Birthday Parade

Birthdays, I've discovered, are a big deal in Japan. I think this is good, because you are really celebrating people and their special day! I love my birthday and enjoy telling everyone when my birthday is getting close (less than a month, by the way), so I'm loving the big birthday celebrations.

On Thursday, we had a birthday parade for all of the students who had a birthday in February. The teachers set up little plastic chairs at one side of the dome with pom poms underneath. Every student who had a February birthday sat in the special chairs, and joined their classmates in singing and dancing. Keiko had asked Mike, Lori and I if we could teach an American dance to the students. We finally decided on the Macarena, which is silly because its name is not even English, but the steps are easy and we all knew it. Keiko thought it would be a good idea for one of us to call out the steps while the other two do the dance and have the kids follow. I ended up shouting the steps into the microphone for the kids, calling out "Right, Left, Flip, Flip, Shoulder, Shoulder, Head, Head, Waist, Waist, Butt, Butt, Wiggle, Turn and Clap!" I felt obnixious. I think the kids were a bit confused by it so not many followed and we ended up doing just 8 repeats of the steps.

The teachers have very special roles in the birthday parades and special outfits too. By outfits, I mean two flags (smaller ones) pinned together creating arm and head holes. My flags had a giant cake on them. We also have to wear those big floppy hats, like ones from The Cat and the Hat. Since this was our first parade, Keiko decided to give us hats that had red, white and blue stars and strips instead. The whole outfit was ridiculous, but the kids had fun. By the way, I did not take a picture of this outfit so don't even ask.

The teachers also give the birthday kids a "flower shower." We took big stuffed flowers and waved them over the kids while singing a happy song and then each kid yelled something in the microphone. Even the more timid looking kids were not afraid to yell- I was impressed. We also got to bang on big drums during other songs, which despite my lack of musical ability, was enjoyable. I really loved the parade and I'm sure the birthday kids felt so special too. What's great about a year round school is that every kid will have a chance to be in a birthday chair!