This is entrance to my school, Seikei, in Japan. Photo by: Mai Takeuchi
By Mai Takeuchi
Since I have spent eight months here and taken a part of American family, I realized there are a lot of differences between Japan and America. I can say that about schools too. So I would love to introduce my high school life at Seikei.
Most schools have school uniforms and girls make skirts as short as fifteen centimeters above the knee, although it is winter. We go to the school by train, walk, bus, or bicycle. It is
These are our school uniforms. Photo by: Mai Takeuchi
because they do not have enough space to park cars at schools and we are supposed to be eighteen to be able to get car licenses. Trains in big cities get busy every morning and evening, so station employees push people to get them into trains even we can get trains every other five minutes. We study about fifteen subjects and every subject is studied in class. If we want to take any music, cooking, or art classes, we have to stay after school as they are extra classes. Teachers are strict and we are not allowed to have our ears pierced, dye our hair, or listen to music. We do not use calculators and computers, so we need to take a lot of notes for final exams. At the end of semester, we have big exams and some students do not sleep at all so they can study because it relates to promotion and entrance exams for college. Our lunch time is about an hour. After we have lunch, some go out and do sports in school yard and some girls just chat, so we have a lot of fun. We hold a school festival once a year. We have stands, a haunted house, a maze and recitals for dance and bands. We also have sports festivals for three days a year. We compete against home room classes. Boys play soccer, basketball, softball, and tennis then girls play basketball, volleyball, football, dodgeball. After we all have relay races. Everyone cheers loudly for their own class. We love these kinds of events so much.
After school, we also have clubs such as America. But once we join a club, we need to continue to be in there for two and a half years, since we have a big entrance examination for universities and colleges. We start studying a half year before them. After that we and people who are not in any clubs walk to the station and then we go eat or karaoke to have fun on the way to the station with friends. Most of us go to preparatories from two hours to six hours for an entrance exam for colleges. Then we go home, have dinner with chopsticks, and take a bath. In my country, every family has their own bath tub. Bath time makes us relax after a tiring day.