From: htakeda@Bonnie.ICS.UCI.EDU
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: Japanese School II
Date: 5 Oct 92 21:48:27 GMT
Article-I.D.: Bonnie.9210051448.aa14116


Hi It's Hiro Takeda.

Ignore this stuff it's from last year.
>Is anyone out there getting these posts.  I have gotten
>no response on the first post.  Last year some people mailed
>me saying they wanted more.   If you do like what you see
>please tell me so.  If you can see any room for improvement
>then tell me so.  Thanks

Well here goes part two.  I'm not qualified or anything so don't
hold me responsible for anything.

		JAPANESE SCHOOL II

	Both elementary schools that I went to had a HAN system.

			HAN

	A HAN is a group of 4-6 students.  Each class had HAN's to do
various tasks.  The HAN is just a group made up at the begging of
the school year.  Usually it was just made up by the teacher by where you
were sitting.  The teacher would just group up students into HAN's by taking
clump of students desk and saying "from here to here your Han 1, this block
here is Han 2" etc.  Well the HAN would always be used in any task in class
that needed groups.  Here are some of them

			Souji

	Souji is cleaning.  Yes the Schools in Japan don't have Janitors to
clean up after you.  The students would do most of the cleaning in the
classroom and outside.  Evey student is required to bring in 2 Zokin's
(cloth's made of old towels for wiping everything from the floors to the
windows) at the beginging of the school year.  We would each use our own
zokin when it was our turn to clean.
        Usually there was a daily souji and this was just simple sweeping
and wiping of the floors.  The were 2 hans that would do the souji
every day for a week.  The teacher would make up some kind of rotatable
chart that had numbers on the wheel and Souji pointing to 2 hans outside
the wheel.  The teacher would rotate the wheel every week to indicate which
han was the Souji han for that week.  Other hans would have other tasks that
I will be explained later.  The daily souji is done after lunch during
a 30 minute break.  The han assigned to do the souji would clear the tables
and sweep and then wet the zokin and wipe the floor clean.  Doing the zokin
work was usally a lot more strenuous since we'd wipe on our hands and
knees.  Another group would do the same thing for the hallway in front of
the class.  We would also have to clean the blackboard and take out the
garbage.

	Once or twice every quarter the whole school would have a Ohsouji.
This is a Big souji.  Were there would be 2 hours taken to clean up the whole
school.  At this stage every han is called to do the ohsouji.  But in addition
the the classroom and the hallway in front, the school would assign some
outdoor area to each class.  So if your in 6-4 (sixth grade class four) you
may be assigned to clean the front gate area.
	Well the Teacher would usually assign hans so that have the people
are doing the assigned and have are doing the classroom.  Then each han
goes to it's respective places to clean.
	The assinged cleaning is usually some place that doesn't get touched
for a couple of months so it was really dirty.  But it would be easier
to slack off since the teacher would only be there at the begining and end
of the ohsouji.  Also since these places are sooo dirty, only 20 minutes
of souji would make it look so much better that we'd usually get away with
a minimal amount of work.
	The class room souji was basically the same as the
daily souji except we would wax the floors.  Again we would
 have to do this on our hands and knees.  And now we were
spreding this orange liquid so our hands would get all slick with wax.
I always hated this.  The wax would make the floor shiney and slippery, and
for a couple of weeks it would be hard to run around on this floor.

Anyway souji was always a pain.  wiping floors always killed my back you know.


			Kyushoku

Kyushyoku is the cafeteria lunch.  The way they distributed lunch is nothing
like that of in the States.  Kyushyoku is made in the Kyushyoku room and
Kyushyoku no Obasan (Kyushyoku Lady),as we called them, would be working
there since morning to make the lunch for all the students in the school.
Yes, everyone in the school would eat the same lunch.  Students and teachers.
	This is another place where the han came into play.  The rotatable
chart that I talked about would come into play again.  There would be
one arrow pointed to a han saying Kyushyoku.  That han would do the
Kyushoku for the week.  It isn't that bad since they get to play during
the 30 minute souji.
	So at the end of the 4th period the Kyushoku personell would get these
white clothes that we had to put on when serving the food.  It was like a
poncho and a hat.  The kyushyoku people from the previous week would clean it
and hand it to the kyushyoku people for the next week on Monday.  Then
we would have to go to the kyushyoku room to get the food.  We would have
a cart to push to our class room.  The lunch usually consisted of 4 food items
and milk.  We would have about 2 buckets, 2 boxes and a carton of milk.
        During this time everyone else would be taking out napkins and there
own Hashi(chopsticks).  The napkins and hashi would usually be of some anime
character.  Girls would have something cute like Sanrio(usually pink or red),
and the boys would have robots, and planes, etc(usually blue).  We would
spread the napkins on the table so the food won't fall all over our desks.
Then after we do this we would just talk and wait for the kyushyoku people
to come and serve everyone.
	Then the kyushyoku people come with lunch.  First thing that we
would always do is serve the teacher.  Then we would start dividing the
food into these metal containers that are provided from the kyushyoku
room and take the lunch to every student in the class.  It was always hard
to divide things like soup since it is possible that you would run out.
So you'd have to be pretty accurate.  After serving all the students
then we would serve for the Kyushyoku people or ourselves.  Do you see the
pattern.  We first serve the older, then others, then ourselves.
	Anyway after lunch the kyushyoku people would clean up, take all the
bowls and containers back to the kyushyoku room and go outside to play
during the 30 minute souji period.


	The other han's that weren't assigned to any souji or kyushyoku for
that week get to play during the 30 minute souji period too.  The other
school that I went to had a separate time for eveyone to have a lunch break.
So at that school we had a lunch time, 30 min souji, and a 20 minute break
so everyone would go outside to play.  I liked the latter system better, since
everyone had some time to go outside to run around before starting class again.


I have to continue this later.  Thanks
HIRO