The final-year trip of Japanese high school is more than just a school trip: it’s a rite of passage. The “shuugaku ryokou” translates as a “field trip”, but usually they are held in the final year of elementary, middle, and high school, when the students and their teacher take a trip together for a few days to see a new place, or wander around a new city. For most students, the trip is the most anticipated event of the year, and for some its significance is so great, that the best memories of their school days will be eclipsed by the excitement of travelling somewhere with their school-friends.
While most final-year trips used to involve students going up to Tokyo to see the big city, or to Kyoto to get a glimpse of Heian Japan, now trips to the East Asian mainland are gaining popularity. So when Kawaguchi Technical High School announced that the students would go to Taiwan, one can only imagine the excitement. For safe-keeping, the teacher collected all the passports of his students. But then he lost one. Just one.
This article has tugged on the heart-strings of Japanese netizens, all of whom feel great sympathy for the boy who had to miss out on the trip. Many wonder exactly why only one passport went missing, with some pinpointing bullying as the potential cause of the incident.
From Sankei MSN News:
Teacher At Technical High School in Saitama Loses Student Passport, Student Can’t Go on Final-Year Trip
On February 4, the Saitama Prefecture Education Committee announced that a teacher in his 40s at Kawaguchi Technical High School had lost one out of the 28 passports he had gathered from the students in his class before they went on the school trip, resulting in one male student being unable to participate in the trip. The Education Committee are reviewing a punishment for the teacher, since ‘He took insufficient measures in keeping the passports’ and the desk in which he was storing the passports was not locked.
According to the committee, a school trip was planned in Taiwan from January 29 to February 1. It was decided that the teacher in charge of the trip would take care of everyone’s passports so that the students wouldn’t forget to bring them, and the teacher had been keeping half in a desk drawer in the staff room and the other half in a desk drawer in the teacher’s prep room.
The teacher noticed in late January that the boy’s passport was missing. He searched for it, but unable to find it he apologised to the student and his guardian the day before they were due to depart. The teacher still participated in the trip because he was to escort the students, but the student himself was unable to go, and attended school as usual while the rest of the class were away.
Comments from 2ch.net:
名無しさん＠１３周年：
Too sad.
名無しさん＠１３周年：
Is this another bullying story?(´･ω･｀)
名無しさん＠１３周年：
Was the passport hidden?? By his classmates??
名無しさん＠１３周年：
Why did only one passport disappear?
名無しさん＠１３周年：
It’s a mistake to go abroad on a school trip in the first place.
名無しさん＠１３周年：
That’s no accident. Don’t you think the teacher just really hated this student? It’s not possible that only one passport would disappear.
名無しさん＠１３周年：
I guess he got the money he paid for the trip returned to him though.
名無しさん＠１３周年：
1. Bullying
2. A crime carried out by the boy himself because he didn’t want to go on the trip.
3. Passport was hidden by a ghost.
名無しさん＠１３周年：
It’s awful that they only let him know the day before…Does it take much time to have a passport re-issued? Would it have been impossible [to have it re-issued] from the time the teacher realised it was missing?
名無しさん＠１３周年：
Well, this much is obvious but from next year they should go back to looking after their own passports. That way, even if they forget the passport and can’t go on the trip they have no one else to blame.
まさかとはおもうが：
If it’s one of those steel office desks, and he put too many passports in the drawer, the passport could be caught in the frame of the desk, couldn’t it? I mean…the passport could still be in the desk drawer, right?
名無しさん＠１３周年：
For something as important as a passport, isn’t it the norm to keep them in the headmaster’s safe or something?
名無しさん＠１３周年：
So this kid went to school while everyone was away and did what? Essays?
名無しさん＠１３周年：
Why did only one passport go missing? Not possible.
名無しさん＠１３周年:
This is going to give him the worst memory of his life so far. I wonder if in the end the day will come when he can laugh about it?
名無しさん＠１３周年：
If it was me, I’d tell them to postpone the trip until another passport can be issued.
名無しさん＠１３周年：
Either the teacher lost it purposely, or the student hid it because he didn’t want to go, or it was hidden by other students who were bullying him…seems like there are no other possibilities.
名無しさん＠１３周年：
I’m sure everyone had a great time on this once-in-a-lifetime school trip, because Taiwan is pro-Japanese. This teacher probably had fun with everyone too, and it was a lovely memory for all concerned. Everyone except the boy.
名無しさん＠１３周年:
Looking forward to it days in advance, talking about how you can’t wait to go with friends, probably buying new clothes and shoes, and then the day before, to be told ‘You ain’t got no passport, so…’ If it were me, I’d cry. I’d lie and be like ‘Oh well, can’t be helped’, but then when I got home I’d bawl my eyes out in my bed.
名無しさん＠１３周年：
Could have been turned into a film if the plane had gone down and only the boy was saved from death.
名無しさん＠１３周年：
I just feel so sorry for the student who couldn’t go.
