Japanese Primary School Part 1

Call us crazy, but we've enrolled the girls into a local Japanese primary school. We are living in Japan after all and wanted to make the most of the experience. The girls had mixed feelings about this, but we were pretty confidant that the benefits would outweigh the potential troubles. 

School started on the 7th of April, just over a week ago now. For primary school, everyone has to go to the primary school in their local area and all the kids walk to school. Even year one. All by themselves. The school has set routes that the students follow, so there is a lot of students streaming past in the morning and afternoon. They do have some parent helpers/teachers out with flags along the routes to help kids get familiar with it, but for the most part the thinking is that you are at school now, so it's time to be responsible. 

Higashi Yotsugi Primary School Hat

We only live a two min walk from our local school. I think the strangest thing about school so far has to be the rather overcomplicated timetable. There are six hour days, there are five hour days. There are days that are only four hours and finish before lunch. Then there is the B timetable, which also has five and six hour days, but finish at different times. Also, I don't think they count the 20 minutes of self study that students need to do when they arrive at school in this, although Rachel says her teacher gets in at 8:30 and class starts then. Who knows!

Inside school shoes ready for day one

The first day of school was a one hour day for Rachel, and a three hour day for Sophie, since she's in year six and has "leadership responsibilities". To be honest, even though I've written down what day is what on the calendar, I'm still never quite sure when they are coming home. I guess that's why the kids are trained to get to and from school all on their own, so it doesn't really matter. 

Part of Sophie's year six leadership responsibilities has been to look after a year one student every morning for the first two weeks of school. She has to get to school by 8:05 to meet the year one-er, make sure they put their bag away, go to the toilet, get a drink etc, then sit with them in class and read or draw together until it's time for the teacher to come in. 

It's free dress for primary school, though on the first day, Sophie did have to wear "ceremony clothes" (button up white shirt and black skort). The only thing that identifies the kids as school students is the really obvious school backpacks and their school hat. We did have to buy the sports uniform (white shirt, dark shorts, red/white reversible hat) for them to change into for sports. 

Speaking of sports uniforms, the girls take them to school on Mondays and bring them home on Fridays. I think this is strategic to help people not forget their uniforms, because with all the timetable changes, you never really know when you'll need it. Rachel had PE on Friday in the first week, and then on Monday in the second. The other thing they've needed to get changed into their uniforms for is the start of year doctors check ups. 

Yes, you read that right. Every student has multiple, dare I say, numerous doctors checkups at the start of the year. At the school, provided by the government. I'm talking movement/muscular skeletal checks, ear, nose and throat, asthma and heart as well as eye tests. It was pretty strange for the girls, even though I pre-warned them about it. 

Aside from that, the girls have settled into their classes really quickly. Rachel's teacher is pretty fabulous and makes sure he takes the time to check Rachel is understanding things. She is student number 30 in class 2 of year 5 (refered to as 5-2). Students sit in their number order (at least for the start of the year), and I think she likes it up in the back corner where she can look out the window. 

Sophie's teacher has been a little harder to get on board. I know she's focused on helping all the year six students "prepare for Junior High School", but it's still annoying. Sophie is number 20 in her class (6-1) and sits in the second row. I know this because when they had the start of year parent meeting on Friday last week, we got to go and sit in the classrooms, at the desks that our kids would sit at, and listen to the teacher tell us stuff. 

Most days the girls have come home with something new and fun that happened to tell us about. Scattered in these stories are moments of "Japanese all day makes my brain hurt", which was expected. On the first day, Rachel was delighted to report that her school had axolotl in the hallway on the first floor. We have been subsequently less excited seeing the conditions of the tank that these poor creatures are exisiting in. Nothing interesting in there at all; not even a rock for them to hide behind. It's the flip side of living somewhere like Japan, on one hand: cool axolotl! On the other hand: no care for animal rights.

Speaking of the flip sides of Japan, as I sat in Rachel's classroom listening to her teacher talk about things (and point out the work they had done that day on the black board (yes, you read that right - it was written with chalk and everything!)), I noticed that right under the fancy touch screen TV sat a still working cassette tape player. Oh Japan. One foot in the future and the other firmly in the past. 

There is lots more to say about Japanese schools, but I'll leave this here for now and you can come back another time to learn about school lunches, cleaning classrooms, clubs and all the different subjects!