Recently the inimitable Josh pointed out that I hadn't posted a single picture of a school or students, even though I spend most of my time in school-like facilities full of student-like people. Guess it's time to come clean. I spent October teaching at Kaminopporo Junior High School (back to Nakajima tomorrow) and took quite a few pics during my last few days there.

The first thing you'll encounter in the entryway of every Japanese school is a whole mess o' shoe cubbies. Teachers have to bring "school shoes" (typically tennis shoes) to swap into before proceeding to the school proper. Students swap into their school-approved shoes (part of the uniform), making them even harder to tell apart.

My workday invariably begins in the teachers' room. It's almost always located on the second floor of the school. We're packed in there pretty tightly, but it does the job.

In addition to the standard uniform, students also have athletic uniforms. The gents were chatting about proper springboardy-tower-of-death-thing (in the background) technique before I rudely interrupted with my camera.

Crazy-jumpy-death-thing is for boys! Volleyball is for girls! This gym is absolutely identical to the gym at Nakajima. Japanese schools seem to be heavily standardized in terms of design and layout. Classrooms are identical from one school to the next as well.

Lunchtime! School lunch is remarkably tasty. Every day, the designated kids don cute little server outfits and dish up/serve lunch to their classmates.

More lunchtime insanity. I ate lunch with the kids every day. Sometimes conversation was extended, other times it was like a bad blind date.

The Proud English Teachers of Kaminopporo! From left to right, Mr. Saito (I forgot to ask why he always wore a lab coat), Mr. Yoshimura, me looking as unphotogenic as ever, Mr. Tanaka (looking atypically serious), and Mr. Omichi. They kicked ass.

Leaving was really sad. After my last class, all the kids made me autograph their English textbooks. I kid you not. Several took pictures with me, a few even gave me little goodbye letters! It's strange to feel so...I dunno, loved for doing so little.

thank you brian!

I now have real, photographic proof of the japanese posing phenomenon! in my japanese class, I recently learned the verb for "to take a picture." since then, we've participated in endless little practice situations in which we ask a stranger whether they would please take a picture. fine. but each and every time, the japanese teachers insist on us doing the peace sign thing, and in each illustration in my language book that contains a camera there is at least one happy stick-person forming their little stick hands into that ever-popular victory "V." I now realize that my teachers are just doing their best to train me properly for natural camera interaction in japan. hooray!

Where the white women at?

Also, what's your relative height in Japan?