Graduation

In my last entry I spoke about graduation ceremony. Mainly I said it was very boring. I had to sit for two and a half hours (in a skirt suit nonetheless) listening to Japanese I didn’t understand. Also, I had been studying Japanese really hard all week, and I was tired of the language and wanted a break, so I did not even try to listen. I just sat there and thought about nothing!

Yesturday one of the English teachers at my school asked me what I thought of the ceremony. I said it was alright. She asked if it was different than an American one. I said it was the same, except there was more bowing and the ceremony was more like a high school graduation. I don’t remember my junio high graduation being nearly as formal. “Also,” I mentioned, “The speeches seemed boring because I could not understand them.” The teacher replied, “They were boring! It was very tiring to sit through the graduation.” I was surprised because I thought it might have been interesting to Japanese people. My supervisor had mentioned how she likes graduation ceremony because it shows the student’s unity, but perhaps she is more of a fan of Japanese tradition. I said so to the teacher. She said that there were not any jokes, and you had to be very quiet the entire time. I do recall that no one laughed the entire time (which is okay with me because I am always over curious to the point of insanity when Japanese people are laughing around me. I want to know what’s funny!!). In American graduations almost all the speeches have a joke or two. So I guess I didn’t miss out on much.

One thing that did strike me about the ceremony was this: as the students were marching out of the hall to forever leave the school, many of them were crying. I don’t remember students crying at my junior high graduation. I do remember many (including me) jumping for joy. Maybe they are sad to split from their friends and go to separate high schools (unlike America, where you often stay in the same town with the same people through high school, students in Japan go off to various high schools around the area and farther away). Or maybe students just show emotion more in Japan. But, I thought, there must be something special about this school if so many of the students were crying.

Tomorrow is the ceremony for the branch school. Since there are only six students graduating (as opposed to my base school’s 100 students graduating), the ceremony will hopefully be a lot shorter! Maybe I’ll even get to leave early!

Signing out,
Lisa