Enkai!

End of the school year, so that means end of the year enkai! Copious food and drink for all...


Course that also means personnel transfers and retirements. Really, the more time I spend in the Japanese school system, the more it reminds me of the military. Teachers are transferred every year by bureaucratic fiat, according to the needs of the "service." And every unit has a "hail and farewell" party for the year.

So this year we lost about 5 teachers, including our very cool VP, pictured at right. Good guy.


And we lost one of the English teachers. He'd actually only been subbing for another teacher who was on pregnancy and maternity leave for about the last year and a half, so he was never gonna be permanent, but he was a really good dude and I'm gonna miss him.

This was his first teaching job out of college, so it was kinda cool to watch him find his feet and his style over the last year and a half. And I got to help. It was pretty damn awesome.

They even had me give him his farewell bouquet. [This is Japan, so that makes it not gay to give flowers to dude.]

And we have one teacher, who's not exactly transferred, but he'll be working at the teacher's union 99% of the time. Since he didn't rate a farewell bouquet, they stole some plastic flowers off the wall and stuck them in a fish. Gotta love Japan.