Japanese High School
 

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.

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.

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

-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

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

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.

But that would be so awesome if we could.

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.

yeah one who knows Kanji in the Japanese language might be able to make out the meaning of Chinese sentences, but it would be very hard because the Kanjis in Chinese language is much more complicated and the variations is much wider and bigger in numbers.

and actually, there is such subject where they read Chinese literature/scriptures, and not many student would took that class because it requires an advanced knowledge of Kanji.

I suspect it's because it's more akin to learning Latin, i.e. not very useful. And for Japanese people who really want to learn Chinese, learning the Classical version absolutely does not help them communicate with people in China so they just go straight to the point and take modern Chinese instead.

Modern Chinese has more 当て字 than Japanese and half the characters used are used just to express sound, not meaning, bit like kana. For languages like Korean and Japanese that uses Kanji purely to express meaning, it will totally confuse them.

some might say that classical chinese is useless, but i just think that the whole literature subject is equally useless. :P

why take literature when you could take english?

anyways, the kids that took chinese literature in my school at that time were all girls... i guess boys don't like subjects that has no practical use :)

You'll find on the other side of the pond, Chinese students are equally not too excited by Classical Chinese.

Still for Japanese literature scholars in Japan, you'll find most of them would know quite a bit of Classical Chinese and some knowledge of the modern bastardized version.

This is because every so often, you'll find hidden bits of Chinese grammar lurking in Japanese.
日々是好日 (ひびこれこうじつ) comes to mind. Everyday (日々) is (是)　a good day　（好日）. 是（これ） here means です.

i have zero knowledge of the Chinese language, but i guess it can be expected for the Chinese language to have an influence on the Japanese language, because Japanese civilization used to look up to Chinese civilization.

anyways, i'm impressed with your knowledge on both languages. are you Chinese?