[jasonbvr]

Yes, sarcasm. The form of humor that suits Japanese the best just happens to be the one that they rarely understand. The Japanese taste in humor leans heavily to the slapstick, act like an idiot kind. But that is another story.

Onto more fun stuff about school life in Japan...

I compare Japanese school life a lot to the US because that is obviously what I know best. Here are some key differences between the US and Japan that are not academic.

Japanese students, outside their lectures, operate with a greater degree of autonomy and freedom. For example, in a US school when the students begin arriving in the morning the teachers are in the classrooms and hallways which are scattered throughout the school's grounds. The reason is that many teachers in the US have their desks and workspace inside their own classroom and secondly have to act as guards to keep an eye on the kids. In Japan we have the teachers' room. This is like the main office in a US school except every teacher has a desk in here. When we get to school, most if not all the teachers are in the teachers' room. Some kids will be out in the playing field doing club activities or the gym, but they will be unsupervised. The teachers have a meeting every morning while the students are all coming into the school. Afterwards, the head teacher for each class goes to their class to give a sort of daily breifing to the students. Then they return to the teachers' room to gather some things to go off to the first class. In the US, you would be lucky if some idiot hadn't burned the school to the ground by that point.

Another difference between the US and Japan, the bad kids. Bad kids in my school are nothing more than a bunch of kids with attention deficit disorder who goof off in class. I will admit, I don't really have any really bad kids, but even the worst I have heard of do not compare to those in the US. For me, the goofball kids in Japan are a necessary evil. When you go to school as much as the Japanese do, comic relief even if it is dirupting is necessary to make it through the day. So as much as I hate having lessons interrupted and really want every kid to get through school, the jackass confusing his B's and V's sometimes is really nice.

Other bad kids, here are some examples. In Japan, we don't really have suspension. The other week, I heard one of my friends talk about kids riding their bikes through the halls and denting up one teacher's car. In the US, there would've been legal action and lawsuits for the second action. I have no idea what they did to these kids, but I doubt it was much. And the ones that did it, have been acting this way since elementary school. The thing is, Japan completely reversed their position on punishment in school. They went from one extreme to the other. Whereas these kids would've been beaten in the old days (very bad), now there is almost zero repercussions now. Now they get a stern talking too.

Anyways, it is lunch time so maybe I will write more later.