Life in Japan

From BRRP

Contents 1 Transport & Travel 1.1 Dialects 2 High School Life 2.1 Comparison to Other Countries 2.2 Cram School 3 Misc. 3.1 Holidays/Celebrations

Transport & Travel

• Depending on how far the school is from your character's house, they'll walk or take the bus/train to school. Depending on how badly they wanted to go to their high school, they might live pretty far from it and have to commute a long way to get there every day. So all the kids in an OC class may not necessarily live close to each other.

Dialects

Every area in Japan speaks a different regional dialect. The most famous is Kansai-ben, usually used in comedy, but others include Nagoya-ben, Kyushu-ben, Okinawa-ben and Tokyo-ben (Standard Japanese). Because the differences between each dialect can be pretty big, a person from one area visiting another area might have trouble understanding.

High School Life

• High school in Japan lasts three years after three years of junior high. OC classes are usually first year high schoolers rather than third year junior high schoolers, like in canon. More on this below.

• Students have to take entrance exams to get into high school. So it can be assumed that for the OC classes, a) even the awful students somehow pulled some good test grades out of their butts and got in that way, or b) the school was just easy to get into. Or possibly, c) for a special experimental school like V7OC's, students got in based on something other than exam scores.

• Kids have a ton of reasons for choosing to try and get into a certain high school. It could be to help them get into a specific university, because of commute time, the school's reputation, parental expectations, because a friend wants to get in, or even because of the way the uniform looks. Orrr maybe your character just didn't care! XD

• Students are not allowed to wear their outdoor shoes inside the school. They drop their outdoor shoes in a cubby by the entrance and wear special indoor shoes during school hours.

• Generally, the school day starts at around 8 in the morning and lasts until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. However, after-school clubs and cleaning will keep students at school for a couple hours extra.

• On that note, students are encouraged to join a club at the start of the school year. The students are also encouraged to run the clubs themselves, without a teacher's help, although of course a teacher will sometimes supervise depending on what type of club it is (a basketball club & team, for instance, will need a coach).

• While Japanese schools do have janitors, the students and teachers have to pitch in to clean the school after each school day. This will be anything from sweeping floors to basic tidying up to gardening out the front of the school.

• Japanese high schoolers don't move from class to class - instead, their various teachers do. The class will move for specialized classes like phys ed or art, but for the most part they stay in their homeroom all day - most of them eat lunch in the classroom, too. Because of this, a homeroom class will get to know each other pretty well, unlike in an American high school, for instance, where a homeroom only spends a few minutes together a day.

• Curriculum will pretty much be as follows, with some exceptions/changes depending on circumstances: Modern Japanese, Japanese history, writing, math, sciences (chem, bio and earth science), home economics, phys ed and health, government, and art.

• Boys wear white T-shirts and colored shorts to gym class. Girls wear white T-shirts and bloomers. Both boys and girls have a winter gym uniform also. Boys and girls are usually split up for phys ed, so there will be a girls' phys ed teacher and a boys' phys ed teacher having classes at the same time.

• Schools have strict behavioral and dress codes that they try to enforce on their students, even when they're not in school. For instance, students traveling to and from school will be expected to give up their seats on the train and remain standing, or they won't be allowed to stop at any shops on the way to or from school. Some schools even set curfews. Of course, it's hard to actually enforce these kinds of rules, especially when the kids are no longer on school property, so whether your character would actually follow them or not is up to you. Technically, they're also not allowed to loiter around in their uniforms after school - i.e. they should go straight home. A lot of students don't really do this. At all.

• Junior high school girls generally don't do this, but by high school, girls usually start to modify their school uniforms - usually this takes the form of shortening the knee length skirt to mid-thigh or shorter, but there are others as well. Long/baggy socks, despite popular belief, are only worn nowadays by ganguro girls, i.e. the dark-skinned girls in clown makeup hanging around 109 and Centre in Shibuya every damn day because they have nowhere else to be.

• There are two different school uniforms in every school - the summer and winter uniforms. Students start wearing the summer uniform on the first of April, traditionally, and winter clothing on the first of October. Uniform rules are very strictly enforced - even hairstyles are often policed by the schools.

Comparison to Other Countries

Japanese high school lasts for three years - age 15-18. So first years are usually fifteen-turning-sixteen, second years are usually sixteen-turning-seventeen, and third years are seventeen-turning-eighteen. OC classes in BRRP tend to be first year high schoolers.

• Comparing this to an American school, the OC classes would be tenth graders, or sophomores.

• This also applies to Canadian and Australian schools, where the OC classes would be in grade 10.

• Comparing this to a English school, the OC classes would be in year eleven. Scottish, they'd be in fourth year.

Cram School

Not everybody attends cram school, but it's pretty common. These are private schools that offer lessons after regular school hours and on weekends. Kids will attend for different reasons, most often to improve their exam scores or to get extra help studying their regular school curriculum. Going to cram school's not as bad as it sounds, though. Kids don't have to wear their school uniforms and usually have friends that attend. There's also more interaction between the students and teachers.

For kids who don't want to go to cram school, there are other options, such as private tutors. There are also supplementary textbooks/study guides that are associated with cram school. So not having your OC attend doesn't necessarily mean they'll be behind the rest of the class.

Misc.

Holidays/Celebrations

• Shichi-Go-San: Traditional rite of passage celebration in Japan for young kids (3 year old boys and girls, 5 year old boys, and 7 year old girls). The kids will dress in kimono and visit shrines to pray for a long, happy life; the family also takes pictures of the kids and the kids get special candy which symbolizes longevity.

• New Year's: New Year is the biggest Japanese celebration - it's generally a time to spend with family or friends, either at home eating traditional food called osechi and playing games or visiting a temple to... eat traditional food called osechi. Children will often receive presents of money from relatives, but your OCs are probably too old for this. Sucks to be them. The 'firsts' of the new year are important too - many people will drive a pretty long way to find a good place to watch the 'first sunrise of the year', for example. First dream and first smile are others.

• Coming of Age (Seijin no Hi): Celebrated by everyone who will reach adulthood (age twenty) within the year. Ceremonies are held on the second Monday in January. AKA, something your OC will probably never get to do, but maybe their older siblings have. :D

• When a girl gets her first period, the entire family will eat a meal of red rice and beans to celebrate.

• School festival: Every school in the country has a festival once a year (maybe twice - I think once) around the end of October, beginning of November. This will consist of stage performances, skits, stalls selling food and the like and sometimes even celebrities visiting the school to give interviews or perform (this is probably only the case with big universities in large cities).

• Rokuyou: Not exactly a celebration, but these are the series of six days that show what kind of luck will be had that day. No one pays attention to these except when they're planning a funeral/wedding/something similarily important. Despite this, they're on every Japanese calendar. For example, today is Taian, the luckiest day of the six. Which basically means shops are going to open and people are going to get married today.