We pulled over to give the driver a chance to smoke and to look out over the mountain. Some Thai guy was sitting on a rock with a bagpipe he had made of garbage. Continue reading
The neighbor’s children wake up early on the weekend. Continue reading
There’s nothing simple about turning on an air conditioner in Japan. Continue reading
We’ve been imagining a future for Tetsuo, our imaginary middle-upper-class Japanese child. We’ve assumed a moderate degree of financial difficulty in getting Tetsuo-kun into university, but nothing too major: We’ve been blandly middle-class. Continue reading
We last left our fictional Japanese son, Tetsuo, in his final year of junior high, preparing for high school entrance exams.
You and I – his loving, middle-class parents, and you, my adorable wife, who is almost too infatuated with me – want the best for Tetsuo-kun, so we do what every loving, middle-class parent with practically too-doting wife in Japan does: We send him to cram school, or juku. Continue reading
After spending two years in a Japanese High School and having multiple conversations with people who actually know how things work, I’m happy to return to my journalistic roots by pretending I’m an authority on something I’ve barely scratched the surface of.
So this week, we’ll examine the Japanese Education System in three parts: The System!, Getting into High School and College, and The Cost of School Attendance. We’ll call it, “On Pretending to Know About Education in Japan.”
Today: The System! Continue reading
This Japanese Life. 