School Daze

I’ve gotten some questions about Japanese schools, so I’m going to try to describe what Japanese school is like from my limited understanding. Some things that I’ve experienced may not be the way it works in all of Japan. But I have a feeling that a lot of it is pretty similar across the board.

In Japan, school is divided into elementary (grades 1-6), junior high (grades 7-9), and senior high (grades 10-12) schools. But they just start the counting over in each school. So I teach at a junior high, but refer to all my students as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd graders.

School starts at 8:15, when all the kids need to be in their classrooms. At this time the teachers all have a meeting in the teachers’ room. (The Japanese like the open plan for offices, so everyone has a desk in one giant room). Then the teachers that have homerooms go and take attendance and do whatever it is they do in homeroom.

Typically, all students stay in the same class together and the teacher move from classroom to classroom. There are 6 class periods of the day and each subject is taught a certain number of times a week. The government requires that JHS students get 3 class periods of English per week. Classes last either 50 minutes or 45 minutes. The school uses two different schedules, though I’m never quite sure why they sometimes go by the shortened schedule. Class size tends to be big. I think 30-40 students in a class in junior high is pretty normal. (But it varies based on the size of the community. One of my friends visits a school on an island that has about 70 kids in grades 1-9 total). The students also eat lunch in their classroom. Everyone eats the same school lunch, including the teachers. In each class, a group of students serves the lunch. I’m not sure if the servers rotate periodically, but I do know that they wear white smocks and headscarves when they do it. At some point in the day (at the end in my junior high and after lunch in my elementary schools) is cleaning time. There isn’t janitorial staff in Japanese schools, so the kids sweep, empty garbage, wipe the windows and whatnot.

In junior high, after school ends the students have their club activities. Unlike in the US, the kids are in one club. Most kids are in some sort of athletic club, but there are also kids in band and in computer club at my school. I can’t think of any other non-sports related clubs at my school but depending on interest, there could be more at other schools. So the kids practice their sport every day for about 2 hours after school, year-round. (No wonder the school lunches are so big and filling). Usually only the ichi-nen-sei (1st) and ni-nen-sei (2nd year) participate in club activities. The san-nen-sei (3rd year) quit their club activities and start going to another study school after school to prepare for high school entrance exams.

The elementary school kids go to school in their own clothes, but they all have adorable little matching hats. Everyone else has a school uniform that they practically live in. In Japan you can see kids at any time, any day, including weekends, in their school uniforms. They all have their formal uniforms and their gym uniform. They wear their gym shorts and shirt underneath their formal uniform so when its time for P.E., they can just change in the classroom. And once they get to school they have to change their shoes and put on indoor shoes (as do the teachers). They have little cubbies in the entrance where they keep their shoes. All the kids wear the same shoes inside the school.

Hm…that’s all I can think of for now. I don’t really know much about high school since I don’t teach there. But feel free to ask any questions and I’ll try to answer them.