Yonezawa Technical High School

Yonezawa Technical High School, a photo by dtk_guy on Flickr.

I have one student who attends the Yonezawa Technical High School. Apparently they have an annual "event" which the students refer to as "Jigoku no Oenrenshu" (I'd loosely translate it as "School Cheering Practice from Hell"). It seems that at his school there are four school songs which are essentially yelled out at the top of ones lungs. Freshmen students have a week or so to learn these songs at the beginning of a new school year. If I recall the story correctly, the newbies are assembled and taught the songs en mass. Then the following week they have to learn them off by heart. If it was just a matter of being given a lyric sheet and committing the songs to memory then things would be simple. But no, this is Japan and why make things that easy. I was told that all through the second week of the new term the songs are blared through the school PA system at lunch hour each day. Added to that joyful scene are marauding teams of third year students who patrol the school and ambush freshmen students with demands to perform the songs on cue. The part that got lost in translation was the grand finale. The way I understood it, after enduring this torture (what else could I call it), the first year students are hauled down to Fukushima to perform these songs. I asked my student what he thought of that and he told me his class didn't make that trip to Fukushima on account of the 3/11 earthquake.

Addendum: Another one of my friends attended the same school over a decade ago. The "Jigoku no Oenrenshu" was something she missed out on because she transferred into the school in second year. Nonetheless she confirmed the details of the above story. The additional things she pointed out were; 1) that the songs are belted out with one's hands held behind the back whilst thrusting out the chest and looking upward, 2) in her time the upper class students checked on the progress of the first year students on a one-to-one basis and in close quarters (they'd stand less than arm's length away from their "trainee"). Oh joy...