A (Chinese) Japanese Firedrill

Wow, look at this 11 days without a post. You would almost think I had a life or something.

I mean, you know things are crazy when I skip out on doing at least the Pop Culture Posts, right?

So let’s skip the half-assed apologies and tedious explanations and move to the content.

Firedrills will always be exciting, no matter how old I am. I mean, how can you not enjoy wasting class time?

I recently got the joy of experiencing a firedrill at both of my schools. As you might expect things at the Technical School were much more exciting and blog-post-worthy.

At the Technical High School the fun began unceremoniously with the Vice Principal announcing “There’s a fire. There’s a fire.” over the intercom. The teachers in the staff room clearly picked up on his lack of urgency and enthusiasm and felt the need to make up for it by feigning terror and shouting “Fire!!” as only Japanese women could do (or get away with). So we all filed out of the main building and walked over to the gym.

It was here that the real fun began.

Because this is Japan there was insane and unnecessary amounts of picture taking. Teachers had apparently brought their camera for the occasion, and I shit you not, there were two outside professional photographers clicking away as we filed out of the building.

Once we made it to the gym, also because this is Japan, there were several rounds of speech making. Each pretty much reminding us of what a bad job we did. The students were clearly not devastated by this, and how can you expect anyone to take it seriously when you have everyone taking pictures like this is the most exciting thing to happen to them since the birth of their first-born?

I was entirely zoned out while in the gym likely due to the combination of incredible heat, the fact that I understood nothing, and the tear-inducing smell that is inevitable when you get 1000 people in a hot gym with no shoes and no airconditioning.

So it finally ended with about 15 seconds to spare before I passed out and it was over. Or so I thought.

The Vice Principal got on the intercom again to make another speech, but this one had a little more emotion than the “There’s a fire.” message.

Turns out someone had stolen a pair of the students’ shoes while we were all in the gym. Naturally no one confessed, so we had another meeting in the gym to try to shame the person into confessing. Clearly no one did.

I’m not sure if the issue was simply dropped or what. What I do know is that the school day lasted an extra hour because of the shoe-related witch hunt. That’ll teach that shoe-stealing bastard.