Freie Fujino Steiner Waldorf Schule

So I guess I'll finally talk about my school. First of all, its far away in Fujino up in the mountains so it takes me an hour and a half every morning to get to school. Fujino is a really tiny town outside of Tokyo, but it is really beautiful. Pretty much the only reason why people go there is to hike because other than that there's absolutely nothing to do there. In fact if you forget your lunch, you're fucked because there are no stores less than a 20 minute walk down a hill away from the school. Going up the mountain, the school bus can hardly make the turns on the narrow roads. The best part is there is a gorgeous lake that you cross twice on the way up and down the mountain. When it rains it's so pretty, I feel ike I'm in a Miyazaki movie.
After the lake the ride really reminds me of going up Tantalus, except somehow more Asian... Fujino is also an art community so as you go up the mountain there are all these modern art sculptures tucked into openings in the foliage. It's kind of bizarre. They're pretty cool sculptures but I can't get any good pictures from the bus. Here's one of the less cool ones that I passed when I was walking down one day (different route than the bus.)

Also, far up towards the top of the mountain there is this huge metallic love letter settled onto into the trees. Nobody told me about it, so when I saw it one day from the train station I freaked out. I imagine it's enormous, apparently you can hike to it. I was even more freaked out though, when I saw that the mountain top across the valley has a huge creepy pair of eyes that make it look like its alive, almost definitely by the same artist. Anyways, I couldn't get a good picture, but I found some on the internet.

Fujino is really the perfect place for a Waldorf school. The campus is all up in the woods. It's super quiet. And the town was really just asking for a Waldorf school to be built there. There's already all these art center things and natural healing centers and hot springs and "lotus house"s and crazy hippy shiet.
The school itself is so intensely Waldorfy. I never realized how mildly Steiner our school was before, but over in Honolulu we definitely have it easy. Here, not only is the school made completely out of wood, it's also like a crazy dodecagon thing... it looks like a turtle. They built it completely themselves too, of course. The whole building is basically round and the roof is a dome with windows arranged into a pentagon and pentagon shaped lamps. All the desks are wooden too, like the ones in our lower school. And all the mainlesson books they use are actual bound books with silk paper in between pages and everything. The highschool only has two classrooms, a small sink area next to the one stall bathrooms, and then a big loft.



There's a couch right below the window in the loft and I like to take naps on it, but because the roof is a kind of dome, the acoustics are super crazy so that if you are in the loft, whoever is talking across the room from you on the first floor sounds like they're right next to you. The first time it really freaked me out. I was sleeping and it sounded like somebody was whispering in my ear so I jumped up and looked around but there was no one there. Turns out it was two girls in my class whispering to each other across the room from me. Weiiirrd.


Outside the school there's this huge scupture thing. I've asked students about it but nobody really knows why it's there... The big white building in the back in the lower school. It used to be a regular public school so it looks pretty normal until you go inside where it is definitely a Waldorf school. The building is pretty sweet though, three stories equipped with a really nice wood working room, a big chemistry lab, and a really nice gym with a stage and errthang.

There are 7 other students in my class, all girls. They're all really different from each other but they're all bestfriends. It's really interesting. Everybody at this school is so nice and polite to each other all the time. It doesn't feel like high school. Everyone treats each other equally, and you hardly ever hear people talk badly about anyone. It's really....pleasant. The students are all really diligent too. The Waldorf fair is coming up and here it is run completely by the students. This year specifically the girls in my class. It's pretty amazing how the teachers have almost nothing to do with it. The students all stay after school on their own and get together and get shit done. The girls in my class all have huge responsibilities too. For example, Lidia is in charge of making all the flyers and pamphlets and the program for the entertainment. That also makes her in charge of the entertainment too, though. So she has to find people to perform and schedule them and make it work. The crazy thing is that they do EVERYTHING by hand. They make everything so much more of a pain in the ass so that its perfect and Waldorfy. Another girl in my class is in charge of all the shifts for all the booths. Another girl is in charge of designing and creating all the elaborate flag thingies that they put around Fujino and a huge billboard that they put up for the fair. They put me in charge of making the class shirt that we wear during the fair... :/ uh...
yeah.

The classes here are all really long. The school days are as long as ours but we sometimes only have three classes a day including mainlesson. It gets really tiring and boring. Especially when you can hardly understand what's going on....It's pretty easy though because they hardly get any homework.
Fall break is in a week and Adrian's coming and we're all going to go to Kyoto and stay in a hostel.

I still havn't learned the morning verse in Japanese yet, but I am determined!