Old Smells and Sounds Die Hard

(Ibaraki Prefectural) Kashima Senior High School.



From 1990 till 1992 this school was the center of my existence. It was the initial reason I was sent to Japan and, though I wound up doing far less there than at the other three public senior highs I visited once a week, I was treated with far more respect and civility by my Japanese coworkers there. Inevitably, because of the same (disastrous) curriculum changes that got me more or less stuffed in a closet, I was rotated to (far less friendly) Kamisu High School, which served as my home base till my contract ended in 1993. However, I still looked forward to my visits to Kashima H.S. every Friday. I never had much to do, and I had little contact with the students, but it was still a very friendly place.

The last time I set foot in Kashima H.S. was in 1994, when I popped in with a friend to borrow their broadcast media club's studio equipment. Although I frequently drove or walked past it in the years that followed, I never went there again.

...until today.

Ironically, this was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. It was a meeting of the association of senior high music teachers for our local district (motto: "The guy who knows the motto didn't show up today"). Mr. Ogawa had some "important" business to take care of, so he asked me to go instead. It was just supposed to be a quick summing up of the schedule for the upcoming school year and a naming of the new officers. Considering the chronic apathy that affects most music teachers worldwide, it was a given that the meeting would be over in thirty minutes. Basically, all I had to do was sit down, drink my coffee, and then get up and leave again.

It sounded easy enough. Still, I was intrigued with the idea of setting foot in my old stomping grounds for the first time in more than a decade. I was convinced I wouldn't remember the place any better than the people there now would remember me.

The fact that I accidentally drove in through the exit (ignoring the "do not enter" sign) reinforced that theory. When I went in through the main entrance, as I'd done so many, many times in the past, it didn't feel familiar to me at all. I was a total stranger visiting a totally new place. It was actually kind of scary.

But then the chief secretary came out of the office. She was the same one that had been there in my day. She'd come out to talk to another music teacher who had just arrived, but when she saw me she stopped short and just stared at me with surprise. She responded to my greeting by just continuing to stare at me blankly.

It's good to see you again, too.

Actually, the music teacher who had just arrived turned out to be the one that had been there back in the early 90s. Now he's stationed at a different school, but when I was an (increasingly bitter) ALT at Kashima H.S. back then, he was the one in charge of the music program. As we walked down the old corridor/bridge to the music room, we couldn't help reminiscing and laughing at the irony of it all.

Then, all at once, it began to hit me. The dim light of the hallways. The view of the traditional garden in the courtyard below. The way my footsteps echoed. That same, old, musty smell. And then the chime rang; not the clear, bright, electronic chime of the academy where I work now, but that old, deep, dark, grandfather-clock-like ringing that sounded with a hint of warm, tube-amplifier distortion. Memories came back like a flood.

Frankly, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go sit in the staff room for a few hours and wallow in sentiment or run away screaming. As it turned out, I had no chance to do either. We arrived at the music room on the third floor of the middle block, and the meeting began in earnest.

Unfortunately, the meeting didn't end in earnest. I was a substitute from the only private school in the lot (i.e. there to observe and take notes, naught else), so I mainly just sat there while the others discussed a lot, and went off on a lot of irrelevant tangents, but decided nothing. Finally, after two hours (of one hour scheduled), everything was suddenly decided in a three-minute burst of decisiveness, and the current music teacher at Kashima H.S. told us to hurry up and get the f*** out. I did just that.

I found my way back to the exit alone, seriously worried I was going to get lost in that massive complex. Indeed, though the sounds, smells, and outdoor scenery were still digging all kinds of memories out of my brain, the layout of the buildings was still unfamiliar to me. It still looked and felt bizarre, as if the familiar had somehow been superimposed on the alien. Still, I found my way out without any trouble.

Interestingly, as I went along, every student that passed me greeted me cordially in a loud, confident voice. What a change that was from the final year of my ALT era, the first half of 1993, when the students in general (mainly the younger ones, not the older ones) seemed to be getting colder and more apathetic, and the new freshmen were so hostile to English and to foreigners in general that teachers at Kashima H.S. stopped inviting me to their classrooms and I was asked to stop practicing kyudo (Japanese archery) at the school's range (since the freshmen said they refused to practice if "that gaijin" was there). The cycle has come and gone, I guess. Besides, Kashima H.S. now has a much higher academic ranking and a much better reputation than it did back then. Maybe I should also comment that the students there now seem friendlier and more proper than the (spoiled rich) kids at the academy!


Yep, there is definitely a "do not enter" sign at the exit. Oh, well.

Okay, the trip down memory lane is over. It's back to the academy for me. I have a tune to arrange for the orchestra.