Above, front row, left to right: Takahiro, Shota, Ito sensei (their teacher), the Kochosensei (principal), Fernando, and Yuuki. Second row, left to right: Me, Maita sensei (school nurse), Katsumata Megumi sensei (helped teach 5th/6th grades this year), Takahiro's mother, Shota's father, his mother, and his grandmother, Yuki's maternal and paternal grandmothers, Fernando's grandmother, his mother, and his father.
As you can see, most of the mothers and grandmothers are wearing formal kimonos (the exception being Fernando's mom, because she's Brazilian). The men are all in suits, freshly cleaned and starched (and I'm wearing a white tie). The kochosensei is wearing a collarless shirt, along with a white tie and tails. Ito sensei, the 5th and 6th grade teacher, woke at 4am to have her hair done (there are strands of pearls woven into the braids on the back of her head) and kimono put on.
I've tried to explain that at my high school graduation, Samantha kept checking to make sure I was still wearing pants underneath my robe, because I'd been thinking of going commando. The idea of someone actually relaxing on an occasion like today is so foreign to people here that I don't think they really understood what I was saying.
This photo was taken outside the main door of the school. In front is Ito sensei. In the second row, left to right: Uzawa sensei (the head teacher, a sort of teacher/administrator hybrid), Yuuki, Takahiro, Shota, Fernando, Kaneda sensei (1st grade teacher), and Katsumata Hisae sensei (2nd grade teacher - no relation to the Katsumata sensei in the photo above). Katsumata sensei taught 5th/6th grade last year, so she taught our graduates when they were 5th graders. In the back, Tokushige sensei (3rd/4th grade) and me.
1 comment:
I enjoyed this very much! I hope they soon forget your high school graduation--commando story, if they "heard" it at all. Just a nervous mother. Love, MPM
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