This morning we assembled and headed to the train at 9:45. I appreciated the extra time in the morning to sort photos, clean my room, and rest. We took the train to Ashiya (in Kobe) and the plan was to take taxis from the train to the school. Since the area around Ashiya and Kobe is linear – the train gets you pretty close to everything. The southwestern region of Honshu Island, the main island of Japan [Nihon] is mountainous except for a flat strip along the coast. Thus, the entire coast is a mostly continuous city for 80 miles or more. The actual town divisions are based more on memory of the past than current reality.
Since we arrived in Ashiya ahead of schedule, I thought it would be a good time to convert the rest of my dollars to Yen. There was a main bank in Akashi and so our leader, Hiroshi, said it would be a good place to do this. I had 20 minutes to work with – my experience at the airport said it should be a 30 second transaction. At the airport, it would have been, but this was Ashiya.
As Hiroshi later explained to me, the Japanese picked up a bad habit from the Chinese – bureaucracy. I had a woman teller who looked to be 19 years old. She must have counted my 9 $20 bills 20 times. I had to fill out an elaborate form – including a Japanese address. Let me ask you, if I am changing dollars, what is the chance that I HAVE a permanent Japanese address? Well, the whole experience took 25 minutes! [$7 per minute] It seems the fact that our teller was young meant she lived in mortal fear of making an error. She took my bills away to check for counterfeiting. She recounted the 9 bills. She check over the boxes I had filled out – face inches from the form tracing my writing with her fingertip – face locked in concentration.
At no point in this entire transaction did her perfect manners fail her – but my patience was on the verge of doing just that. I was causing a delay with the group! I hate being late – was I going to make the whole group late? Should I grab my 9 bills and just walk out? That would be rude, right? In the end, Hiroshi sent everyone else on ahead in the taxis and he and I arrive a bit late. What an experience!
We arrived at the school around 11:00. Konan High School is a private boys school perched on the mountainside overlooking Ashiya. Students come from around the entire area to attend this school. Most take the train and walk up the side of the mountain each day. This is impressive considering that most students arrive by 8:00 and stay until 7:00. The academic day ends at 3:00, but students who participate in clubs stay until 6:00 or 7:00. Also consider this school meets 220 days per year. [US schools are 180 days in case you have forgotten]. Thus, with travel included, a typical student at this school is away from home for 14 hours a day, and walks 3 miles up and down a mountainside each day.
During the course of the day, we got to meet a group of students who studied English. Their skills were mixed, probably not too different from a bunch of our students who have studied Spanish for 3 or 4 years. They set it up so we could speak with them one and one – and I found that I could make an easy connection by talking about baseball. They had never heard of Pennsylvania, but when I said that I lived between the Phillies and the Pirates, they smiled and nodded. Some were shaky on the Pirates, but all had heard of the Phillies!
After the meetings we got a tour of the building with short visits to classes in session. Class size varied from 44 to 14. 30’s and 40’s was most typical. We observed math, chemistry, biology, and English. After the tour we split into two groups to view an entire class. I went with the history group to observe a 10th grade world history class. The teacher, who had traveled to 193 countries!!! taught about European exploration and supplemented notes and films with slides he himself had taken on his journeys [over a period of 30 years.] I was amazed that he could afford this travel, until I discovered that teachers with 15 years experience at this school make upwards of $120,000. Suffice it to say I am looking into certain new possibilities!
There are at least two Americans and two Brits teaching at the school currently. After the school day, we had a chance to tour a few clubs and sports teams that were meeting. Most clubs were not meeting because tomorrow is a big exam day. Three groups, however, DID meet despite the academic demands. Of the three, two were exceptional. The first was the baseball team. Japanese High School Baseball is probably the most intense high school sport schedule I know of. Students practice 4 hours a day 364 days a year. You read that right. [some slacker teams don't meet on Sundays, though] Most of the practice was run sans coach. I witnessed student run workouts, batting practice, fungos, infield practice, etc… When I asked if the team would take a picture with me, I was overwhelmed by the response, as the attached picture illustrates.
Next stop was basketball practice. Basketball is not my thing, but Jae, Patrick, and Lisa took the opportunity to shoot some hoops for themselves. The practice itself looked pretty familiar with sprints, passing drills, layup drills and stretching exercises. The stretching looked interesting, so I included that picture too.
The final stop was the Konan Brass Ensemble. The short version is that I was blown away. They played two numbers for us once they got organized. They were professional grade, no doubt. Several of the performers were accomplished Jazz musicians already. If I had paid money to hear this group I would have been well satisfied. I gave the student leader [who played Saxophone] a Pennsylvania pin as a gift as a reward for such fine work. The second reason I was blown away is that the volume in that room blew the doors off.
Speaking of blowing the doors off, the entire school is 15 years old as the old one was destroyed by the Kobe earthquake of 1995.
This was a tremendous school experience that gave a good glimpse at some good things being done in Japanese Private Education.
Tim Jekel
Bible Bapitst School
High School History
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