Tour of a Typical Japanese Junior High School.

Today we'll take a quick tour through a Japanese junior high school. Students are generally required to walk or ride bikes to school and getting dropped off by your parents might show that you couldn't get up on time or make it look like you're too lazy to walk, so even if you're running late your parent is probably going to drop you off a block or two away and make you walk the rest. Because of this you won't see a bunch of cars piled up in the school zone and there are also no school buses so the grounds around the school aren't really designed to facilitate a lot of traffic. Before we get to school I want to point out that I'm not going to be talking in terms of whether I think this country or that does xyz better, this is just a tour where you get to see some things that you normally wouldn't. So for safety you're required to get off your bike and walk once you get to the front gate. Even if no one is around you have to do it and the principal and vice principal can usually see the main gate from their workstations so I never really see any kids trying to break this rule. There are designated places to park, usually the higher grade level the student is the closer to the front gate they get to park. Most schools have some kind of tree or stone monument in the entrance but this one has a little fish pond so we can stop and say hi to the fish on the way in. Whenever you enter into a building in Japan and see an elevation change which is really common in schools and in most Japanese homes, what that's signaling is that you need to change from the shoes you've been wearing outside to shoes or slippers that are used exclusively inside. Teachers will have their own shoe lockers for this and students usually have shoe cubbies as well. For visitors the shoes are usually left outside and they'll get a pair of slippers from the school to wear while they do their visitation. On the guest side of things there's a help desk window so the office staff can see and interact with anyone who's coming or going. There's a map so you can figure out where you need to be. On the back wall you can see a lot of the certificates that have been awarded and of course up front are all the trophies so you can be appropriately amazed at how wonderful your school is. And if you are a visitor you have nice school color slippers here with the logo and everything. Very fancy. Going inside we can immediately see some of the projects or lessons on display. Schools have begun teaching students about sustainable development goals and both the entryway display and the staircases put these moral lessons in places where students will be sure and see them every day. Before we get to the classrooms I want to show you the faculty room and I want to preface this by saying that most schools' faculty rooms are not this nice. This is a really nice faculty room and each grade level will have its own teacher's room which in most cases kind of doubles as a storage room. You can see that we have tons of books, there's paper, markers, and everything's just piled up somewhere. But we've also got a couple sinks, there's a kettle so if you want to make tea or something you can, and there's also a fridge. So even though you're never supposed to eat anything in front of students sometimes you need to keep yourself alert and make sure that you can focus throughout the day. It also helps if you're in a school where you can take a breath, enjoy a good view, get some fresh air, and have a couple minutes to yourself to refocus on whatever you're trying to get done. But teachers don't really have any private space for working. This setup is supposed to make it easier to collaborate with one another across subjects or communicate needs for different duties and help everyone get along by befriending their co-workers beyond what you'd get just passing each other in the hallways once in a while. You also never know when you might need to swap to formal wear for a surprise parent meeting or something like that, so you have a locker and a changing curtain for when the business casual just isn't enough. Across from the faculty room are the bathrooms, and yes I made sure no one was in here before I took the video. And you can see that the walls and slippers are gender-coded, the girl's restroom was pink, it'll typically be pink or yellow, the boy's restroom will either be blue or green. This is another place where you have to change your shoes, and the bathrooms tend to be pretty well ventilated and have either windows or fans to the outside. As you can see there are also traditional squat style Japanese toilets, those are still very common, and it's a little strange at first but it is pretty nice when you don't have to touch anything. Something that stands out immediately as you move through the hallways are the faucets everywhere. Students will generally use these around lunchtime, both to wash their hands before lunch and to brush their teeth afterward. And it's kind of dark in the halls here since it's a weekend, but note that all the walls both to the outside and the classrooms are windows. The halls are pretty narrow since things are stored here. On the right there are a bunch of lunch serving tables and there's a tablet cabinet, but we also have little cubbies built into the walls which are usually used for storing sports team equipment. As we go on we've got a media room and a PTA room here on the left, but the interesting thing about this school is this gigantic open floor it has for assemblies. This is amazingly rare in Japan. Schools don't typically have any kind of auditorium at all and all the meetings are held in the gymnasium, so students really just have to sit on the floor in the gym. And I wish more schools had something like this because it's a convenient place for clubs to meet on rainy days, but I also have a lot of great memories from playing games with students here after lunch when they have their free period. As we pass the stairs you can see some hampers for trash. As you might be aware, students are responsible for cleaning the schools in Japan. There are no custodians here, so it's all up to you to keep your school bright and shiny. And on the other end of the school you can start to see how much natural light we get, unlike my room in the U.S. which had zero windows. Looking left we can see a dumbwaiter for the school lunch crew to transport food. There are no cafeterias and students all eat at their desks in their classrooms, so you'll see one of those in every school. You can see that the doors are all sliding doors which saves some space and reduces the risk of injury. And the glass is also transparent since there's no fear of a lockdown situation. Other teachers or administrators can come and take a look in, observe your class, or look for a student and not have to interrupt the lesson. The rest of the hallway windows are frosted so students aren't able to distract their classmates easily when they walk by. As we enter the classroom you can probably see several differences from western classrooms almost immediately. The desks are wall-to-wall with about 35 students per class. Unfortunately that's not different at all, but in the back every student has a cubby for storing their bags. In Japan teachers are the ones who travel between classrooms while students stay put in the same desk next to the same kids every day all day long. And as a teacher mostly standing up in front during content delivery there's not really a teacher's desk because it's not your classroom, so you'll do most of your work in the faculty room we visited earlier. And I've never been big on animation, but for those of you who love it, here it is. It's the protagonist's chair. I always wondered why every main character sits in the back left next to the window. Maybe it's just because it's the best spot. You're not right next to the teacher and you get a great view. Well, it's a great view of our gym anyway, but basically every junior high school gym in Japan is exactly the same and we'll look at that in a little bit. But as far as the inside of the room goes, there's not much bonus stimulation since teachers move between rooms. There's no decoration that makes this the history room or that the math room. There's just a whiteboard and the day's schedule. From the teacher's point of view there's not much to see either. It's typically either a writing assignment or a calligraphy assignment of some kind hanging on the wall, as well as another schedule just for special events. It's pretty bare bones, but as long as you plan your lessons well it's enough. If your school's in a city maybe there's not much interesting to see, but since I've always been working in a countryside, I wonder a lot of the times how anybody with a straying attention span gets anything done because I constantly find myself patrolling around the room, helping out the kids, checking problems and that sort of thing. And then I just get to the back of the room and stop for a second and soak up the view. And I think no matter how anybody feels about Japan's culture or history or politics, nobody can say that this is not an absolutely breathtaking country. To make up for all the daydreaming, you might expect the libraries to be packed, but if you have a teacher brain you've probably already noticed that there are basically no seats here. In western schools we usually have huge libraries furnished with lots of technology and they can host a few classes at a time. Well in Japan our library isn't even open during the regular school day outside of lunchtime. You can see that there's a sink and a closet full of cleaning tools, and if you have free time you can study with a nice view. But this is a space that clearly was not designed with teaching in mind and the selection of books is very minimal. School libraries here are something students would just have to use on their own time, so as you can imagine they don't get much traffic. In fact the only time I've ever seen the library used, it wasn't being used for a library at all. It would be lunchtime when students are just in here socializing, or some kid after school might be using it as a place where he can take a makeup test or practice a speech or presentation or something like that, but it doesn't see a lot of use as a library. As I mentioned the big hall can be used for assemblies, but most schools don't have that. Most places just have everything take place in the student's favorite area, the gym. And you might have noticed that some kids were practicing sports there today and I didn't want to film them, but I can show you some pictures that are just blurry enough to hide people's identities and you can get an idea. Here you can see students are separated by boys and girls even during assemblies. In this school it's being done by class, but in the next school I'm going to show you it's done by the entire grade level. And every gym has the Japanese flag and the school crest on stage. And other than that and a couple basketball hoops, there's basically nothing. Assemblies are conducted with students just sitting on the floor and this is the same place that they'll do their entrance ceremony and three years later it's the same place that they'll do their graduation ceremony as well. And since everything is so spartan, you can imagine that PE teachers have to use a lot of creativity. And if we go outside you're going to see how valuable that creativity will be. Schools don't usually have a track or turf or anything really. It's just an empty gymnasium and a completely barren field. And that's the same situation in elementary school, so the children are complete pros at inventing a game with a random ball and some lines drawn in the dirt. And really if you can get good at a sport playing in the dirt, imagine how much better you're going to be on an actual sports field. Finally we can take a quick stroll around the grounds and see a little more of the school. The wheelbarrows here under the stairs are for students who are assigned lawn work for their cleanup tasks. The weeds are pretty overgrown right now because we're just coming out of summer break, so they have a lot of work ahead of them. And they're lucky that it's not a very grassy campus because if it were they would also have to mow all the lawns and rake up all the clippings and do a lot of that stuff. So I guess that's the silver lining to most of our campus being stone and dirt. And up here on the left hand side you can see that this is the external bay for the school lunch delivery. There's usually some kind of passage like this for them so that they don't have to block the front of the school off in case of an emergency. Ambulances and that kind of thing can still get in. To the right we have a fairly new annex building that has a computer lab, some science labs, stuff like that that couldn't be facilitated in the original building. There's also a shed for storing groundskeeping equipment. Remember all the cleanup is done by students and they usually have one professional that will help with bigger things like this tree here that's braced up. On the left you can see some cloths out to dry. Those are probably for scrubbing floors which the kids will have done on hands and knees without any fancy appliances to help out. And I mentioned at the start that you have to change your shoes anytime there's an elevation change, but there are also some peculiar places to be mindful of like this one. The tracks are for cars and are considered outside where the rest of the covered walkway is considered inside. And the belief that outside dirt and inside dirt are different is non-negotiable so you just have to accept it and mind where you step. I think the architect pictured a really lively campus that gave students a lot of freedom, but the schools basically immediately shut down access to all these external stairways and tagged them as fire exits. So this part of campus is sadly never really enjoyed by anyone else. But it's nice to pass through on the way out and sometimes you get a nice moment of peace where you hear the choir practicing or the sports club kids cheering each other on. These are sliding gates that will be closed and locked in the evening after the last of the faculty heads home. And speaking of locking up, there are two places I can't really show you, but behind the gym here we have a building with straw mats inside for a karate club the school doesn't have anymore and a swimming pool because every school in Japan has access to a pool and is required to teach kids how to swim. That's all for today, I hope you found this tour interesting and have been able to learn some of the differences between Japan schools and the ones you are used to. And special thanks to West Junior High School for allowing me to film on their campus.