In a Japanese high school

One of the subjects I take is a Japanese Education class. But it’s not just lectures, note-making or discussions – every now and then we have an opportunity to visit various schools, and the first one we went to was the Kanazawa Nisui Prefectural Senior High School (石川県立金沢二水高校, Ishikawa-ken-ritsu Kanazawa Nisui Kōkō).

Entrance to Nisui.
http://www.nisui-dousoukai.com/page17/index.html

Although most of the day was organised especially for us, I managed to get a glimpse of the real everyday life of a Japanese senior high student. I won’t mention the uniform; I think everyone already knows enough about Japanese uniforms. But, for example, it was very interesting to be able to observe classes a little bit. I was allowed into a physics class (which I don’t understand even in Polish or English, nevermind Japanese – and judging by the equations, the students were quite advanced!) and advanced English class (it was done all in English and the students engaged in some discussions and were made to share opinions of various subjects). What’s more interesting, the students there can choose a profile, humanities or sciences, and then take only classes from that profile. Does that mean that there goes the stereotype of an Asian high schooler who memorizes quantum physics and advanced maths, and calculates everything in their head with the speed of light?

Classroom without the pupils.

Left from the previous class.

Though just being able to get into a Japanese high school was a great experience. Schools can’t just let anyone in and an average high schooler sees their school every day, never even knowing that there could be a different one, so they’re not going to take pictures just for some potential foreigners to see. Nisui is quite pretty – and surprisingly big, even though we kept to one building only. Although for such a big school I was surprised at how small their library was.

A gallery where pupils can eat lunch or hang out, and where they have assemblies.

But, as one would expect, the most interesting were the students themselves. One hears so much about Japanese students studying hard day and night, taking extra classes and going to cram schools, under pressure and stressed out… yet when you finally face one, not only they don’t look overwhelmed by all this, but they seem to be happy that their daily life looks like this. I tried not to look too shocked when the group of girls who showed me around and talked to me said, that they spent part of their summer holidays at school taking some supplementary classes – more!, they themselves said that they enjoyed it. I cannot imagine that there is anywhere else where a high school student would say that spending some of their holidays can be fun.

Place to study on the corridor.

In the end the time flew by (though we didn’t have much of it in the first place, two, maybe two and a half hours) and I was really sorry when the time to leave came. I’d gladly talk to the students a bit more, observe some more everyday classes or even their lunch time. But it doesn’t look like it’s likely to happen as next we’ll go to a different school.

A picture left on a steamed up window.