End of school trip

Shuugaku ryokou

I’d thought I’d been posting about my only year of required education in Japan chronologically, but I noticed that I forgot about a very important aspect. The third year students went on a two night trip to a different part of the country. We took standard commercial trains into the city and then we boarded chartered busses to go through the historical/ tourist-y locales. I remember this was during the rainy season (which means it wasn't really at the end of our schooling, just the last year of school) and we got rained on a lot while we went through the historical locales.

I had no idea how we were supposed to get where we were supposed to go, so I was very careful to stay with the group. It probably would have been a lot of fun if I actually liked the people I was going with, which I didn’t. It was third year and most of them had already formed their friendships. Still, I had to room somewhere (we were something like five or six to a room) and as luck would have it, I ended up with the “cool” girls. Oh JOY. “Cool” kids in Japan are just as insufferable as “cool” kids in any other country. (Note the quotation marks. I’m not talking about the truly cool kids, like me and my friends.)

The girls and boys were supposed to be on separate areas on separate floors, so (of course) the “cool” boys (the ones who didn’t like me because I wasn’t perky enough or dumb enough) came to our room and ate all our candy while the girls squealed in mock dismay, and when the teacher came on their rounds (of course), the boys all hid (of course) in the “oshiire” (futon closet), and all but one of them were stupid teenagers (of course) so all but one of them jumped on the top shelf of the futon closet and only one dove into the bottom shelf (of course) and the shelf was strong enough to support six duvets but not strong enough to support five stupid teenage boys (of course) so it came crashing down (of course) on top of the one kid that was smart enough to remember that the top shelf wasn’t going to be that strong (of course) but not smart enough to remind his friends of this (of course) and he was in a lot of pain (of course) but everyone was afraid that if we went to the teachers for help, we’d get into trouble (of course) so everyone more or less pressured him into dealing with the pain (of course). We were lucky he was not seriously hurt.

Especially him.

And we did nothing about the damage done to that closet, either. Oh, how courteous and considerate of us. To this day, I haven’t told my teachers or parents. But I’m blogging about it here.