Adjust to Japanese Schools

I knew that studying in a Japanese school wouldn’t be easy, but no one told me I’d be going back to grade 1. Not in content but in structure. Every Monday through Friday I Japanese class from 8:30 until 12:30 followed by a lunch break and then into our business classes in the afternoon. Didn’t like this structure? Tough! There was a policy in place that stated that if you missed more than two classes you would no longer be eligible for the credit. This was an extremely tough concept to deal with coming from University where no one really cared whether you showed up or not.

Course work was fairly difficult as well. I hated speaking with my friends on exchange to various schools across Europe who were constantly telling me about how much free time they had when I was trying my best to balance studying for my daily vocab test, weekly mock conversation checks or bi-weekly chapter tests.

And form what I had observed of my Japanese friends, I actually had it easy. Starting in about grade 5 they begin to take “cram school” after regular school hours the help them prepare for entrance exams. So a normal day looked like this:

7-8:30  à Travel to school

8:30-5 à Day school

5-6:30 à Travel home

7:30-8 à Travel to cram school

8-10:30 à Cram school

10:30-11 à Travel home