Koshien Baseball, Graduation & Closing Ceremony!

Hi There!

As I mentioned last week, I recently spent a few days attending the spring Koshien baseball tournament. This might sound familiar to you because in prior trips to Japan, I went to the summer tournament that takes place in August.

If you probably remember, Koshien is a high school baseball tournament held near Osaka. The summer tournament is very famous: forty-nine teams enter the tournament (one from each prefecture of Japan plus a few extras) and they compete in a single elimination games. The games are held at a professional baseball park and 50,000 or more fans attend most of the games. Pretty much every game is a sellout.

The spring tournament is similar, but I believe there are fewer teams that take part. Also it sounds like a selection committee chooses all the teams for this one whereas prefectural tournaments (think about it like a state championship tournament in USA) determine who goes to summer tournament.

Also, for 3rd year Japanese high school baseball players, a loss at summer Koshien marks the end of their baseball careers. So there is a lot more emotion tied to the summer tournament. Remember that high school in Japan is only 3 years long.

All that being said - the spring tournament is a bit less popular and not quite as well attended. But, for high school games, they still draw large crowds, cheering sections with brass bands and the games are still played at Koshien Stadium. It makes for a nice atmosphere without the crushing summer heat normally associated with summer games.

I went to the stadium expecting to be able to buy tickets at the ticket window. But, as I approached Koshien, I could see that all the ticket windows were closed. I thought that maybe entry did not require a ticket, but I could see at the gates that people were pulling tickets out their pockets and handing them to ticket takers.

Some local staff members told me that you had to buy your ticket ahead of time and handed me a sheet that had more information on it. I decided to try to look into Plan B, which would be finding someone selling a ticket outside the stadium.

I have done this before. In Japan, ticket scalping is not a common practice - I am not sure if it is illegal or what, but you normally do not see it done as openly as you do in the US.

I ended up seeing a guy sitting near an entrance holding a sign - while I could not read all that the sign said, I discerned that he was selling something for 2,000 yen (about $20) and he was displaying a map of the stadium which seemed to say where the seat was.

I asked him if I could buy the ticket - turns out his ticket was in the behind home plate area and had a face value of 3,900 yen ($39), so he was selling me a ticket at a significant discount. Not only that, but I would be sitting next to him during the game!

I think this also happens somewhat frequently at events like these - a person will buy two tickets then try to find someone at the venue to attend the game with them. At Koshien specially, I also have found that a lot of men attend the game alone. It has happened several times that I sit next to someone who is at the game alone and wants to chat with the foreigner.

My new friend did not speak a lot of English, but he spoke enough and I spoke enough Japanese for us to have a conversation during the game. He was from Hiroshima and came to Osaka the night before to see Koshien. We watched three games together that day!

The games were fun and well played. They had all the regular aspects of Japanese high school baseball. The first pitcher worked very fast - he was throwing a pitch to the batter almost as soon as he received it from the catcher. You can see video of that below or you can visit the youtube link here.

I also took some video of team's infield & outfield pre-game routine, you can see it here! I ended up going to almost two day's worth of Koshien - I saw three games on the first day then went to about two games on another day. The tournament will wrap up next week!

Graduation and our school's closing ceremony were other major events this week. Japan seems to often formally commemorate the start and end of important activities with a ceremony. You might remember that when I played in a teacher softball tournament last year, there was an opening ceremony. Koshien, mentioned earlier, also has an opening ceremony.

In Japanese schools, there are several different such ceremonies - there is a ceremony to formally open the school year, one to welcome new first graders to the school and then a ceremony to mark the school year's end, among others.

I will first share a bit about graduation - this was for 6th graders who would be moving onto junior high school. Each student came with two guests to the graduation ceremony, normally both of their parents.

One by one, each student was called to the front to receive a school diploma from the principal. One thing that was interesting was that each student gave a very short speech before getting the diploma - I could not understand a lot of what was said, but it seemed like they mainly thanked their parents and shared inspiration with their classmates for junior high. Overall, as is the case with many Japanese school ceremonies, it had an almost rigid, military-like feel as students moved sharply from spot to spot.

After this part of the ceremony, all students sat together in the gym and heard a speech by the school's principal. Afterwards, they went through a tunnel of clapping teachers and parents. It seemed like maybe the students spent a little bit walking throughout the school, but I am not sure.

After doing that, the last ceremony was for the students to sing their graduation song in the school yard. They sang this song that I shared with you last week. After the ceremony, students took pictures with their friends around the school and that was that!

The next day was the final day of school and the closing ceremony. It was a half day for students except for 6th graders who did not attend the first part of the day. With about an hour left in the day, the ceremony started.

A teacher mentioned to me that whereas the prior day's ceremony was about the departing students, today's ceremony would be about the departing teachers You might remember in prior updates in which I mentioned that Japanese teachers usually do not spend their entire teaching career at one school. The government rotates them throughout various schools, usually within the prefecture (similar to a US state). It seems that the maximum time a teacher might spend at a school is 5 years, but that seems rare.

For my school, we found out last week that about 5 (including the librarian, a teacher that speaks fluent English and school nurse) would be moving onto new schools.

All of the students gathered in the school yard and our principal went through which teachers would be leaving. One of the departing teachers is a first grade teacher - her students were taking the news hard, crying very loudly!

After the principal gave a short speech about each teacher, it was the teacher's turn to address the school and share some words about their time. The final activity was that the departing teachers went through a tunnel made up of all the students and remaining teachers - it took some time for them to move through all of the students!

The 6th graders who graduated the day prior also returned to school only for the ceremony - I am not sure what their role was other than possibly saying good bye to the departing teachers.

After closing ceremony, all of the teachers moved into the teacher's room where the festivities continued. The vice-principal called each teacher to the front of the room and they were "roasted" by one or two of their teacher friends. The moment was quite emotional - many teachers were crying as they verbally shared memories about the departing teacher.

In the past, I had the impression that the Japanese do not usually share tougher emotions publicly, so this was quite different for me to see teachers visibly sad about the teachers leaving.

After a teacher would have words said about them, it was the teacher's turn to again give a short speech to the staff about their time at the school. Again, as with the other speeches, some of the teachers were quite emotional. After everyone was done, the meeting ended.

I thought that the ceremonies around the teachers re-emphasized the importance of having an impact on the school, students and teachers. When you leave the school, you are going to want to have people that are moved to share good stories about you - it is almost a way of having accountability, I think. But, I do not think that is the main point why they have this activity, though - maybe just a side point.

Departing teachers will be around the school for about another week - on April 1st, new teachers across Japan show up at their new schools. That's also when teachers will find out what grade they will be teaching in the new academic year. Some teachers expressed nervousness about it - as I mentioned, some grades contain misbehaving students (especially the current 5th grade class who will be 6th graders from April), so I am sure there is some anxiety about which teachers will be teaching that grade.

I know a current 6th grade teacher told me that she wants to teach 3rd grade next year - I am not sure if that is because of fear of the incoming 6th graders or not.

Until then, teachers are straightening things up at the school, doing cleaning, or taking a few days off before starting to prepare for the new year. After April 1st is a busy time for teachers as they have just over a week to start preparing to teach their assigned grade. I am told, though, that many teachers will stick with the same grade, just with different students.

In the meantime, I will be taking some time off from school - traveling to the Kyushu area in southern Japan. I will update you on that next time!