HAMOKON

Each year, the junior high that I work at has a singing contest. Each hoomroom picks a song, that they practice for weeks, and then perform in front of all the students. It's actually graded by the music teachers, and perhaps it's their mid-term. I don't know if all schools do this, but my school does it annually.

All three grade levels have to sing at the harmoney concert. My school has 796 students, so the 3rd and 2nd years sang on Thursday. Friday the 1st years sang and then the best classes (3-3 and 3-4) came back to sing for the 1st years-- who were not at Thursday's concert. The teachers, including me, also sang a song. The teacher's song is always in Japanese- so sometimes I struggle with it. This year,however, I kept up with the teachers.

My first year the Harmony Concert was in the fall, but the following year the school held it in the spring. That worked out well, so this year our Hamokon (as the students call it) was on June 15th and 16th.
Those are girls from homeroom 3-2. That means they are third year (9th grade) students in JHS and they are homeroom #2. Did you notice the sailor outfit? That's what the girl's uniforms look like. I never realized the uniforms really look like that. After I came to Japan, the outfits in the anime Sailor Moon made a lot more sence to me.

Those are a few of the boys from homeroom 3-6. The one on the left is one of my favorite students. He's not really into English but he aways talks to me in Japanese and the few sentences he knows in English, like: "Good Morning, How are you?"