Maybe it’s because elementary school was such a long time ago, but I don’t remember my parents ever coming to my school to help clean it. Cleaning the school was always the janitor or custodian’s job.

Today was the first day of school after summer break. It was also parents’ day to help clean the school. I went to my daughter’s school and didn’t have a clue what to do first. So I went straight to the school office.

In Japanese schools, people who enter the school area put on slippers to walk around indoors. I hate slippers so I went hadashi, or barefoot. When I got to the school office, they told me I needed to go to my daughter’s classroom. So I grabbed my shoes I had left at the front of the school and carried them to her building, putting them on for a few steps and then taking them off to enter her building. See why I hate them so much? Besides being a nuisance, they’re hot and usually way too small for my gaijin feet.

When I got to her classroom, the first thing they noticed was that I didn’t have slippers on. So they went and found a big pair to fit my feet. I politely thanked them, but luckily didn’t have to put them on since I had already begun working.

While my daughter’s 1^st grade teacher was searching for slippers for me to wear, her 2^nd grade teacher was busy putting me to work. She had me clean the windows. I was happy to do that job. I actually love cleaning windows.

I am not an anal person, not by a long stretch, but when it comes to windows being cleaned, I like having them clean. I don’t like spots on them. So needless to say, when I was done cleaning my daughter’s classroom windows, they were very clean and had no streaks. I did, however, leave a little around the edges because we only had dry towels to clean them. So it would have taken me all day to clean the dust from around the edges. As you can, I’m really not that anal or else I’d still be there right now!

Other parents were outside pulling weeds from the grounds and out of the gardens, packing trash bags with the weeds and any trash found on the school grounds. Other parents were wiping down floors, walls, tables, chairs and whatnot alongside the kids. It was a fun experience.

I asked the principal if they had another day like this during the year, but he said it’s only a one-time thing done on the first day back to school after summer. I was a little bummed! Guess I have next summer to look forward to, eh?

This entry was posted on Friday, September 1st, 2006 at 10:30 pm and is filed under Kansai Related. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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