Kurokawa Junior High and Nakajo Senior High - Tainai City

I am putting two days together with this post. We visited Kurokawa Junior High School on Thursday. Junior High in Japan is 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, except they call it 1st, 2nd, 3rd for this level. These are the last years of compulsory education in Japan. Most students do go on to senior high school but entrance into specific high schools is very competitive and is based on the scores students receive in their March exams of 9th grade.

Kurokawa Junior High is quite small, about 160 students, because it is in a more rural section of Tainai City area. It is nestled in a beautiful mountain valley and we had lovely weather for our visit. I could not stop looking at the view! The students had an assembly for us and we were asked to prepare a song for them. We sang “What a Wonderful World” then the students sang for us a song that was partially in Japanese and partially in English. It was really touching.

We had less contact with students during classes in the Junior High (and Senior High, too). The students stay in one classroom all day and the various subject teachers come to them. They get a ten-minute break between each class and a fairly long break after lunch as well. We ate lunch with the students and all of us were really amused when the administration put on a “Carpenters” CD from the 70’s! We thought they had put it on because they thought we would like it but actually the students like The Carpenters! Can you imagine the riot that would occur if we did that in an American Middle School cafeteria?

Nakajo High School was our final school visit and all of us were really ready for them to be over. The high school students as a whole were much more like American students in attitude, dress (even though they had uniforms), hairstyles, accessories, etc. We found it amusing that the boys had more elaborate hair than the girls! Our overall impression of this school was that most students didn’t really seem to want to be there. The teachers said quite candidly that this was a very low high school. It is difficult to express my impressions without sounding judgmental and we don’t necessarily know the whole story.

This was our last night at the Royal Tainai Park Hotel. I will miss the great accommodations, restaurant, public baths and beautiful surroundings.

10/29/2007 : view on map : permalink : add a comment