Hiranai Town について...

Before going further with stories, might as well start from the beginning...

Right now, I'm living in Aomori Prefecture in a sparsely populated town called Hiranai. About 15,000 people live here, but spread over a fairly wide area. I teach English at Hiranai's 3 junior high schools and 7 elementary schools. The schools vary greatly in number of students, ranging anywhere from 20 to 200. The discrepancy comes from the difference in number of school-age kids between different parts of town. Hiranai actually used to be a number of smaller towns in the past, and back then schools were built accordingly. Many of them have special traditions local to the area - for example, in one small elementary school in a fishing village, all the students play big daiko drums to honor the scallop fisherman's lifestyle (Interestingly enough called the "Scallop daiko", or ほたて太鼓). So, going to each school can be a different experience, especially in smaller elementary schools where it seems like they try hard to preserve a area's traditions.

Besides school traditions, the size of classes makes for different experiences in different schools as well. At the biggest school of over 200, some classes have 35-40 students. At the smallest schools, classes can be less than five students. Some schools combine grade levels because there are so few students for one grade. Each size has its pros and cons, of course, but that is for another time.

Sleepiness has hit me pretty hard, so I'm done for now. More about schools and some about the town next time.

A long time coming

Japan:
I decided to start this log (finally) to document a few of the experiences I've had here on the other side of the world. Updates will come as things happen and when I shunt my laziness to write about what has happened until now. Until then, ciao.