The day of opening ceremony. While we waited to go to the small auditorium we let the kids watch an AWFUL dub of “My Neighbor Totoro”. It was Fox licensed allegedly, but I’m not sure which country. The dub wasn’t Disney’s, and everything was just wrong about it. The girls were voiced be women (which is the norm, but they sounded like women doing bad impersonations of kids), and they called the dust sprites dust bunnies. It was awful.

So I’ve learned something about this school: no one knows what’s going on ever. While we were racing to load the kids in the bus, I asked M if I needed my “house slippers”, the slippers you wear in Japanese houses and schools (which, in reality, get dirtier than outside shoes after a short while); she said “You can bring them if you wish”. We rode with the kids in vans and got to the auditorium hall. Well, like almost everywhere else, the auditorium requires house slippers. However, they already had house slippers there, all stamped with the name of the hall. As I wasn’t wearing socks, I decided to keep my slippers and not wear the sweaty used ones that God knows who wore. Still, M should’ve told me they were here, instead of essentially saying “do what you want”.

The hall was un-welcomingly bright, lit with fluorescent lighting (EVERYTHING is lit with florescents here - it’s so depressing). The kids were lines up on one edge of the room, teachers on the other. The teachers had to give impromptu speeches, and I was to be first. I figured I’d say something like, “I’m so honored to be here blah blah blah.”

The parents started arriving, mainly fathers. I wonder if many of them were out of work, because it would seem extreme just to take off work to see a corny opening ceremony.

It starts! We all sang the “Hello” song, gave gifts to the new kids, and did the speeches. Before too long, it was over. Wow, that was uneventful.

We returned to the school and hung around until early afternoon.