If you've watched more than a few anime series, you'll know that clubs are an important part of life in Japanese schools. Clubs are more than just a fun thing for students to do, they're tools of society building, and in junior high school (also known as "a machine for turning open-minded, creative kids into straitlaced Japanese adults who conform to everyone else") it's required that students join a club to build character. Since Japanese students study only with students of their same grade, clubs are the only setting in which students will interact with their senpai and kohai, or upperclassmen and underclassmen, in social settings. In high school (which is not part of compulsory education, and is usually more flexible than junior high), clubs are not required, and students can opt to join the kikaku-bu, or the "going home after school club" if they want. I recently visited my son's high school, and the posters advertising the various clubs (light music club, etc.) made me smile. In my own high school life, there were almost no clubs, unless you were on the football team or the cheerleading squad or in brass band. I wish I could go back in time and re-live high school over again -- I'd create an awesome Genshiken (Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture) club that would rock.
If I could do high school or university over again, this would be my life. Oh wait, it is.
8 comments:
I like this side of Japanese school life. It seems to coincide with the culture that you "MUST have a hobby". I work in a school (ages 8-12) and the after school cooking club is so fun and a good chance for the children to learn new skills. Do teachers help to run the after school clubs in Japan, or do the students manage it themselves?
The teachers are required to oversee a club and it can take a lot of their time. If you watch K-On! you can see this, the girls convince their teacher Sawa-chan to be the teacher for the light music club.
I did do this in High School, I was the secretary of my school's own genshiken.
Man those were good times, You just made me put the nostalgia goggles on.
I had "club activities" during highschool, all of them were during class hours but outside the school, mainly in the arcades in front the school or some streets away in a friend's place playing Dungeons and Dragons.
That's why it took me 6 years to end highschool, the best 6 years of my life ^^.
Oh I want to go back to then, I don't play as much D&D now.
Interesting - another similarity between the UK and Japan. My secondary school had clubs for astronomy, electronics, a good choir, drama club, and quite a few others, as well as football (soccer), hockey, cricket, athletics teams. All run by teachers in their spare time - either at lunch time or after school.
Interesting, Steve. Next thing you know, the Japanese will be calling the thing that covers the engine of a car a "bonnet" (actually they already do). ^_^. They also use dust box, water closet/W.C., and N.G. (which I always believed was an old British way to say "no good").
Interesting, Steve. Next thing you know, the Japanese will be calling the thing that covers the engine of a car a "bonnet" (actually they already do). ^_^. They also use dust box, water closet/W.C., and N.G. (which I always believed was an old British way to say "no good").
I had math club. "Mathletes", I think it was called. Actually, there's a whole structure of math competitions across the US. I got to attend the American Regional Math League competition representing the New York Metropolitan Area team! We actually had to take a long bus ride and stay in a hotel. There were two simultaneous competitions, one for each side of the US, linked by satellite...good times.
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