Day 39 in Japan - Opening Ceremony!!!!!!

I was so nervous I cried when I woke up this morning. Sam took me to school and it felt like a first day of kindergarten or something.
The kids had homeroom and then cleaning first period - cleaning really helped to get my mind off the upcoming speech. It was nice to just focus on sweeping and wiping down desks in my English room. But the cleaning meant I was very sweaty when I got to the gym for the BIG OPENING CEREMONY OF THE SCHOOL!

All of the students cleaned in the first period - it was
amazingly efficient. No bludging or whingeing. WHAT?

The students had to sit on the floor for most of the hour ceremony, but they had to stand up for first bits. They had a school song that they sang fairly enthusiastically. I had to give a speech to the whole 1200 students - first in English and then in Japanese. The speech went OK - the transcript (in English) was:

Hello everybody,

I am Brianna Thompson, and I am from Australia. In Australia, people call me Bri, but now I know that in Japan, Bri is a fish. So my name in Japan is Anna - please call me Anna.

I am from Wollongong and Melbourne in Australia. Wollongong is a city the same size as Akashi, so I feel like Akashi is my home already.

I hope that you will say hello to me when you see me!

I like swimming, photography, kendo, eating and sleeping so please talk to me about those things if you would like, or just say hello!

Thankyou for listening. I hope that we can have a good year together! 

I had to give the speech in front of THIS MANY STUDENTS!

After my speech, a poor student had to get up and welcome me in English on behalf of all of the students. There were a few talks from the student welfare people, the principal and the vice-principal, and then the principal gave out a bunch of awards to students who had done well in stuff over summer. My school has a great weightlifting club (with tiny girls who can lift twice their weight!), and an awesome brass band. But one thing that I DIDN'T know was that we have one student who went to the Yo-yo World Championships in the US over the summer AND WON. We have the Yo-yo World Champion at our school. I tried to Youtube him, and I think I found his winning performance, but I have to check with one of the other teachers at school. He's so cool - he has funky hair and he's even a celebrity with the other teacher. At the end of the ceremony, there were uniform checks, where the students got in trouble for having hair colour other than black (even if their natural hair colour isn't black, they have to dye it to black for this school), hair styles that were slightly different from the others, pierced ears, no undershirt, undershirts with patterns on them, or basically for having any uniqueness about them at all. There is no way I would have passed that check, so I stood quietly in the corner, trying to brush my non-black hair over my earring and cover my foot tattoo with my other foot.

Everyone has to have the same coloured hair, shirts, EVERYTHING!

Uniform checks to check for... uniformity.

After the ceremony, I had temporary celebrity status around school - almost every group of students I walked past did as I asked and said "Hello!" to me, and then scurried away giggling. The girls think I'm cute (which is hilarious), and I heard the Japanese word for boobs more than once as I walked past groups of boys (but I feigned ignorance as to what the word mean).

I spent more of the afternoon doing some more cleaning in the classroom (English wall is all done - see the photo below), having last-minute meetings with the teachers about Friday's lessons and looking at baby photos from Adam and Mel.

Wall o' English. Finally complete (enough)

My classroom (guest appearance from Yokoi-sensei)

I got my first punctured tyre on the way home this afternoon, and spent an hour or so trying and failing to repair it. I think the puncture was too big for the little repair kit we have here, so I will have to get a whole new inner tube. I can't figure out how to get the wheel off my bike (plastic covers and weird nut/bolt things), so I'll have to go to a bike repair shop. Damn. After that fail, we had a bit of a pick-me-up in the form of a Skype call to Sam's mum and dad. It was our first call to a phone (it's so nice and cheap) from Skype, and our first go at Skype-ing on the iPad. A much better note to end the night on. First real self-intro classes at my visit school tomorrow - I am SO NERVOUS. Although I feel a bit better after my speech went well today, so hopefully I won't cry in the morning.

Food highlight of the day: Omiyage brought back from Nagano by Takasumi-sensei - cheesecake, but don't be fooled as I was, they mean cake flavored with a little bit of cheese flavoring. Like eating very faintly Parmesan-y sponge cake. Actually pretty good, but a bit odd.