[Sangetsu]

"The grass is always greener on the other side..." Young American (and European) people don't know how well they have it. Their lives are so easy that they actually get bored with the wonderful lives they are lucky enough to have.

The lives of my students in Japan are much different than the lives of high school students elsewhere. Japanese students get to wear uniforms to school, but so what? They are not permitted to dye their hair, wear jewelry, or to offend the dress code in any way. They come to school at 8am, study until 3pm, have club activities for another two hours, and then go to juku (cram school) for another couple of hours. If they are lucky they will get home by 9:30 at night. And add the fact that many students attend school 6 or 7 days a week, and you can see that there isn't often time to spend doing anything else.

School is a tough grind to pass the university entrance exams, and even if you are lucky enough to pass these exams you will only end up qualifying to attend a sub-standard university where you won't learn anything more than it takes to be hired as an overworked and underpaid salaryman. Of the world's top 25 universities this year, none are in Japan, almost all are in America, with the remainder being in Europe.

Am I trying to burst anyone's bubble? Perhaps, but if you can't be happy where you are now, don't think that simply changing your location is going to make you feel any better. A great number of people come to Japan with high expectations and then find it to be nothing like they expected. Some do enjoy living here, while others come to hate it.