Graduations and new starts....

The air is mild tonight.  Very mild and springlike. 
Children have been playing outside in the streets all day.
It is Tuesday.  Usually, there are no children playing in the streets on a Tuesday. 
But right now, most of the children and students are enjoying their holiday. 
The big holiday between two school years. 
The only holiday without any homework they have to do.  Yes, they have a lot of schoolwork they have to do during the rest of their school breaks.  But not during this one.

Spring is the time for graduations and new starts in Japan.  The school year ends in March and starts in April.
I remember when my best friend and I became junior high-school students.      She changed to a different school, started wearing a blue uniform, she became busy with her compulsory sport club after normal school hours and her life changed a lot. 
My school life didn`t change much
Her advancing to junior-high was the starting point for us becoming aware of  the differences in our two worlds.
.

 
She is Japanese and went to a school nearby where we lived.  I was Norwegian and had to go to the "Norwegian School in Kobe". 
Our school realities were two separate worlds.  
But after school we came together in a third world that was our own.I didn`t envy her the long hours, but I did envy her the uniform.  She looked so grown up.  So cool. 


She started learning english at this time. 
She hated the subject.  Just the word "English" made her feel guilty and miserable.
Ever since we were eight years old there were certain comments we had to endure almost every day.  
Comments about the colour of my hair and eyes, and comments about how lucky she was to be able to learn English for free.  
True, my hair and eyes had strange colors. 
But the part about the English was definitely not true.  
It was very annoying.  For both of us.  It made us both feel ashamed and miserable.
Her mother once, very sarcastically, commented that her daughter did not learn any English at all while her friends Japanese just got better every day.  For free! 
I did not quite know how to react but decided to do what I could, English wise.
However, we had better things to do with our limited time together.  Much better things.

Her summer vacation was long, but mine was longer. 
And! she had loads of homework to do. 
I was totally free from all scolastic duties.

My family went away to a cooler place for the summer months while her family, off course, stayed on in the heat.

There were always some time left of her school break after my family returned to Kobe after the holiday.   
Some days, but not many.  And the few we had, were very precious!  We had so much to catch up on and so much fun that had to be done.
She worked hard and did all her homework before I got back. 
All of it, except the English. 
That, we did together when I came back. 
I wrote the answers on a piece of paper and she copied it into her notebooks.  I checked all the multiple choises and told her, in Japanese, the content of the book she should have read. All in a few hours.
As we grew older and her homework load grew bigger I returned to the heat by myself a week or so prior to my parents, in order to be able to do her homework and have our fun before school would start again. 

I remember her and her mom on all her graduation days too. 
Graduation from grade school, junior and senior high.  I saw them off and envied my friend. 
She beautifully groomed and her mom in an elegant kimono joining other excited children with nervous mothers on their way to a solemn seremony. 

All this came back to me after talking with my boyfriend, this afternoon.  He lives across the street and we have been in love all his life. 
Today he came running to show me his brand new "randoseru".
The word "randoseru" originates from the dutch ransel, my electronic dictionary tells me, and means a schoolchild`s satchel. The kind you strap to your back.   The kind your grandparents buy for you.  (My electronic friend did not tell me that...)
It was bright blue, shining leather. 
Too big for his little, frail body.  
- Only two more nights to sleep and then it is April, he announced.   His face sparkled with joy and excitement while the  grandmother stood in the back ground, smiling, brimming full of pride.

I`m not sure if it was my little boyfriend who triggered this string of memories. 
It could also have been the graduation ceremony I saw in a news clip in the morning.  It could have been lying there like glowing ambers....
 
The clip showed a big school gym.  The gym was full of neatly folded futons and luggage and people sitting on the floor, watching.  Watching and holding their tears while six children, lined up in the front of the gym, struggeled to get through a school song.
The gym, which now is used as a shelter for earthquake victims, is part of a school in a town in Ibaraki prefecture. 
A little school in a little town.  
There used to be 107 small students in the little school.
The tsunami took 78 of them.
Six students are given their graduation diplomas.  The reporter does not say how many diplomas were supposed to be handed out.  
It is cold and the graduates, as well as teatchers and audience look as if they are wearing everything they have, at once.  Woolen hats, sweaters, towels around their necks in lack of mufflers. Sweaters on top of sweaters.  No beautiful kimonos, no dressed up mothers with strings of pearls around their necks, as is the custom.
The headmaster calles the names and the children come, one by one, to receive their diplomas.  They bow deeply in front of their headmaster, wipe their eyes with their sleeves and sit down on the gym floor again. 
The school song is sung without the assistance of any musical instrument.  But they sing.  From their hearts. With all the strength they can muster.

I don`t know what triggered my memory..... 
I just remembered.