my everyday day at school.

hey.
i thought, instead of doing a "my life is so good right now, i did …, and … and even …!!" style post, which is a bit interesting for a couple of people, but can be a bit dragging, i thought i'd do some informational posts on a variety of topics to do with my day to day life here in Japan, especially in comparison to australia.

here's my standard day at school, in a schedule form:

• usually, i'll get up out of bed before 7:40am, and, depending on how late i am, i'll either get dressed straight away and be out the door about 5 minutes later, or have breakfast. this is pretty different to australia, where i missed breakfast all of 1 time in all of my school life (13 years!!!).
• my town has lots of public announcement style speakers, where, occasionally, they'll announce something to the whole town. i think they might also be used in the chaos that would follow a natural disaster (read: the overdue tokai-earthquake, which will probably hit pretty close to where i am), but for the most part, they're just used to play super corny (like almost everything in this country!!) music at 8am, 12pm and 6pm daily. at first, i got freaked out by this, but now it's pretty useful!! :P ) so i need to be out of the house before, during, or just slightly after the 8am music plays. that's because:
• it takes me half an hour on my bike to get to school every day. that's more than 6km, slightly uphill, twice a day, almost everyday!! so i'm a genius at multitasking on my bike now. the other day, i got my drink bottle (with screw cap lid) out of my bag, opened it, had a drink and put it back into my bag, all while riding and being careful around traffic. i seriously couldn't do that 3 months ago!!
• if i'm late to school, i'll get into some serious trouble with my host family. the japanese just have this psychological need to arrive to all things on time. so whenever i'm even a single minute late for school, my host mother gets notified (and i'll get castrated), and then i have to get about 6 teachers to stamp a sheet of paper for three consecutive days. school starts at 8:35.
• i have 6 lessons a day, punctuated by short home room before the first lesson until 8:45, and lunch at 12:30 or so. there's no recess, but all the classes have a 10 minute break in between. i still get pretty hungry in the last lesson before lunch though!!


• all the lessons go for about 45 minutes. currently, my lessons include a variety of first, second and third year english lessons (as the english that is being taught is fairly simple, so is the resultant japanese. therefore, it's probably the best class for me to learn something in all day.), calligraphy, physics (i've done the curriculum before, and my teacher knows some english, so ironically enough, i'm usually one of the best in the class!! haha) and PE. i've also got free lessons, where i'll study kanji, or new sentence structures.
• at lunch, i'll have my bento (a variety of cold japanese foods served with rice in a plastic box -- see pictures) with a couple of guys from my class. in it, i'll always have: half a thing of rice, along with some japanese style omelette (they usually have soy sauce and sugar added to them), a pickled dish, sometimes some fresh veges, and a major protein source. in the two photos to the right, up the top, in no particular order, there's: rice, brocolli, omlettes, some cooked ham, and a カレークロッケト, which is a deep fried pocket of mashed potato, with a small amount of curry in the centre. the rice might look a bit bland by itself, but i really love it. i think, almost EVERY day, since i've arrived here more than three months ago, i've had some rice. it's considered sacrilegious to add soy-sauce to the rice; it's like mooning the pope. and you don't leave any rice behind; i've read that while you might not be looked down upon for wasting money, you will be for wasting rice. it's really quite dense, so while it might not be that high in protein, the sheer bulk of it means that it takes up a large space in your stomach, keeping you full for quite a while.

After school lessons finish, i have another short home room, where notices and the like are read to us, and then we have souji. as you've most likely read, if you have any interest in japanese schools at all, instead of hiring of cleaners/janitors to clean the school after hours, the japanese just get all the students and teachers to put in 10 minutes a day into their predetermined job. it means the school stays pretty clean, and they save quite a bit of money too, i'm guessing! :) i have to clean the above ground corridor that connects the two major school buildings. but, as it's covered 24/7, and there are 4 of us sweeping everyday, it stays almost too clean, and we have nothing to sweep up, on most occasions!!

after souji, club starts for about 80% or so of the students who have decided to attend a club. they range from the "an hour and a half of mucking around, twice a week" (read: ESS; ie English Speaking Society), to the draconian, military inspired full-time bootcamp that is baseball. the baseball kids would seriously spend almost all their time playing baseball!! for example, it's currently golden week, the major week of holidays for the entire country. but, the baseball kids have practice from 8am to about 6pm, EVERY DAY!!!!! i'm not sure how they don't go on a baseball induced rampage, killing everything in sight… but, they seem to love it, so it can't be too bad; but it's not for me! :P

my club is judo, a kind of semi-traditional japanese wrestling. some things about it are pretty good, like newaza, which is a kind of glorified version of sibling scuffling/wrestling, but elbow submissions and strangle holds are good!! today, we had judo again, even though it's golden week, as well as having it yesterday too. yesterday, it went from 8:30am until midday, and today went from 9:00am till 12:30pm, but it was at another highschool.

the rundown of yesterday's (fairly normal) practice went as follows:

• warm up, mainly taiso: a type of calisthenics done at the start of every working day for most companies and the start of every physical activity for schoolkids.
• perhaps some ground technique learning, which would go for about a half hour or more
• a rotational system is used to allow everyone in the group to practice against each other, using the moves that they just learnt/relearnt/perfected in a "match" style situation.
• more techniques are practiced, followed by another match kind of thing.
• at the end of the practice, there'll sometimes be a true match, where the timer and scoring system is used, as well as the entire playing space; rather than a small fraction of it.
• then, as a cooldown, the taiso is repeated, and various bows are done to:
• the guy who created judo,
• the teacher,
• and to the other people in your class
• then, you go home!!

i'll usually be home by 6:45, where i'll have dinner and talk to my host family for a bit, have a bath and relax, ready to do it all again the next day.

so yeah, that's my standard day!! :)