Last Monday, I visited Gyoda Joshi Girls' High School. I'll be the assistant English teacher for two classes there. It was a rather depressing occasion. Let me fill you in. Forgive me if I get a little fruity-sounding; this place gives me a strange feeling.
Gyoda Joshi feels to me like an old man. He is all-too aware of his mortality, and waits for the final moment with both trepidation and anticipation. He knows that death is near, and perhaps he even knows when it will arrive at his bed. Joshi feels the same way. A school that was designed to hold almost a thousand girls now houses sixty students, ten teachers, four staff-members, and myself (but only on Mondays). The building is a shell, a shadow that too quickly reminds you of the aging population in Japan and the shrinking numbers of the younger generations.
Joshi will be closed at the end of this academic year. New admissions ceased in 2001 I believe, such that this year there are only third grade students. The sixty students await graduation with intense anticipation, I feel. For the teachers, it is a different story. They try so hard to engage the students, to participate in a job that has a very definite termination date. A future that seems exciting for students surely is something to bring worry in the factulty. How can you actively engage your students every day, knowing the end is coming and surely you will move on either to retirement or to (hopefully) a greener pasture? Thus, the entire grounds of Joshi smell of decay to me.
This isn't to say that there aren't bright students or dedicated teachers. I did feel that some of the students were interested in English, and certainly the teachers still cared very much for their jobs. But a certain sadness infuses their motions it seems to me, some kind of futility. But I hope I am just imagining it. I do hope that Saitama prefecture will be able to relocate them to a more lively location. I hope their next schools will be filled with the laughter of new students rather than the slow slither of spiderwebs and the creep of mildew. I hope they will find a place where nearly every seat is full, rather than a place where whole wings have been closed off.
I commend the staff at Joshi for their (outwardly) positive attitudes and approach to their situation. Many lesser workers would simply shrink away from the not-so-simple task of finishing out the year at a doomed institution, much as many faced with death will simply wither away willingly.
がんばて！！
Good Luck.