And the winner is...

Well, no one guessed correctly why the girl at my school was suspended. Actually, only one person even guessed! :) It's ok, I'm sure you all wondered quietly. To ease your anxiety I'll just tell you. She was suspended for working at her part time job. One of the teachers at my school saw her working and that was that. Apparently in Japan, if an academic high-school student wants to work part-time they must first clear it with the school. A fellow teacher assured me that Tsurusaki High School rarely grants such priveleges. This was the second time she had been caught working, and so her punishment is 3 weeks suspension.

Harsh. I guess that would explain why students have time to spend 3 hours a day, 7 days a week at their club activities.

In other education news around Japan... the Minister of Education in Tokyo has recently been receiving letters from anonymous students threatening to commit suicide because they have been bullied. Bullying in Japan has been a major problem in schools for years. The Ministry of Education reports there have been no reports of bullying for the last seven years, but apparently this is not the case. School officials and parents turn a blind eye to it and tell the students to 'endure, endure.'

This was the advice given to one poor student who wrote such a letter to the Ministry of Education last week. Ministry officials were able to trace this letter to one of 21 or so prefectures from around Japan because, although the kanji on the postmark was unreadable, they were able to deduce it partially. It may have come from Oita and so in one of our meetings last week, the principal alerted the staff and asked them to be on guard and try to figure out if it was one of our students. As far as we know, it wasn't any of our students...but it makes me wonder if any of this goes on in my classes? I often miss a lot of the side chatter because it's in Japanese, and I don't spend much time in the classrooms. It makes me sick to think someone could be treated so horribly in school.

Here are some links to newspaper articles in the last few days about this subject. It looks as though that one letter may have been from Kyushu after all, the girl that jumped to her death was just in the neighboring prefecture.

Suicide threats boosts school patrols and Girl jumps to death

Five more kids threaten suicide; minister says don't write

Classmates shake down girl for 100,000 yen

Perhaps the most quoted metaphor when describing Japanese culture is "The nail that sticks up gets pounded down." Bullying is the perfect example of this. I intend to do more research on this.

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Today I went to the soccer game and Tsurusaki High School won in overtime! They will now travel to Tokyo to Nationals. I'm really proud of them. It was a beautiful day for soccer and they got to play in the World Cup Stadium. I took some photos.










Another week begins. じゃあ、またね。

Pictures of the US

A girl at my high school has been suspended for 3 weeks! I’ll give you $100 if you can guess what she did...
to be continued...


I taught a lesson a while ago about Cultural Images. I told them that lots of people don’t know much about Japan except, of course, for the famous cultural images such as sumo, giesha, sushi, manga, etc. I wanted them to think about the cultural images of the United States. This was a selfish lesson - I really just wanted to know what they think of when they think of the US. Later I’ll use it to build a stereotypes/assumptions lesson. I really liked a lot of their answers and I wanted to share it with you. Pictures of the US:










In other Tsurusaki High School News... our soccer team (yes, there is only one and it’s a boy’s team) has advanced to the final round of the Oita High School Tournament! They have the championships next weekend in the big dome stadium that hosted the World Cup Tournament a few years ago. Exciting! If they win they will advance to the national tournament in Tokyo. Go Tsurusaki!

Usuki Bamboo Festival

It has been a weekend of exploration for Shawn and I. Yesterday we went to a bamboo festival in Usuki, a town about 40 min to the southeast of us. Usuki is a place with lots of historical significance, there are castle ruins, stone buddhas carved into mountains and a historic street that reminds me of the Japan in Memoirs of a Geisha. Long narrow streets bordered by beautiful traditional Japanese houses. It was awesome.

For the bamboo festival the people had carved designs into huge bamboo reeds and then placed candels inside to create a lantern effect. They lined the streets and winding through these historic homes there were various displays of amazing creativity and art. The lighting was beautiful.

We bought at tripod for the trip so we could photograph the illumination in all it's splendor. Shawn has amazing pics of lots of the displays. I could only catch a handfull of non-blurry pictures. Here they are:

To give you an idea of the construction:













Festivals are an excuse to people to celebrate their traditions and some take the opportunity to wear their kimono. Here are a few girls I wanted to scoop up and take home with me. How adorable are they!?




We also saw women playing the koto, which is a long instrument with strings you pluck...sorry I can't describe it better than that.



It was a really great experience.
We were also able to explore a little around the castle ruins and hang out. I'll leave you with some photos from the rest of the day.






Despite all the festivities and lovely photo-ops, I think I captured the best moments on the train ride home.








Have a great week!