Today is my school's ceremony in which the teachers who have left for another school return to say goodbye. You read that right, they come back to say goodbye. The reason for this is that the way teaching assignments are made fits the typical "Japan is a top-down society" stereotype to the letter.

Teachers are, though payed by their individual schools, hired and in the employ of the prefectural government. The prefecture decides who goes where, and one's assignment can change annually. The longer you teach, the more say you have in whether and whither you go, but even then, there are limits to how long you can stay at one school. The teachers are notified sometime in March (the last month of the fiscal/academic/everything else official year), as are the administrators of the school. The rest of the staff finds out at or around the end-of-the-year office party. The teachers are required, I believe by law, not to inform the students that they are leaving until March 31st, which is already in the midst of spring break. Your favorite teacher might be teaching an hour or more away, and you'd have no idea.

And so, they're coming back. They'll get flowers, get thanked, give speeches, take pictures, shed tears, and get asked "why" a lot. But that's the system. So it goes.

PS