The city in which I do my daily penance, Ichikawa, is twinned with the city of Rosenheim in Bavaria, Germany (birthplace of Hermann Goering according to Wikipedia...hmm). Every year, the Junior High Schools of Ichikawa and Rosenheim take part in a school exchange project, a cultural exchange where a few Japanese students are introduced to the world outside their city and a few German students are thrust into the world inside Japan. It still confuses me a little as to whether there is an academic purpose of the trip, at least any deeper than allowing students to have a look at schools/societies on the other side of the world (which even alone is, of course, a valuable opportunity). The Japanese schools at least, seem to treat the trip as an English learning opportunity for the Japanese students, which is a little strange, seeing as the German students, while aeons ahead of their Japanese counterparts, are still not native English speakers.
The Japanese students all went over to Rosenheim in the summer. There seems to be no real theory at work in choosing which students will go over to Germany. I don't know who went from this school, but at my old school, the girl who went certainly wasn't the best at English, and she didn't even really want to go. I honestly think that the decision is probably made in a room, deep within the bowels of city hall, where the luminaries of the Ichikawa Board of Education sit around a fire, chanting arcane incantations and pulling bones out of a cauldron; bones on which the heat of the fire has scorched the names of the students that shall go.
Most of the Japanese students end up coming back from Germany with a new look in their eyes. They begin to scorn the behavior of their (male) peers that now seems so pathetically immature, and generally apply themselves to their studies with much greater dedication, especially so in English. I imagine that they all then go to decent high schools and universities and then to high paid jobs overseas, forever grateful to whatever fates it was that plucked them from academic obscurity.
The German students have a different experience awaiting them when they get to Japan. By the time they are probably preparing to come to Japan, it usually happens that one or more of the Japanese families that are supposed to be welcoming them into their homes will, now facing the imminent arrival of a foreigner (can you imagine?) into their very homes (where their children sleep, no less!!), have pulled out of the exchange and run away to he hills, screaming in terror and fearrrrrr. This means that the teachers of the school here will have to try to find another host family for the student, which is no easy task. They often ask among the teachers for a suitable candidate, and eventually can be heard suggesting (seriously) that the best idea for the Japanese/German cultural exchange would be that the ALTs (all of whom are English/American/Australian/Canadian etc.), should take the German students in. Bloody ridiculous. Eventually though, a kind family can be unearthed and the student arrives at the school.
The poor girls who arrived in the city schools today, were immediately thrust into classes to run the gamet of Japanese school subjects - Maths, Japanese, English, Revised-History (where, to their surprise, they find out that they had been the good-guys in WW2), and so on. All the classes are conducted in Japanese and they have no idea what the hell is going on. Sooner or later, they are introduced to the ALTs (me! - the lucky, lucky girl), and they can finally speak to someone who can understand English. The girl at my school (a very sweet 14 year old who towers above the 14 year olds here and speaks excellent English), had a lot of questions. As there had been no official welcome from anyone at the school, she hadn't been told what she was meant to be doing all day, nor if anything was expected of her and was very confused. She was also confused as to why none of the English teachers could speak English! This particularly amused me, as it's what I've been saying for years. The Japanese kids were all desperate to speak to her and in their excitement had forgotton the miniscule amount of English they had once almost known. Their questions to her were coming thick and fast now that I was around to translate: "What like food are you?!" WHAT LIKE FOOD ARE YOU?!!" "HOW STUDENTS DO HAVE??!" "What boy? WHAT BBOOYY?" and she was just about managing to roll with the punches.
It was then that she turned to me, and, in a devastatingly calm voice through the sea of screaming students engulfing her, asked me question was pertinent on so many levels: "Why are you here?"
Realising that I didn't know, I was suddenly lost for words. I could have cried.
