Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Morning Confusion

I hope today's update gives insight into Japanese culture. I worry that the significance of the event will be missed by my foreign readers exactly because it's so foreign. Still, it was funny when it happened.

As mentioned in a previous post, we have a new Board of Education superintendent. We are still working on the kinks. On Monday morning, things were very hectic because of the transition. Normally, every morning we do an "aisatsu," a formal greeting. Normally, the assistant to the superintendent first says "Ohaiyo gozaimasu" and then we repeat it followed by the superintendent. Yesterday it was funny because, instead of the normal routine, in the rush out of his office on Tuesday, he started by saying "Ohaiyo gozaimasu". So the assistant had to politely explain that we were suppose to greet him first. This cracked everyone up. Today, when the chime went off at 8:45 AM and everyone stood up to greet him, we couldn't find him. Finally he ran to his office, put on his blazer, and we could continue. I swear will get this thing right yet!

Some distressing news; last night I went for a short walk after dinner because the wind had died down and I wanted some fresh air. I found on my driveway an injured bird. It looked very exotic. Sudden thoughts of bird flu went through my head. It made no attempt to move away when I got close, so I knew something was wrong. I decided to not interfere with nature, as I had been taught, but thought about it the rest of the night. This morning when I walked to work, the bird was gone. I'm glad I didn't interfere and nature took care of itself. It looks like the bird was able to leave on its own.

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