I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello

In Japan, the school year ends in March and begins a few weeks later in April.

And every year in Japan, teachers face the possibility of being transferred to another school in the prefecture, or to the main prefectural board of education. They have little say in the matter, and most people seem to not last more than 5-6 years at any given school before changing. It's a really strange process, actually. On

the day the transfers are announced, Kocho-sensei (the Principal) comes into the teacher's room with a single A4 sized piece of paper which he attaches to the front board via magnet. Shortly following this, everyone rushes to see who made the "list." It's hard to believe you find out your coworkers and friends are moving to another school via a list posted on a blackboard, but that's how it goes.

So this year, we lost maybe 6 or 7 teachers. I knew four of them fairly well, so I was really sad to see them go.

The teachers on the "list" continue to work for a few days before going to their new workplaces on April 1st. At the same time, the new teachers came to our school for the first time.

Even teachers who stay at the same school don't necessarily get out of the odious task of cleaning out their desks for the new year. Every teacher has a homeroom - a first year, second year, or third year homeroom - that they stay with throughout high school. When I got here, my row was full of "first year teachers", which doesn't mean it was their first year teaching, but that they were in charge of first year homeroom classes. As their homerooms became second-year homerooms, they became second-year teachers. Which means they move to the second-year teachers' row.

So you may be thinking, what? So they pack up their desks and walk a few feet over and unpack?

No, because that would be logical. Instead, every single teacher packs up some of their things... but only to make their desks lighter... so that they can push them across the teachers' room. Every teacher has an identical desk. But for some reason, no one has ever thought to just move the contents. They move the entire. thing.

My seat didn't change, so I was free to stand there, mouth agape, watching everyone rearrange the entire teachers' room over the course of a half hour. In the end, it looked exactly the same, but everyone seemed out of place. I really m

iss my old row-mates, but hopefully over time I'll adjust to my new neighbors.

As for leaving teachers, the English teacher who sat next to me was transferred to a special needs school for the deaf that Steff works at. A really nice teacher who sat behind me has been transferred to Kencho, to work at the Board of Ed. When he visited a week later, he told me that now he works from 8 am until midnight every day. He also started wearing glasses, and looks considerably older than he did at the end of March. A nursing teacher who used to sit across from me moved to a high school a few cities over, but also invited me to her son's birthday party next week, so we'll keep in touch.

We gained two new English teachers, one of whom lives a four-minute walk from my apartment. We also got a new swimming coach who used to work at one of my special needs schools. I used to sit in on his two-period long class every other week, so seeing him at Hofu High School was a pleasant surprise. And where my supervisor used to sit, directly behind me, now sits a geography teacher who used to work at my OTHER special needs school. So the new batch of teachers was actually not so new for me!

Next time: graduation/Japan's obsession with ceremonies, work drinking parties, and a weekend of camping and horseback archery...