Life as a Japanese School Girl
1) Uniform
I going to have to pour cold water on everyone's burning questions about my school uniform... No it is NOT
attractive. The made up, curly haired girls in short skirts and baggy socks are from the "bad" schools where there aren't any uniform rules. Nishiko is meant to be 2nd in its region thus it's knee length skirts, no dyed hair, no makeup and no accessories for me.
Yes, you read right... NO MAKEUP!!!
Now don't get me wrong I never went to school back in Sydney looking like a drag queen, but I would use concealer on my blemishes and eyebags (due to my excessive studying into the depths of darkness HA!).
However I'm just not used to not decorating my face for such a extended period of time. I cheat a bit though and curl my eyelashes. Even though I don't put on mascara flipped up eyelashes make eyes look prettier ne? A uniform trick I learnt from the "cool" girls in school was to roll up my skirt 3 to 4 times when teachers weren't looking. I, trying to set a good example for all my fellow classmates, will only roll up my skirt once so it skims my knees. Although if I wasn't scrutinised so much my skirt would have been rolled up 3 times to achieve an mildy attractive length.
Photo of undecorated me eating Toffee Grape which was 100yen!
2) Class
One word here: DIFFICULT
My homeroom 21 (2nd grade, class 1) takes classes like Japanese History, Classical Japanese, Modern Japanese and Biology. I didn't even study Bio in English, learning important facts about an amoeba is certainly harder in a different language.
Classical Japanese is huh? to a Japanese student. To me it's just akfhlpeou8yd9283dhdeioa. You know those Chinese drama's about Ancient China which are like, "Tai wang tai hou jia dao" and "Huang a ma ji xiang" yeah we learn that type of language (only Japanese of course).
Guess which subject I'm following better than anyone else in my class? (No, not including English!!! *glares*) It's Math! Oh the joys of doing Year 11 Math again only at a harder level. They don't use calculators here, so how the hell can they do trig? I'm dropping most of my math classes before I find out.
The photo is of my Japanese History, Modern Japanese and Math book. You can laugh at my scrawny writing.
3) Students
The students are lovely. A lot of them are really shy but the more outgoing ones all come up and say hi to me. At lunchtime everyone moves their desks (cause they have lunch in their homerooms) to sit with their group. I sit with a group of really nice girls who love Kat-tun and NewS. I only remember some of their names though... they all look the same because of the uniform rules, so everyone has the same haircut and colour albeit different lengths so no one has distinguishing features. I remember Maaya, Yoko, Mifuyu, Aya and Noriko. I'm known as メルMeru. It sounds like a cat's name lol.
4) School
Instead of walking to each class, you stay in your homeroom and the teacher comes to you. You also have four pairs of shoes for school. A pair for your way to and from school, a pair of slippers to wear inside the school (2nd years are blue), a pair of sneakers for inside the gym and another pair for the field. We also have a short period where we clean up the school, like take out the rubbish and sweep the floors. I wonder if there are still cleaners?
There is also no bell in between periods!!!
And no this picture is not of my school. It's of some garden around a Temple. It's Sakura season... isn't it beautiful?
5) Club
There are so many different clubs, from Boys Soccer to Tea Ceremony. I registered for Girls Basketball today, although the teacher in charge of the English club requested the ryuugakusei (exchange students) to go to their meetings too. I think we just watch DVDs of Hollywood movies, so it shouldn't be too exhausting.
6) Transport
I walk to school. It takes about 40mins? Good exercise but bad in the rain with a faulty umbrella. You know humans have developed weapons of mass destruction but we still can't manufacture an umbrella that won't flip inside out when there's wind.
Anyway, most students ride a bicycle to school. I'm planning to do so as well once summer hits. After hearing about the story of a previous exchange student whose breaks stopped working as she was going downhill, I decided it probably wasn't the smartest idea to ride a bike to school on the slippery rainy roads.
Another photo of the Temple garden. Pretty PINKU!
I going to have to pour cold water on everyone's burning questions about my school uniform... No it is NOT
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attractive. The made up, curly haired girls in short skirts and baggy socks are from the "bad" schools where there aren't any uniform rules. Nishiko is meant to be 2nd in its region thus it's knee length skirts, no dyed hair, no makeup and no accessories for me.Yes, you read right... NO MAKEUP!!!
Now don't get me wrong I never went to school back in Sydney looking like a drag queen, but I would use concealer on my blemishes and eyebags (due to my excessive studying into the depths of darkness HA!).
However I'm just not used to not decorating my face for such a extended period of time. I cheat a bit though and curl my eyelashes. Even though I don't put on mascara flipped up eyelashes make eyes look prettier ne? A uniform trick I learnt from the "cool" girls in school was to roll up my skirt 3 to 4 times when teachers weren't looking. I, trying to set a good example for all my fellow classmates, will only roll up my skirt once so it skims my knees. Although if I wasn't scrutinised so much my skirt would have been rolled up 3 times to achieve an mildy attractive length.
Photo of undecorated me eating Toffee Grape which was 100yen!
2) Class
One word here: DIFFICULT My homeroom 21 (2nd grade, class 1) takes classes like Japanese History, Classical Japanese, Modern Japanese and Biology. I didn't even study Bio in English, learning important facts about an amoeba is certainly harder in a different language.
Classical Japanese is huh? to a Japanese student. To me it's just akfhlpeou8yd9283dhdeioa. You know those Chinese drama's about Ancient China which are like, "Tai wang tai hou jia dao" and "Huang a ma ji xiang" yeah we learn that type of language (only Japanese of course).
Guess which subject I'm following better than anyone else in my class? (No, not including English!!! *glares*) It's Math! Oh the joys of doing Year 11 Math again only at a harder level. They don't use calculators here, so how the hell can they do trig? I'm dropping most of my math classes before I find out.
The photo is of my Japanese History, Modern Japanese and Math book. You can laugh at my scrawny writing.
3) Students
The students are lovely. A lot of them are really shy but the more outgoing ones all come up and say hi to me. At lunchtime everyone moves their desks (cause they have lunch in their homerooms) to sit with their group. I sit with a group of really nice girls who love Kat-tun and NewS. I only remember some of their names though... they all look the same because of the uniform rules, so everyone has the same haircut and colour albeit different lengths so no one has distinguishing features. I remember Maaya, Yoko, Mifuyu, Aya and Noriko. I'm known as メルMeru. It sounds like a cat's name lol.
4) School
Instead of walking to each class, you stay in your homeroom and the teacher comes to you. You also have four pairs of shoes for school. A pair for your way to and from school, a pair of slippers to wear inside the school (2nd years are blue), a pair of sneakers for inside the gym and another pair for the field. We also have a short period where we clean up the school, like take out the rubbish and sweep the floors. I wonder if there are still cleaners?There is also no bell in between periods!!!
And no this picture is not of my school. It's of some garden around a Temple. It's Sakura season... isn't it beautiful?
5) Club
There are so many different clubs, from Boys Soccer to Tea Ceremony. I registered for Girls Basketball today, although the teacher in charge of the English club requested the ryuugakusei (exchange students) to go to their meetings too. I think we just watch DVDs of Hollywood movies, so it shouldn't be too exhausting.
6) Transport
I walk to school. It takes about 40mins? Good exercise but bad in the rain with a faulty umbrella. You know humans have developed weapons of mass destruction but we still can't manufacture an umbrella that won't flip inside out when there's wind.
Anyway, most students ride a bicycle to school. I'm planning to do so as well once summer hits. After hearing about the story of a previous exchange student whose breaks stopped working as she was going downhill, I decided it probably wasn't the smartest idea to ride a bike to school on the slippery rainy roads.
Another photo of the Temple garden. Pretty PINKU!
Labels: Japan Exchange, School
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