This time of the year is special in Japan. The snow is melting, the weather is getting warmer, the sakura flowers are blooming and everyone is returning from their Spring holidays. It's a time of new beginnings.. and one of sheer madness!

In Japan, everything starts and ends on April 1st. The fiscal year is finished, students return for a new school year, university graduates are just entering the workforce, and teachers across the country play a colossal game of musical chairs! During this time, teachers wait in anticipation to hear where they will be working for the next year school year. There's no guarantee they'll be at the same school or even same town, and there's a good chance they won't even be teaching the same grade. A Gr.6 teacher may suddenly find themselves teaching a Gr.1 class, for example. The reasoning behind the constant mix and match of teachers among different grades, students, and co-workers is to allow them to gain a wide range of experience in different positions. Of course, this also prevents a teacher from getting good at teaching a certain grade so I don't completely understand the rationale. All public servants who work for cities and municipalities also go through the same blender. A Board of Education employee of several years may be suddenly moved to the Tax Department even though they have no training. Job-security might not be a problem, but it seems job-location-security is!

The crazy thing about all this is that it takes place within a two week period. The names of all new teachers at the schools are published, on an official date, in the newspaper near the end of the semester. The knowledge of where each teacher is moving to is kept very hush hush until then. Once the teachers find out their new locations they have to pack and move houses, get acquainted with their new city, and prepare the curriculum for the upcoming year.. all within two weeks! I'm currently working with a new JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) who is fresh out of University and has never taught a class before. She just moved into my town from Sapporo five days before she took over the role of main English teacher at my school. I taught with her this week and it was obvious she was pretty nervous through the whole ordeal. I knew exactly how she felt though because I was in the same position when I first arrived; being thrown headfirst into a classroom full of kids and having no clue what to do. The school themselves also do a sort of spring-cleaning in the teachers office. All the desks are removed, cleaned, and rearranged according to grade. It was fun coming to the schools this week to find my desks halfway across the room (or in the case of one school, actually having a desk now). With the new influx of teachers, I'm looking forward to the upcoming school year since all the new teachers and kids makes everything feel renewed and fresh.

Maybe the Japanese actually know what they're doing in this; by switching everything up, everyone is forced to start a new routine and are constantly challenge themselves to become better at their jobs. Instead of dredging away at the same job and place for years and years on end, their job always changes each year making it more enjoyable. I know I'd definitely prefer it that way.. except maybe with more than two weeks notice!