Chorus Festival

The past two weeks the students have been busy practicing for chorus festival. And last Saturday we all came into school for their performance.

Much like sports day, Chorus festival is a pretty big deal in Japan. But it doesn’t involve me too much. My only job is to come in and watch.

Much to my disappointment, all the songs were the same as last year. There was a small part of me that was tempted to say to my Japanese Colleagues: “for goodness sakes people, couldn’t you have found some new songs for the kids to sing? Do you know how boring it is to sit through the same performance for the second year in a row? Aren’t there any more songs in Japan that you could have chosen from?”

But instead I kept my criticism mute. I said things like, “weren’t all the songs the same as last year?” And they were just pleased that I had paid enough attention to notice.

And after chorus festival was the usual drinking party. Although I complained on this blog about the previous school drinking party, I actually had a good time on this one. A large part of it is seating assignments. This time I was seated by the younger teachers, and it was a lot more like hanging out with friends than work colleagues.

In fact I even stuck around long enough to go to a second bar with some of the younger teachers. Before we entered the bar, one of them explained to me: “the forbidden word inside this bar is ‘teacher’. None of us are teachers inside this bar. You never know where parents might be, so just in case the parents of our students are inside, don’t say teacher. Call everyone by their name, don’t say ‘sensei’.”

Although there was great concern by my colleagues that I would mess this up, it actually proved easier for me than everyone else. Partly no doubt due to the fact that I was the only sober one. But also in Japan it is usual to address people by their title instead of their name. At school my name is not Joel, it is “Joel sensei”. But of course as an American I can slip out of this a lot easier than the Japanese can.

So I spent the rest of the evening watching for them to mess up, and then calling them on it. “Ah, you said the forbidden word!” I would shout out at various times. Eventually I proposed that a penalty should be imposed for saying the forbidden word. We agreed that anyone caught uttering the forbidden word would get a finger flicked against their forehead.

“But that will hurt,” one of the woman complained.

“Well, than just don’t say the word,” said the man to my left.

I began to play with this. “What’s your job again?” I asked her. She was on the point of answering when she caught herself. A while later I showed her a picture on my cell phone. “Who is this man?” I asked.

“It’s Ando sensei,” she answered automatically.

But it was agreed that there would be no penalty since I had tricked her into it.

Right before we left the bar, the hot tea was brought out. “What is tea in Japanese?” I asked.

“Tea wa cha,” she answered

“What?”

“Tea cha” she said slightly louder and omitting the verb.

I can’t take credit for that joke, I learned it from Eoin. It doesn’t always work, but this time it played out beautifully. Although again, it was agreed there would be no penalty because I had unfairly tricked her.

My colleague on my left passed out. His head knocked his beer glass over and it spilled perfectly into the lap of the teacher across the table. Since everyone was still in their business suits, it caused a bit of commotion and there was a lot of passing napkins and cleaning up. We decided to call it a night shortly after that.

Link of the Day
Watch this video of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Rio in 1983, and then ask yourself what the AM radio would be saying if he had run as a Democrat.