Basics
From Secondheaven
Fun fact: Japanese students are in school 60 days more than American students. 269 days a year!
Contents |
The Basics
In this section we'll cover the major differences between western and Japanese schools. We've used several source texts in determining this information, but in the end of things we had to make a few tweaks to allow for a playable environment!
General Students
The student body at a Japanese school is largely the same as it would be at a Western school. There are the slackers and the brainiacs, the jocks and all other classes inbetween. However, these differences are much more fine-tuned than in a Western school due to uniforms. Japanese students do wear uniforms, and there are codes of conduct as to how they should wear their hair, and other such accessories. In this RPG we'll be lax compared to a real Japanese school, but we'll still have some rules to enforce.
Students are organized by test scores in Japan into Homerooms. These are numbered by your year in school, 1, 2, and 3, (Sophomore, Junior, and Senior respectively), and the level at which you graduated.
- A high level student in their First Year (Sophomore Year of School) will be in class room 1-1, the first being Year 1 and the second number being Classroom 1.
Classes are also organized by your focus - Science or Math - but this is only in year three. Every year according to your grades you may get reshuffled, but if everyone performs the same they end up being in the same classes throughout. Your levels in your math courses and science courses are determined by an Entrance Exam, which place you in room 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, ecetera. The lower the number on the scale, the lower levels of math and other such classes you'll be taking.
A Japanese classroom generally averages around 45-50, and isn't so vague as to only include members based on their test scores. However, for our game, you'll offer us your testing rank and we'll place you in a homeroom based on this rank - more on this in the character building section!
General Classroom Stuff
The students are visited by their core teachers daily. The only time they leave their rooms are for PE, Art, History, and any class that requires special equipment like lab equipment. Even lunches are often had within a classroom, with desks being organized together. More on these points in their specific sections.
The most important thing to know about Homerooms is that they act as small self-governing units of a larger, largely student-run organization. Out of a typical Japanese school, the Student Council and other refracting student clusters run sixty percent of the school and organization - down to cleaning classrooms after school!
General Teachers
Teachers visit classrooms for the subjects during fourty-five minute to hour long class blocks. They bring their supplies with them on a cart, and are known throughout the school as "The English Teacher" or "The Science Teacher." In larger Japanese schoools there are more teachers than just one - but for the purposes of Second Heaven, we'll assume Mr. Lagus teaches all PE courses, etc.
A teacher is responsible for clubs after school for various activities, and they are also "responsible" for reviewing the work each of the individual homerooms does for the week. If a Cleaning Section doesn't clean properly for a week, this could come to reflect badly on the teacher given the responsibility of that homeroom. However, teachers are not actually ever within their homeroom - merely, they are like supervisors at a multi-tier corporation. They will notice these things, and check up on the paper work, but are hardly ever seen.
Teachers also work as dorm advisors, and dorms have student advisors as well! One elected student official. More on this in the dormitory section.
General Homerooms
Homerooms work as small, tiny, self-governing cells, as we'd mentioned before. Their responsibilities include the following: Attendance, Organization, Schedule dispersion, cleaning the classroom, lunch duties, and small modes of disciplinary action. Usually students within a homeroom watch out for one another - if one's hair is out of dress code, another girl might redo it before the strictest teacher comes in.
For attendance in the morning, the Class Representative (if it's room 1-1, 2-1, and 3-1, this is the Class President) finishes a sheet and will eventually turn it into the faculty office for review. At evening, groups of students called "hons" (for purposes in our games, we'll call them Squads, or cleaning squads), break off and are responsible for cleaning and organizing the room. Then after they are done, the cycle repeats again.
School begins at 8.30 and "ends" at 2.15, with an extra optional period at 2.30-3.45, along with clubs and curriculars starting after this point. As an RPG we won't be too specific on times, but your class will have a schedule handed to it.
Most homerooms cannot take different classes (excepting third year, which has a choice of Science or Humanities routes) - there are very few options on what courses to take. For courses, please see the Character Building section. The mods will supply each room with a regular daily schedule, all though in Japan these schedules are often different week to week!
Well, until next time!
