Woodpeckers

Everytime someone important comes into the staff room here everyone stands up and bows to them, and also when they leave too. The result is that I find myself suddenly the only person sitting down and have to belatedly rise to begin a five minute ritual of bowing and smiling and saying osewaninarimashita until said VIP leaves the room. But they invariably (and rather rudely I think) take so long to leave the room the whole thing becomes a ludicrous display of bobbing heads and repeated salutations until it resembles a conversation between two kids saying 'you are' 'you are' (and all the never ending repetition this entails). At the end of one such occurance today one of the teachers turne to me and said

Japanese are like woodpecker, always bow

It cracked me up. He said it's because Japan is a samurai country. I replied that Australia is a kangaroo country so therefore we really couldn't care less when a random leaves the room. It was an enjoyable conversation, a rare occurance around here, and made my day a little better.