Japanese High School

[YeroN]

Hello fellow JF's!

I need some informations about Japanese Highschools(the last 2 grades before Graduating).

1. What Subjects are they teaching? How does their schedule look like?
2. Are there many sports to do (baseball, basketball, tennis, etc.) or only few. Which sports are common?
3. Is it like in the US, that the school has some kind of "School spirit" and that every school has his own sports team and that they compete against eachother? Do schools have their own orchestra?

Thx in advance =-D

[MMM]

Originally Posted by YeroN

Hello fellow JF's!

I need some informations about Japanese Highschools(the last 2 grades before Graduating).

1. What Subjects are they teaching? How does their schedule look like?
2. Are there many sports to do (baseball, basketball, tennis, etc.) or only few. Which sports are common?
3. Is it like in the US, that the school has some kind of "School spirit" and that every school has his own sports team and that they compete against eachother? Do schools have their own orchestra?

Thx in advance =-D

1. Japanese, English, Math, Science, History, Geography, Home-Ec, etc.
2. Many sports clubs to choose from. Baseball, basketball, volleyball, tennis, etc.
3. Yes, there are games against other schools. Schools have their own bands.

[YeroN]

Hey thx for the fast reply, some other questions:

1. They don't teach Spanish or French do they? And if yes is it common or rather rare?
2. From when till when does the school go and when do they do the sports/orchestra/etc.? Could you write an example like:
8.00-12 school 12-13 break 13-16 school 16-18 sports/music
3. Can you choose both, orchestra and sport team, or only one of them?

[MMM]

Originally Posted by YeroN

Hey thx for the fast reply, some other questions:

1. They don't teach Spanish or French do they? And if yes is it common or rather rare?
2. From when till when does the school go and when do they do the sports/orchestra/etc.? Could you write an example like:
8.00-12 school 12-13 break 13-16 school 16-18 sports/music
3. Can you choose both, orchestra and sport team, or only one of them?

1. You would have a hard time finding a high school that teaches Spanish or French.

2. 8.00-15:00 school 15:30-17:30 sports, band, club

3. You could not be on a team and in the school band at the same time. You could attend a music class, though.

[Tangram]

This is rather old, but still fairly accurate.

Archived:Contemporary Research in the United States, Germany, and Japan on Five Education Issues: Structure of the Education System, Standards in Education, the Role of School in Adolescent's Lives, Individual Differences Among Students, and Teachers

[Colin]

-Random-

I heard from someone that another class they teach is Chinese Literature because they are able to read the literature with their Kanji knowledge

[mrnicekid]

the subject depends on the school, but basic subjects like math, science, national language, english, geography, history etc is a must.

i used to attend a technical high school in Nagano (国立長野工業高等専門学校), and because it is a technical high school; history, biology and home-ed is not very focused.

we focus more on subjects like probability & statistics, add. math, system control, electric & electronics, basic programming, IT, robotics, CAD　design, engineering ethics etc.

and we also have extra-curricular activities just like any other normal high school, and we also join them when there is a national competition like soccer, volleyball, robot competition, brass band etc. i joined the tennis club, english communication club and cultural exchange circle (well this one i was actually forced to join, just because i'm a foreign student, but it was cool).

the schedule is quite packed.

basically i went to school 5 days a week from monday to friday and class starts from 7:50 to 16:00. lunch break is 50 minutes and one subject is 90 minutes each, with a 10 minutes break between them.

i don't know about American high schools, but I guess this kind of schedule is quite normal compared to other countries.

[NOTE]
What I meant by Technical High School here is the National College Of Technology

[MMM]

Originally Posted by Colin

-Random-

I heard from someone that another class they teach is Chinese Literature because they are able to read the literature with their Kanji knowledge

No, Japanese people cannot read Chinese. They may be able to recognize characters, but the way Chinese characters are used is very different than Japanese.

Japanese adopted Chinese characters in the same way English adopted the Roman alphabet. That doesn't mean we are able to read Greek, though.

[cridgit001]

But that would be so awesome if we could.

[kirakira]

Originally Posted by MMM

No, Japanese people cannot read Chinese. They may be able to recognize characters, but the way Chinese characters are used is very different than Japanese.

Japanese adopted Chinese characters in the same way English adopted the Roman alphabet. That doesn't mean we are able to read Greek, though.

Japanese adopted Chinese characters based on the now defunct Classical Written Chinese.

Classical Chinese can be easily read by Japanese and Koreans and it is taught in high school as part of Kanbun class in Japan. Elementary Classical Chinese grammar and Japanese conversion rules is taught as part of the curriculum.

Classical Chinese is completely different to Modern spoken Chinese. Any educated Japanese person would know who 李白 and 杜甫 is. Chinese poetry are also composed by Japanese and Korean scholars even today and it can be interpreted by both Chinese, Korean and Japanese without any translation.

However, Classical Chinese is just as difficult regardless whether you know Chinese, Japanese or Korean. Just because you can speak modern spoken Chinese, doesn't really give you any advantage in interpreting Classical Chinese.