"Where's the principal?" I asked the office lady at the elementary school where I work.

"He's out there in the dirt field," she said. Every school has a big dirt field where the children play. We looked out the window and sure enough there he was. Out of his suit and in work clothes, he was dragging some kind of a sand rake across the field.

I explained to her in my best Japanese that we had janitors to do that kind of work in America. It's so funny for me to see the principal of a school doing manual labor type jobs.

At my junior high school, I saw the VP changing a lightbulb in a fire exit sign. I explained to another teacher about how we had zone mechanics.

"What do the zone mechanics do when there's nothing to fix?" She asked.

"I don't know? Sit around. Drink coffee? Watch TV? I don't know?"

Its so strange for me to see how two or three men at Japanese schools can perform the functions of ten to fifteen in American schools. Sure, its great being working at a job where the work is few and far between. But isn't the Japanese way so much better? It makes a lot more sense to me.

This weekend was a sports day, or field day. What's funny about this day is that they make the entire school line up on this dirt field and exercise. This includes doing pushups. In the dirt, or mud if it happens to be wet. Another thing I'd never expect to see anywhere else.

Incredibly, after exercising, the boys have to take off their shoes, and make human pyramids in the dirt. The girls have to dance. Every year, students get scraped up during this event. They step on sharp rocks and cut their feet. And yet, every Japanese man I've talked to has made human pyramids in the dirt when he was in Jr. High School.