The perfect time to walk in the door is 7:53 am. From 7:53 it takes 1-2 minutes to take off your snow boots and find the locker they go in. Then after puting on your “indoor shoes” it takes about another minute to get to the teacher’s room. When one enters that teacher’s room they’re greeted by a round of “good mornings.” It’s important that you get to your desk, though, by 7:55-7:57 or else the “coffee lady” might not get you in the morning rounds.

You see, in most schools only 1 fresh pot of coffee is made a day. If your’re not in by that round then you might be stuck with “tea-bag” coffee or worse… “instant.”

Depending on the school, your morning meeting might start at 8am sharp or maybe as late as 8:20. I consider this brief time as my ‘warm-up’ phase, a time to put on your game face and prepare to play-the-game of Elementary School ALT.

A good ALT knows how to unpack their bag and properly clutter their desk. For the first hour you need your schedule, some teaching books, the class text book, a maybe a dictionary. The goal is to look busy till the morning meeting begins then afterwards look busy “preparing” till all the teachers scurry off to class.

The morning meeting only lasts about 10-15 minutes, but it’s the epicenter of the morning (if not the day). It’s a time when you see the Japanese people at the peak of orderly perfection. At first you rise like in  a courtroom; bow either toward the front desks or to right infront of you. A sharp uniform “Ohayoo Gozaimasu” is said then everyone sits down for the show. The meeting is just typically announcements, but the rules and proceedures are what make it interesting. To announce something you raise your hand, bow to the front, then quickly say your announcement followed by “iijo desu” (“over”) like two soldiers over a radio.

After the morning meeting, the teachers who have you in their classes consipire to tell you what their agenda is about 3 minutes before they have to go to class. Sometimes you’ll be given a paper with the agenda (often copied from some book or template) or sometimes it’ll just be told to you hastily in forced Japanese.

Once these small informal agenda meetings are done with, and teachers vacate the teacher’s room,  you can relax– chill out and drink your coffee– check your phone mail or read the news– pretty much it’s all up to you till your first class… just try to stay mostly awake.

~J out.

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