Judgment day, Pt 2.1

The mood inside the staff room was heavy all afternoon. Not dead silence like my 2nd year (soon to be 3rd) English class, but forced banters and chuckles.

大塲弘子 Oba Hiroko was the only student of the 6 who walked in the staff room today. She walked in smiling embarassingly and looked for Nakashima-sensei, the school nurse who also doubles as the school crying pillow.

Nakashima: あった?
Oba: あってないし。

I was surprised she said it loud enough for everyone to hear. She of all the kids do not deserve the private school treatment. The teachers recommended her for the early-admission process to some school because they were afraid that she would fail. She's kind of like the Rudy of the class: an underdog in every way but never tried less than her hardest at everything. She's earnest about everything from serving lunch to running the 3K school marathon. During the year, we had a in-class English speech contest and the topic was a very Japanese "How my family in 20 years will divide household chores." I walked by Oba and saw that she had finished her written speech so I asked her to read it aloud for me. She didn't go like "え！？　何を言った！?" and joke about being spoken to in English to the rest of her friends, which is the typical reaction I get. She just asked me to repeat what I said (a very underrated response) and read me her speech. I told her that it was good, but during the real speech she should look at her audience more instead of staring at her paper. She nodded and I fully expected that remark to be forgotten like the rest of it.

During the real thing, she stepped up to the front of the class, and recited her entire speech by heart. The students could read their speech and memorization was not required or even expected for this assignment. Keep in mind, this is a girl who has to study her butt off just to get a 65% on her English tests.

I call her the Rudy of the class not only because she tries hard, but everybody else knows it and respects it. Frankly her speech was not very good in either content nor delivery and I would've given her a generous C+ if it was up to me. But the students themselves were the judge, and she got the highest score of anybody in the class. Another example: her name is O-BA, and in school we call all the girls -SAN and all the boys -KUN. O-BA-SAN is what teachers call her, and O-BA-A-SAN means grandma. Nobody calls her grandma. In Jr. high, that's like the equivalent of everybody calling someone like Richard Small as Rich.

尾古百合恵 Oko Yurie
影山　美有 Kageyama Miyu
宮本はるか Miyamoto Haruka
佐子　夏希 Sako Natsuki
福留　　直 Fukudome Nao

are the other 5. Besides Oko and Sako, let's just say that I was not surprised to find the other 3 failing their entrance exams.

I ran out of steam and stories. Maybe some other time.