A Day in the Life of a Junior High School student

Here’s a little insight into JHS life here in Japan. There are many interesting differences!
Junior High School students are years 7-9 back home (they’re called 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders here).The students arrive at school at around 8am or earlier, for club practice (i.e. a sport or craft club) and extra study. The day officially starts at around 8.20 with homeroom, followed by the first four periods of the day. Each year has their own room, and it is the teachers who change rooms, not the students. In my school there are about 30-35 students in each year, so it’s pretty easy to keep track of.

After the morning classes comes lunch. Lunch is served American-style, complete with a tiny carton of milk. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday are rice days, and Wednesday is non-rice day (i.e. bread), and I look forward to Wednesday lunch the most (the rice is getting to me..and my thighs!). It’s often a dinner sized portion, so I go home still quite full from lunch. My JTE told me today that the reason our staffroom is so quiet at lunch is because our school is famous for bad lunches and nobody is enjoying it! Ha ha. Every day has a calorie listing, and a monthly menu is displayed on the staff noticeboard. The students eat lunch together in the classroom, and serve each other, and then clean up after themselves. While lunch is happening, music is blared over the loudspeakers, and it’s been a great way to hear the latest Japanese music since my radio is broken :-(

After lunch comes two more periods and then cleaning. Japanese schools don’t have cleaners; it’s all done by the students. Of particular note is the cleaning song. Every day this week it’s been John Nash’s ‘I Can See Clearly Now’, it’s quite humorous!

After this comes afternoon homeroom, where notices for the next day are given. Following this, most, if not all, students go to their club activities. The most common ones in the schools I’m at are: volleyball, softball, baseball, basketball, tennis, and culture club. These clubs go til something like 7pm, or until it gets dark. Clubs are also held on weekends and in holiday time (yes, kids still come to school in holiday time, and are given extensive holiday homework specifically set out for each day). Japanese students live and breathe school. It’s such a common sight to see student in school uniforms on the weekends!

Junior High is fairly cruisy, and students have varying competency levels, as there is not entrance exam for JHS as there is for Senior High School. The kids first start learning English at Junior High School, so I’m learning to talk really, really, really slow. After Junior High School kids sit an exam to go onto Senior High School, in order to get into their school of choice. Senior High School is optional here, but 97% of students go on to it. Once in Senior High things start to build up, and ‘cram school’ for the university entrance exams becomes a regular activity after clubs finish. Senior High School students often don’t get home til 10om at night, and that’s if they don’t have to travel far. Unlike Australia, Senior High School students sit an exam for each university they want to enter-some can have as many as 10 exams! There is a high rate of student suicide at this age, as the pressure , understandably, just gets too much.

I’m very thankful I got placement in a Junior High School!