Last weekend was my school's cultural festival.  It consists of many different contests, such as speeches and singing.  Each Junior class also decorates their room with a theme.  Themes varied from movies, with lifesize spider mans and Willy Wonkas everywhere to building rockets made out of pop bottles.  Any one can come to the school and go through the different rooms and themes. 

Each club also does something special to show off their talents. My English club came up with a came to figure out what kind of dater you are.  Yes, my club is all girls.  The Chemistry did lots of cool things such as making slime and smashing bananas.  BANANARAMA! Also got a little culture-yyy and went to the little show of the Tea Ceremony club.  I bought some books that I have no idea to read, but hey, I supported a club in my school. 

The morning of the second day of the festival, one of my teachers came up to me and told I would be singing at 1:30.  I believed my face glazed over with the look of "huhhhhh???"  Then they handed me the song I would be singing, and guess what, it was in Japanese!  So here was the task at hand, learn a song in a foreign language that I had never heard before.  I was walking around wide-eyed for about the next hour before I realized what was really going on and looked at my watch and saw that I had 2 and half hours to learn it. 

But come concert time, I was jacked, I was pumped and ready to go.  Bear in mind that my school has 900 kids plus teachers, plus their parents and friends were there!  The band started playin the music and I walked out on stage and crowd just went absolutely nutso!  There musta been 1500 people in the audience.  It was Japandemonium!  But I rocked it Jack Black "School of Rock" styly and had them in a frenzy at the end.  WOOOOOOOOOO!  They will be cravin for more by next year.

Today was an interesting day at school.  In Japan, teachers can't decide where they teach, they can just specify an area.  And they must stay at that school for 3 years, and after that it is possible to transfer, but of course, they can't decide where. 

So today was the day that the teachers find out what they are doin.  Needless to say, there was a different feelin in the office today.  Everyone seemed quite nervous and was pacin around.  I think most of the teachers wanted to stay, since my school is the top school in the city and the students are good.  Out of 10 of the English teachers at my school, 2 of them got transferred and 1 is retiring.  One of the teachers that got transferred is my supervisor, so I was disappointed she got transferred because she has been a good supervisor.  She is also a very good teacher and made our classes enjoyable.

But the whole system of transferring is quite strange.  The one good thing that I can gain from it is that there is never a school in need of a teacher.  All the positions are filled.  But it seems for a country that is so big on group work and team-centered, it would seem more logical to keep teachers where they are in order to create better relationships amongst the teachers.  Also, sometimes the teachers end up having to commute a long ways to work.  Plus its not performance based at all.  So there is no benefit of being a good teacher, it doesn't give you a better chance to stay or go.  I would like to hear the reasoning behind the system.  In fact, I just might ask someone.