Koiyuki
I'm in the editing stages of a essay on Japanese School Life I'm working on for the guild/my Japanese teaching blog, and there are a few points I'm not really certain on/have only seen in more realistic represenations of school life in anime:
-Parents pay for schooling, whether public or private
-Uniforms are custom tailored for students
-They change into school shoes once they get to school, and use those same shoe spaces for letters from other students
-When they reach 10th grade, it's no longer mandatory for them to go to school
-Their colleges are a cakewalk, compared to their high school days
Can anyone confirm or deny this? My research on the topic has been a bit hazy concerning these points, so I'm not if it's fiction or fact or a bit of both
From what I found:
"The public schools from elementary school through Junior high are free and guaranteed entrance (based on where you live) (good area, good school. Not so good area, not so good school) but there are lunch (approx 200yen a day), uniform and school trip fees to pay. If you are in a low income bracket then most of these fees will be paid by your city or ward if you apply before April 20th of each school year!
High Schools are another story! The new government is planing on making public free (tuition only approx 150,000 yen per year) but the extra fees will not be covered (approx 250,000 yen per year)these may be partially covered by your municipality if you are low income, but now with the planed free tuition most are planing on fazing this out!"
Private schools are a completely different manner as they always require some sort of tuition. Let's not get started on all the cram and specialty schools that exist to allow parents to give their children a leg up over someone else to get into a prestigious high school/college starting from a younger age.
Uniforms as far as I know are dependent on the school. I am not sure what you mean by 'custom tailored' as that could mean anything from they are sized and hems are adjusted versus complete control over color scheme.
Yes at most Senior High schools and below, they have school shoes to change into. Don't know about letters however.
Senior high school (10 grade and above) is not exactly mandatory for students. This is where some go on to prestigious senior high schools to prepare for entrance exams. Others go to vocational schools, but most students go through the grueling task of entrance exams.
In my experience while abroad, I've talked to countless friends of mine and they all agree that college is a breeze compared to getting into one (and the high school era). A comparison would be that the Japanese high school times are like college in the US, where high school for the US is like college is for Japanese. I've had a few friends that studied abroad in college in the US and said they had a more challenging workload than they did back in the classes in Japan. Studying abroad in Japan myself, I was taking between 14-17 credit hours over there, but it never felt like I was taking that many because of the course work and expectations on students.
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