Through the Eyes of a Wombat

Last Friday was Graduation Day at Seaside School.

Through some interesting school shuffling, I was able to be there, despite Fridays being my Hiratsuka day. As penance, I spent Tuesday at Hiratsuka waiting for my supervisor to finish writing an exam for the students, and then ‘recording’ it once he finished.

I digress.

Graduation at Seaside School was an interesting affair, none the least because students who have never spoken a word in class spoke to me. There was one kid who, for a while, I was actually concerned was physically unable to speak. Maybe he was born without a tongue, or was deaf, or had some advanced form of lung disease…. in any case, he had not spoken a single word in my presence ever.
Yet after graduation, he came up to me, actually spoke, and thanked me for English classes. He’s one of about four students from the school actually going on to university. My samurai student (well, he sat at the side of the class, said very little except for grunts, and has his hair cut in the style of a true samurai warrior) also thanked me.. as did the class clown, the disruptive creature with his trousers about twenty centimetres too low all year. He even apologized for being ‘not the best student’!
Wow.. quite an experience, talking to these students once the pressure of school was off them…

Yet another chapter in the Chronicles of Kyoto Sensei. My Vice-Principal here at Hiratsuka, who is renowned for making strange noises at his desk, casting me sly glances across the room and laughing, and in general being entertaining. The same bloke who once apologised on behalf of his entire nation, saying “Please don’t think all Japanese people are strange because of me.”
He is on the phone right now, and it truly is a scene out of a cartoon. Remember how, in cartoons, the person on the other end of the phone is represented by a high pitched, twittering unintelligible warble, yet clearly audible to third party listeners.

That just happened. The person on the other end of the phone was clearly audible to me, however due to being a high pitched, twittering warble, was completely unintelligible.