My school life in Japan

Hello everybody!

Today I'm going to write about something I suppose a lot of you wonder about. How's school in Japan? And how is it to be an exchange student there?

First of all, let me tell you a bit about my school, Shimokitazawa Seitoku. It's a private girl's-school in Shimokitazawa, which is a fancy, kind of hipster-ish neighborhood not too far from Shibuya and Shinjuku. Since it's private, the rules are a bit different and stricter than those of official Japanese High School. On the other hand, it's much easier to be an exchange student in a private school, since they have more freedom to make a schedule that works for me. 

The rules are many, but I'll list those that made most impact on me:

1. You have to wear the school uniform. Not a problem, really. I wished they were more comfortable though. And the gym-uniform looks so weird! 

2. You can't wear any make-up. *Dramatic Music*

3. You can't go into clothing stores, cafés or any other place that's not related to school on you way to and from school. Since I live an hour away by train, it pretty much means that I can't go shopping or eat out on school days.

4. We have school on Saturdays </3

5. You can't have a part-time job. I don't have a working permission, so it would be illegal anyway.

6. You must leave the school before 6 pm, unless you have club activities. You know, in case you wanted to stay until 7. (What)

Since my current host family lives quite far away from the school, I have to get up at 05.00 every morning to get to school in time (yes, Saturdays as well). I also have to take three to four different trains, and transfer at the two biggest stations in Tokyo. It can be a bit tiring, sometimes. 

As for my school life, it's... easy. I bet many of you thought like: "But aren't they crazy smart in Japan??", and yes, that might be, but that doesn't mean the same is expected from me. In fact, NOTHING is expected from me, except that I follow the school rules, meet up in class, and take an English test next year. That's the only test I'm going to get, by the way. They don't grade me either, since the classes are either in way too complicated Japanese, too easy (the English subjects), or just completely unrelated to my education in Norway. Take Japanese Literature, for example. There's no way I'm capable of analyzing classic Japanese literature, and no one back in Norway cares whether I can or not. Most of the time I'm reading and doing tasks from the Norwegian school books I brought with me. 

By the way, gym in a Japanese girl's school is so darn cute! Everyone is fumbling around and apologizing all the time, even if it wasn't their fault at all. We were playing volleyball, and the girls on my team apologized to the other team when we scored a point. Like, "Sorry for being better than you", or something? 

Another thing I didn't like that much is that we can't shower afterwards, well, because, they don't have showers at school. I told my classmates that in Norway everyone is expected to shower after gym class, and they were like: "You have showers at school??" We don't have a wardrobe either. Since it's a girl's school everyone just changes in the class room. I was mildly confused at first when everyone around me started to take off their clothes in the break! 

Okay, so this became rather short. As you can imagine I need to go to bed quite early, because... 5 o'clock </3. Dropping off a picture of my school:

And the school logo, which was definitively  inspired by some anime:

And my uniform:

Talk to you later!