Today we “waxed” the floors of the school. Japanese schools don’t have janitors so the kids have cleaning time every afternoon. Last week, before exams started, we had an extended cleaning time to “wipe the slate clean” so to speak–clear out all the cobwebs–so they could take their exams with peaceful little minds. Today, after the students took their last exams in 4th period we busted out the brooms and strange little mops they use to wax the floors. First, we pushed all the desks to one side of the room and swept up all the lint and dirt. There was one piece of what looked like blue hair that we had to chase all around the room. No one wanted to touch it. Then they poured what looked like diluted Elmer’s glue across the floor, wrapped cloths around the bottom of their “mops” and cinched them down. I mostly supervised since they were told I didn’t know what I was doing. They pushed the glue all across the floor, and we watched it dry (it turned the floor from light brown to a glistening light brown). Then we moved the desks back and did the other side of the room. A few of the girls cleaned the windows with old newspapers, and at one point we had a minor crisis where no one knew what to do with the extra wax in the bottom of the bucket. We averted disaster by pouring in the hallway.
The whole process took about an hour and turned the school into an obstacle course. Students blocked off waxed parts of the hallways with brooms and desks and we all tiptoed around trying not to leave our footprints permanently embedded in the floor. It was a bit difficult to wax the floors with 1,000 people in the school, all wandering around trying to be helpful, but it can be done. The students were giddy and giggling, happy to be done studying for the weekend, but the teachers looked frazzled and sweaty. I caught my supervisor, A Sensei, madly mopping while a group of students stood around and watched. “Sensei,” I said, “tell them to help you.” He gave me a little smile and then went back to work. He’d been barking out orders earlier, but I guess the fumes were getting to him. I think between getting students ready for exams, helping them study, and then giving the tests themselves, A Sensei was just tired of telling them what to do.
