Today my current school held its fire drill. This isn’t the first fire drill I’ve participated in, but it still got to me how everything played out. To make it easier, I shall make bullet points comparing a typical American school fire drill and a Japanese school fire drill, both (obviously) from my personal experiences.

American Fire Drill

• The teachers are notified beforehand, the students are not
• The fire alarm sounds
• Students and teachers alike immediately stop what they’re doing and walk quickly out of the building
• Students mill around outside the building for a few minutes
• The all-clear is given, then everyone goes back inside

Japanese Fire Drill (specifically, today’s)

• The teachers are notified beforehand
• Ten minutes before the drill, an announcment is made on the PA system. This announcement informs the students that there will be a fire drill and to procure their coats, outdoor shoes, and to put on their caps.
• A designated teacher takes the school flags (mounted on portable flagpoles) outside and mounts them up at the designated meeting spot in prepartion for the coming meeting.
• Most of the teachers change into their outdoor shoes and wait outside.
• Once everything is ready, an alarm sounds. At this particular school it sounds like an air raid siren. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is an air raid siren.
• The students run out of their classrooms wearing their coats and cleaning caps.
• At the exit, students stop and take off their indoor shoes, changing into their outdoor shoes. They then continue running to the predetermined area.
• The students line up outside in a clear formation based upon year, class, and gender. At my current school all the girls wear red and the guys wear all blue, so they make cool patterns.
• Once all of the students are assembled, a member of the teaching staff takes the mic and, flanked by the school flags, other teachers, and the fire squad, speaks to the students about their performance and other such things.
• A member of the fire squad takes the mic and speaks of fire safety.
• The fire squard puts up a small sign with a little fire on it, and proceeds to let four students grab fire extinguishers and ‘put out’ the fire.
• After the aforementioned students put out the fire sign, some teachers are allowed to use the fire extinguishers to ‘put out’ the fire. This includes the gaijin English teacher, who gets to race three other teachers in getting to the ‘fire’ and spraying it with the pussy fire extingushers they have. Seriously, they were old-fashion fire extinguishers that consisted of only water under pressure in a big fire extinguisher can. It was nothing like the real CO2 extinguishers I’m used to. Regardless, it was fun.
• Once all of the demonstrations are finished, everyone departs, we all change back into are indoor shoes.
• Now that it’s the end of the day, don’t take those hats off just yet… it’s cleaning time!

And that, my friends, was the highlight of my day at school today. I totally killed that picture of fire.

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