OFUNATO, Iwate Prefecture--Boys and girls decked out in colorful kimono attended an entrance ceremony for an elementary school here on April 1, getting a jump on other schools around Japan.
It marked the second year since the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami devastated this coastal Tohoku city that none of the new students at Ryori Elementary School were still living in temporary housing for residents displaced from the March 2011 disaster.
Ryori Elementary School has held an enrollment ceremony on the first day of a new school year since 1910.
It has been a tradition for new students to wear kimono on the special day since the 1970s, when female students began wearing traditional Japanese clothing for the entrance ceremony.
This year, five boys and seven girls enrolled at Ryori Elementary School for the new school year, with the first day of classes set for April 7.
“I’m happy that I have reached the age to attend school,” said 6-year-old Soara Chiba, who attended the ceremony in a black tie-dyed kimono. “I will study a lot so that I can one day open my own cake shop.”
In the 2011 disaster, the ground floor of the school’s main building became submerged by the tsunami, and the schoolyard was littered with piles of debris after the waters receded.
None of the students, teachers or staff lost their lives, but the school was forced to postpone that year’s entrance ceremony by 20 days. The children and parents refrained from wearing kimono at the ceremony out of respect to those who died in the disaster.