Sankanbi

Well, that went surprisingly ... well. On a lovely, sunny Saturday morning I strolled up to Cian's school around 8:30 and found myself the first parent there.
Such is the enthusiasm of the foreign parent.
Cian's teacher, no doubt impressed with my enthusiasm, beckoned me inside the classroom rather than have me mooching around in the corridor, scaring all the other parents away. Plus the kids in his class kept coming up to the door window and making faces at me. As I was happily making faces back at them, the teacher probably thought it was best if I was in the class where she could control all of us.
Cian was sitting in the back right corner of the classroom so I decided to stand behind him so that (a) I could observe his behaviour during the lesson; and (b) subsequently apologize to his teacher for his behaviour during the lesson. Cian usually ends up sitting somewhere along the back row of the classroom. This is due to the fact that as he is so big students sitting behind him can't actually see the blackboard. He is also too big for his chair and his desk. By 6th class he will be lucky to get through the classroom door without banging his head off the top of the frame.
The lesson was about what the students are planning to achieve in the coming academic year. In groups of four and five, the students came to the front of the class and read out a summary of what their aims are as 4th year students. These were broken up into:
gakushuu: educational or academic aims
seikatsu: school life
kokoro: personal development
For gakushuu a lot of the students opted for learning to read and write more kanji, or doing better at Maths. Cian hoped to do both. Nothing from nobody about learning English. So nul points from the hairy foreign parent about that aim.
Seikatsu was dominated by a burning desire to win at this year's sport's day. Cian's class had been humiliated by the other fourth year class in last year's games. In the intervening twelve months, revenge had curdled into a bile so bitter they were spitting it out as they announced their intention to annihilate their neighbors in the next classroom. It was almost North Korean in its hysterically baroque intensity.
Kokoro was all about helping the new first year students, those innocent little tykes who still didn't know how to get to the gym and were convinced that the toilets were haunted. No mention of who had convinced them the toilets were haunted, but I could spot a few of the usual suspects from where I was standing.
At the end of the school year the students will be held to account as to how close (or far) they came to achieving these aims. In fact it will be included as part of their report card, along with their progress in maths, Japanese, science, etc.
After the class it was off to the gym for the PTA meeting.
I was only foreigner there.
And more surprisingly, one of the few men there. If you ever want a quick indication of how progressive a school is, check the gender ratio at its PTA meeting. Unfortunately, the parents at Cian's school were solidly in the conservative education-is-the-mother's-responsibility camp, with us new age men types conspicuous by our presence. Daddy's work, or, as this was a Saturday morning, go off to baseball practice or whatever, but they sure as oestrogen-filled hell don't turn up for no emasculating PTA meeting!
Goddamn!
Which is unfortunate, as the PTA meeting was quite informative and provided a sort of behind the curtains peek at the priorities set by the school and the parents. For Cian's school this meant expanding the school library, safety patrols in the morning and afternoon when the students are coming and going from school, and hiring teaching assistants for maths classes.
By contrast, in Sanae's old school (she was transferred at the beginning of this month - more anon), the priority was keeping the kids out of the local borstal and confirming which parent had custody of the kids after the latest round of divorces.
I, thankfully, wasn't chosen for anything - yet. It is still early in the year and I may well have to 'volunteer' for events as they arise.