I live in a suburb of Osaka about a ten minute train ride from the city. It’s mostly a bedroom community with a few factories, the largest of which is Sanyo. To put it diplomatically, there’s really not much to this town. So imagine my surprise when I learned there is a sumo practice facility here. The Osaka sumo tournament starts in a few days and so every year around this time, we suddenly start to see a lot of sumo wrestlers near the station coming and going. I had the special treat yesterday of visiting this practice facility, which it turns out is about a ten minute walk from my apartment, and on the very same road!

A teacher at my friend’s school invited us to meet him at 8am. We walked to a shipping company and then entered a room on the side of the main office building. Inside was a dirt floor and on one side, a small raised area with tatami mats for people to sit. And of course there were sumo wrestlers, about twenty of them, taking turns fighting. They all looked pretty tired, and the air was warm and damp from all the sweat. We sat and watched the practice until it ended at 10:45am. Afterwards I asked one of the sumo wrestlers what time they had started. 「五時半」(ごじはん/5:30) he replied.

Among those watching the practice was the president of the company. Afterwards, he invited us up to his office, served us drinks and chatted us up about various things. At noon, he led us up to the next floor and we ate ちゃんこ鍋 (chanko nabe), the traditional sumo food, for lunch. The waiters for our meal were the sumo wrestlers themselves! It was a pretty surreal experience. By this time they had bathed and changed clothes. In public they’re required to wear traditional Japanese clothes, but here most of them were wearing (very large) T-shirts and shorts. Some even wore glasses, which I’d never seen before.

After lunch, we returned to the president’s office where he was entertaining two visiting sumo wrestlers, both Mongolian and both very highly ranked. He showed me the 番付 (ばんづけ/sumo ranking list) for the upcoming tournament and pointed out their names. The higher the rank, the higher the position on the paper. Theirs were at the top of the page, but they are in the lowest rank of the top division: 前頭 (まえがしら). Still, very impressive.

It was an unexpectedly fun day. Japan is always full of surprises and you never know what interesting thing might be just down the road!

The school year is winding down. This week was final exams for the first and second years and today was graduation for the third years. The high school graduation ceremony in Japan is similar to the Western ceremony, but with a few uniquely Japanese twists.

For all of the formal school ceremonies, like 始業式 (しぎょうしき/opening ceremony), 終業式 (しゅうぎょうしき/closing ceremony) and 卒業式 (そつぎょうしき/graduation), the teachers all wear formal attire. For the women this means nice dresses and for the men business suits with white neckties. The principle wears a long-tail suit jacket that makes him look like he’s going horse riding when he’s finished.

The graduation ceremony begins with the procession of graduating students into the gym. Led by their homeroom teacher, first 一組 (いちくみ/class one) files down the center and once they reach the front, they split into two lines with half of the class sitting in the first row of seats on the right while the other half takes the seats on the left. This is followed by 二組、三組、etc. This year’s 三年生 (さんねんせい/third year) class was a bit smaller, so we only had six homeroom classes (usually it’s seven). Seated behind the soon-to-be graduates are a small contingent of first and second years and behind them are family and friends. Seated to the left of the third years are the teachers, and to the right are members of the PTA, principles of local junior high schools, as well as a few representatives from the board of education.

Next comes the 国歌 (こっか/national anthem), called 君が代 (きみがよ/ “May Your Reign Last Forever”). The singing of the national anthem is somewhat controversial among many teachers in Japan. This is because the song is viewed as a relic of Japan’s wartime past and the song’s lyrics praise the Emperor. Many teachers simply choose to remain seated and silent instead. At my school this doesn’t seem to have any significant repercussions, but many teachers have been punished throughout Japan for refusing to participate.

In American graduation ceremonies, students wear caps and gowns and walk onto stage when their name is called to receive their diploma from the principle. In Japan, the students wear their regular 制服 (せいふく/school uniforms), while their names are called by their homeroom teacher, in Japanese alphabetical order (あ、さ、か、) and they stand up from their seat and say 「はい」. They remain standing until all the names in their class have been called, then they sit and the next homeroom teacher stands and calls the name for the his/her class. The diploma is ceremonially bestowed upon one 代表者 (だいひょうしゃ/representative) from each class. The representative is elected by the class, and they alone go on stage and receive the bundled stack of diplomas for their class from the principle. As they walk to the stage, they stop and turn to the right and bow to the members of the PTA, etc. and then turn to the left and bow to the Vice Principle, the teacher acting as the master of ceremonies and the rest of the teachers, before walking up the stairs to the stage. They then bow to the principle, who reads the diploma for that student, congratulates them and hands them the diplomas. They bow again and the student descends the stairs, stopping once again and bowing to the left and the right before placing the stack of diplomas on a table set up in front of the stage. This is repeated for all the classes.

There is a commencement address of sorts, but rather than a special guest speaker, the speech is delivered by the principle. Other speeches are given by a representative of the first and second years. The last two years that student was the president of the student council. The final speech is from a representative of the graduating class. In America, this would be the student with the highest grade point average, but in Japan the valedictorian is not specially recognized.

The ceremony concludes the way it began, with the students filing out class by class. The teachers line up on both sides of the procession at the end of the gym to say goodbye. By this point about half of the girls’ faces are red and streaked with tears, the sight of which usually induces a few of the teachers to cry as well. The students return to their homerooms and a kind of secondary ceremony takes place in the gym in which members of the PTA formally thank the homeroom teachers and the principle for their service. When this is complete, the homeroom teachers retrieve the diplomas from the table at the front and return to their respective classes one last time to pass out the diplomas and say farewell.

The teachers receive a very special 弁当 (べんとう/box lunch) on special occasions like graduation. The contents aren’t too different from the usual fare, but there is more food and more variety in the special bentos. The major difference is the normal, white rice is replaced with 赤飯 (せきはん), a stickier variety of rice that’s boiled with red azuki beans, and there is always a large, boiled, completely intact shrimp.

Once they have their diplomas, the school day/year is officially over, but many students remain for a while to say goodbye to their friends and teachers and take lots of pictures. Any teacher roaming the halls will be pretty quickly swamped by students asking to pose for pictures. Later in the afternoon the new 卒業生 (そつぎょうせい/graduates) hold a 卒業祭 (そつぎょうさい/graduation party) performing various songs, dances, etc.

This week was Valentine’s Day. As you may or may not know, Valentine’s Day is done a little bit differently here in Japan. Back home, boys and girls give each other cards, flowers, chocolate, etc., but here, Valentine’s is the day that girls give chocolate to the guy(s) they’re interested in. If a guy wishes to reciprocate, he can do so one month later on White Day. I received chocolate from some of my students as well as my fellow English teachers, so I was pretty happy. Girls give two types of chocolate on Valentine’s day, and I got both kinds. While the set my teachers gave me was purchased at a department store, my students gave me chocolate they made themselves at home, and it was surprisingly good! Female office workers also tend to give their male bosses chocolate on Valentine’s Day – whether they like them or not – out of a feeling of obligation. Hence this is know is 義理チョコ(ぎりちょこ), or obligation chocolate.

The weather has been bizarre of late. In my three years living in Osaka, I’ve never seen it snow. But over the past week, it has snowed many times. It’s the same almost every day. It’s very sunny in the morning, and then shortly before noon, a violent flurry of snowflakes falls down for an hour or so, then the sun comes back out.

It’s the middle of winter now, and the temperatures span from about -2°C to 5°C every day. I’ve always preferred summer to winter because I hate being cold, but Japanese winter is particularly unbearable for me. The problem is that buildings are designed to be cool in summer, but not warm in winter; there’s no insulation. This is fine in summer because you can open up all your doors and windows and you usually get enough of a cross breeze to cool things down. But in winter, the heat tends to bleed out of the room pretty quickly. Also, when you factor in the lack of central heating, it makes things even worse. In my English office, for example, we have a gas stove that sits in the middle of the room to provide warmth (with a kettle full of water on top to add some humidity to the air). For the most part, when I’m in the office or in a classroom, it’s warm. But when I step out into the hallway, it’s like I’m walking outside. I can instantly see my breath! Part of the problem lies in the lack of insulation, but another part of it is that teachers and students alike seem to see no reason for closing doors to the outside. What little heat we have simply flies out of the building. Surely they don’t live this way at home. But at school, they think nothing of closing doors behind them. I’ve made it my personal mission to walk around after the bell has rung when I don’t have class and close all the open doors (and the occasional window!). I can’t wait for spring!