Juku Kids

I have been slacking with the blog lately, I know. But whenever I wanna write I am at school and I can't just hop on the computer and start typing a way. Let see, what's going on…..

I love the tea lady at one of my schools. She is like my grandmother! She has this sweet face and she helps me study kanji when I have time in between classes. She even brought in a kanji work book for me to study out of! What a sweet lady. She is always teasing me and talking to me. She speaks no English and I don't speak Japanese so I just listen to her and throw in the "uhh hu" and the "really" when I think they are appropriate. She is lovely.

OK so sometimes when the kids are acting up and playing around and not focusing on the lesson, it makes me mad. As you can imagine. I don't yell at them or anything, but I get frustrated. Well today I was on the platform waiting for my train to go home after school. I always see these kids with different backpacks (blue) from the standard ones the kids in the public schools use. I always thought they went to privet school that's why their bags were different. But I was looking at this one little boy also waiting on the platform and I realized he went to my school and is one of the kids I have a hard time with always acting up during my lessons. I realized that those kids don't go to a different privet school at all, but are attending "juku" or cram school after school gets out.

For those of you not familiar with Japanese society, juku is a privet school that kids attend for often several hours, for advanced study. Seeing him made me think about the whole juku situation and his situation in particular. He has just been at school from 8 – 3:30 or something and now at 5:00 is going back to school and will probably be there till 9 or 10 at night. I have seen kids riding home on the subway at 11 at night with juku backpacks on. So what happens is that kids play during school hours. They don't pay attention, they sleep and mess around during lessons because they are attending class at night. It's a really messed up system. But it has taught me not take it personally when the kids screw off in my class because, like that 4^th grader, they are probably going to have to be in class all evening while I am at home watching TV. Poor kids!

I don't know what the deal is with all that. But the Japanese really do work hard! I see kids in their school uniforms on Sat and Sun. and on holidays all the time. Obviously they are still going into school for club or sports even on weekends and holidays. It makes me realize how lazy we are. I could not handle all of that. A Japanese friend of mine said when she was new to her job at a Japanese marketing firm she would have to be there at 7am and would catch the last train home sometimes at 12:00 at night!!! That is standard! WOW.

Well I will try to be better at posting on here, don't give up on me! I love writing in this blog.

See you tomorrow desu.

Marjorie