Graduation

Well, it was graduation day a few weeks ago for the sanensei [third graders/ninth graders]. I found myself surprised at just how much I'm going to miss teaching some of them. As for some of the others - the faux Jay Z's with their pants around their knees [uniform pants, of course, uber-cool] who constantly misbehave and screw around in class - well, I'll miss them less, but still...

Graduation was a nice ceremony, with the standard Japanese affectation for crying and emotion... for a country that seems so stoic and tightly wound, when the tears start, the waterworks do flow. Probably some stunningly perceptive psychological insight there regarding suppression and such, but it's beyond me just now.

Oddly enough, the graduation ceremony made me think back on my own high school graduation, and that strange feeling of nostalgia tinged memory that sometimes comes on. Funnily, the thing I always recall from that graduation is the fact that through some odd twist of irony and happenstance I was the student chosen to read the benediction/prayer. Funny in the sense that life since then has resulted in almost a complete denial and rejection of the Judeo/Christian religious system in favor of my hazy, ill-defined, yet oddly comforting agnosticism. God's having some kind of joke there.

And the other bit I remember is just how pissed off my mother was at having not been informed beforehand that I was saying the prayer. Not entirely sure why it didn't come up or I didn't mention it, other than I can't imagine having thought it was significant or a big deal in the slightest sense... but I remember, distinctly, in the crowds after graduation when you finally find your family, being dressed down by my tight jawed mom for not having told her. O happy graduation. She gave me the cold shoulder bit pretty much the rest of the eve, till I went out with some friends...