. Today they got to practice marching outside since it wasn’t raining and was just dreadfully humid instead. I also found out why they were marching. This upcoming competition will be the last sports competition that the sanensei will participate in. After this, the sanensei will quit their club activities to buckle down for highschool entrance exams. Ouch!

EDIT 2: 7/9/07

My friend, who teaches at a private school near my apartment, asked her students what they thought about marching.  They complained that they looked like North Korea.