End of Spring Break Trip, Cherry Blossoms and Start of New School Year!

Hi There!

Last time I wrote, I was just leaving Yakushima after spending a few days exploring the island.

After getting off the ferry from Yakushima, I made a brief transfer to a local train bound for Ibusuki. Ibusuki is a smaller town about an hour or so south of Kagoshima. It is known for onsens and also black sand baths - these are places in which you pay to get buried in black sand. I think I have a picture of an ad for this in last week's photos - you can follow the link in the next paragraph to see it.

I was in the area to visit Mt Kaimondake, which is a cone-shaped volcanic mountain. You will see photos from that hike in last week's photos - either towards the beginning or end of the album depending on how you sort it. If you see the train station sign with the words "Ibusuki" or "Kaimon" on it, the photos around that are from Kaimondake.

There was no rush to make a return bus this time. Some of the options for the return trip included a train or a bus. The train departed from a small platform with the words "Kaimon" on the sign (near the cherry blossom trees).

After Ibusuki, I caught another train up to Miyazaki, which I planned to be one of the final stops on the trip to Kyushu. I ended up not doing a lot in Miyazaki - they have a modern mall there that I stopped at on the first day. I was surprised to see a an "Original Pancake" restaurant there along with a Sports Authority - seems that the Sports Authority brand is still going over here despite having closed all of their US stores several years ago.

One stop in Miyazaki was to Aoshima, which is a small island shrine just south of the city. I also visited a burial mound area with a friend that had a lot of flowers and cherry blossom trees. You will see photos from that in the link below.

A main reason why I looked to visit Kyushu in the first place was that one can travel by overnight ferry between it and Kobe or Osaka. Usually the ferries will depart in the evening and arrive at their destination the next morning. It is about a 12 hour ferry ride between Kobe/Osaka and various destinations in Kyushu - mainly Beppu or Kagoshima.

However, while I was in Miyazaki, I found out that a ferry goes between it and Kobe - so I booked my return travel on it. There are several different ticket classes on the ferry. The most basic is "2nd class" in which you can sleep on the floor in a big open room. Just above that is a bed in a bunk room - the bunk rooms have curtains that you can pull closed over your berth, so it actually gives you a bit of privacy.

Beyond that, you can rent a single room or a suite. I wanted to try for the single room, but I ended up having to make the reservation on the phone in Japanese and was only able to figure out how to reserve the 2nd class bunk room.

The room turned out nice, though - there were only maybe two other people in my room, so it was similar to a lot of hostels that I have stayed at. You could go on the deck of the ferry and see the views passing by during daylight hours, eat a meal in onboard buffet restaurant, watch TV or go to the ship's onsen. I ate dinner and then spent most of the ride sleeping.

When I got back to Kobe on Tuesday morning, I still had all of Tuesday and the next day off of school before going back on Thursday. On Wednesday, I decided to go try and catch some of the tail end of cherry blossom season.

I did not know this before but "peak" cherry blossom season lasts only about a week at various times throughout Japan. The season begins in the warmer, southern regions and then makes its way north throughout the spring. In the Kobe/Osaka/Kyoto region, the peak bloom was roughly the first week of April until around the 7th. After peak bloom, the flowers will start to fall off the trees - either taken down by rain or wind.

To see some blooms, I went up to Kyoto - it is about an hour and a half ride maximum from Kobe. It was very beautiful! You can see the pictures of the blooms in this week's photo album.

After viewing the sakura, it was back to school on Thursday. This would be the first day back for me since all of the new teachers arrived - we had probably 10 or so new people join our school. Some are new teachers, a new librarian and some other people who help special education students.

I also ended up finding out which teachers were teaching which grade - some teachers stayed with the same grade they taught last year while others moved up or down. For example, a 3rd and 2nd grade teacher moved up to teach 6th grade while a 6th grade teacher moved down to teach 3rd grade.

As I have mentioned, 6th grade will be the difficult grade behavior wise - the 3rd grade teacher who moved up to 6th grade actually taught this group of students a few years ago when they were 4th graders. He seems to have a closer relationship with one of the tougher students in the grade, so I think he was chosen as the best candidate to deal with the grade.

I may have mentioned before that most of the people who speak the best English moved on to other schools. I met someone on Thursday who I think told me is my new "manager" at the school - she teaches 4th grade but does not speak a lot of English. Mostly my "boss" is the vice principal of the school, but there is also usually another teacher who I work with kind of in a "boss" capacity.

Friday was opening ceremony for our school and a half day for the students. All students 2nd grade through 6th grade came to school.

The opening ceremony was very similar to our school's closing ceremony. While at the closing ceremony, it was mainly about the teachers leaving, the opening ceremony was about the new teachers arriving. All of the students and teachers assembled in the school playground for it.

The school principal went through and introduced each new teacher and each teacher also gave a short introduction speech. I was surprised about some of the individuality displayed during the speeches - one teacher even juggled a soccer ball! I was expecting the speeches to be a little bit more reserved.

Another interesting part of the ceremony was when the students found out what grades teachers would be teaching. As I mentioned, there were some teachers from last year changing grades. During the ceremony, the principal announced which teachers would be teaching what grades this school year - students reacted with excitement to some of the changes!

Then, students assembled in smaller groups by grade with the teachers for their grade to find out what classes they would be assigned to. Before this moment, students had no idea what teacher they would have or who their classmates would be. Once they were in these smaller groups, the teachers handed out papers to the students which contained a class roster and who their teacher was.

Afterward, you could tell that some students were a bit shocked by the new class assignment - one particular 4th grader (who causes a bit of mischief) seemed quite beside himself as his new class did not have any of his buddies in it and was also with a brand new teacher. Some 2nd grade students ended up in the same class with the same teacher that they had the year prior.

After the opening ceremony was done, the students had a few hours of class before going home around noon. From what I could see, the teachers spent the time getting to know their students while also doing self-introduction presentations to their classrooms.

After the students went home, the teachers started preparing for the first grade entrance ceremony that will occur on Monday. These are new students entering the school - it appears that the school has a special ceremony dedicated to them. I will write about that next time!

Before closing this update, I will share one story that I was reminded of during the opening ceremony. Back during closing ceremony, I mentioned that that ceremony was mainly about the departing teachers.

One of the departing teachers was a special education teacher who mainly spent time helping the school's wheel-chair student. You might remember a while back I mentioned that I saw this teacher running behind and pushing the wheel chair to help the student fly a kite. The teacher would end up having to do a lot of physical activity - helping move the student around the school and up stairs and so on.

As part of the closing ceremony, an assigned student presented a flower bouquet to a departing teacher. For the nurse, one student who had spent a lot of time in the nurse's office presented the flowers to the departing nurse. For the special education teacher, you guessed it, the wheel chair student presented flowers to the departing special education teacher. I thought it was a nice moment.

Until next time,

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Photos from this week!

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