Students in the Classroom and other Misc.

I'm at an agricultural school in southern Kyushu. There are plenty of different kinds of Japanese schools. There's academic, which means that these kids are hard workers and going to go to college, so learning English is important for them because of standardized tests. There's agricultural which means the complete opposite. A very good majority of the students are not going to go to college and upon graduation from high school, they're eventually going to be taking over their parents' farms and other agricultural stuff. So with that logic, that means that some of them don't want to learn English, they don't feel as though they need to because they know that they're never going to leave Japan. However, compared to the students at the academic schools, they're a lot more..er...energetic, but I like that because it means that even if they get the question wrong, it's clear that they're listening to what I'm saying and I'm not getting frustrating blank stares. At the same time, there are plenty of good students at the agricultural high school that I'm sure are going to go to college and although they're a little shy, I still get responses from them.

At the sports festival, we had some visitors. First off, seeing as how I'm supposed to be fast, they had me run in the festival against the students. It was quite awkward at first, but I guess now in retrospect, I'm kind of glad I did it. Doing random things go a really long way here.
About those visitors though, they were agricultural school dropouts...think about that for a second. Drop outs of a school that for only a small percentage lead to college. They decided to come back during the festival and show off how "cool" they are. With their George Michael single hanging earring, to their freakin bright orange hair held back by a sparkly tiara headband. Not to mention sparkly hair clips and Hello Kitty paraphernalia (headbands, earrings, hair clips, etc). Yes they are male and no I am not making that up. They're making quite a uh...bold statement... but it's mainly because they're trying to stick it to the Japanese man by looking like the exact opposite of what's expected, in terms of hair color, having their eyebrows shaved off, manicures etc. But since they already dropped out, by that time it doesn't even matter anymore, does it?