Spring in Japan: A Time of Farewells and New Beginnings

If you are at all familiar with how the Japanese mark their years, you may know that they start their fiscal year in April and end it in March. So, that means March is filled with graduations and farewells and April is filled with entering new schools, starting new jobs or moving to new places for work.

Since I am a teacher, every year I find out in March whether or not I will be moved to a new school in April. It is a strange and frustrating tradition in Japan. This year I am lucky enough to be able to stay at my current school. So I won’t have that awkward meet and greet at a new school. I will just have the awkward meet and greet of the new teachers and staff who will be moved to my school.

I normally don’t write about my job on here but today is a little different as I was asked to give a speech at my Principal’s farewell ceremony. He’s retiring. So, I spent hours considering poems from famous Japanese poets. What would be appropriate? A drunken recollection of dreams under mountain cherry blossoms from Masaoka Shiki as a nod to the cherry trees blossoming right now. Or, a somber look at the ending of a journey from Matsuo Basho.

After staring at kanji and some good and some not so good translations, I just decided to give him a traditional Hawaiian farewell which seemed to go over well with the school’s admin and my Vice Principal. So I will sacrifice one of my precious kukui nut lei saved from one of the random luau we went to one of the times we could afford to go back to Hawaii and I will be playing the ukulele and singing the most famous of farewell songs written by Queen Lili’uokalani, Aloha Oe. It seemed appropriate and easier than composing a long speech in Japanese.

It does feel a bit strange injecting my culture into theirs but I guess it’s what I have been doing since I moved here.