Chapter 4 School in the Lofe of Teen


School plays an important role in the life of teenagers. They make friends; they will come to know about how to interact with people, and various aspects of life. There are some differences about schools between Japan and the US. I want to point out about that and about weird things in Japanese school.
I do not know much about in the US and it does not say much in this book, but there sure are school rule. In Japan, there are many kinds of school rules. Some are acceptable to follow the rules, but on the other hand, there are some weird rules, too. For example, the hair of the students is not allowed to be long. If students broke this rule, they get punished and the worst punishment is that they have to quit schools. I wondered why it is so, therefore, I asked to my school principle why it is regulated. The principle said that it is because long hair does not seem to be nice and polite, and it looks like unclean. I did not, and I do not, understand why long hairs are seen unclear.
The role of teachers is changing in Japan. In US, what the teachers said are should be done, and students think that teachers’ words are right. On the other hand, Japanese teachers are more like close to students, of course it depends on teachers to teachers, or to the extreme, they are like friends.
One of the biggest problems of teachers in Japan is how teachers should have attitude to their students. Two or three decades ago, to punish students with punching them are common if students are chatting in the middle of the class, came late, or forgotten their assignments. However, if teachers punished like this now, they would get in to a huge problem that teachers injured their students. Of course, students’ parents do not want their children to go to a school which employs violent teachers. Therefore, the teachers who hit students would be resigned. I do not know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is what we have to consider.

Chapter 5 The Material Child

Through this chapter, I really thought about not only the friendship, consumers, or media, but also the ability to pay. In my opinion, though the huge gap of the ability to pay is getting narrower, there sure are some people who cannot afford to pay for what they want. In this book, it says that though there are academic pressures on child in Japan, some parents cannot make their children to take lectures of high quality. This will lead to the problem of children’s future. If children cannot take lectures of high quality, they may not be able to acquire good business, or what they want to be. Therefore, the distinction between who can afford to pay and who cannot afford to pay gets worse and worse.
In this chapter, there were some of words that I did not even hear, for example, the expression of “children have six pockets,” and shinjinrui. There also says that Japan uses katakana a lot in varieties of situations. Using katakana, which is words from foreign countries and written in Japanese words, tend to catch people’s attention easily. This is related to Naui. Japanese people tend to have preferences to the new things, especially from America. You can see this clearly if you look at katakana. Though there are lots of katakanas, most of them are English.
Karaoke spread all over Japan. The profit of it is enormous and almost all the teenagers use it. They can show off how good they can sing and friends can be closer through using karaoke. However, there are some problems about karaoke, which are mentioned in this book. Illegal smoking, glue sniffing, bringing alcohol in it is some examples. However, since the drinks in karaoke are much expensive than buying through the vending machines. I think that this is the cause of these problems. I know that the businessmen of karaoke want to make profit, but to prevent these problems, they should lower the cost so that the intense of people to buy would increase.

Short Essay about chapter 3, Family

Through this topic of Family in this book, though there were true aspects of Japanese family issues, there were also aspects that are out of date. For example, in the book, it says that Japanese children avoid their parents from keeping their privacy in this way: sleep when their parents are awake and wake up and do what they want after their parents went to bed. I asked to several Japanese students whether they do this or not. The answer was no.
In Japan, there is a academic pressure from parents, especially mothers. These mothers are called “kyoiku-mama.” This action of mother is widely spreading in Japan. The number of children who go to cram schools is extremely increasing in ten years. Parents behave to their children strict in order to make their children to study a lot. Through this, since parents get more nervous than praising their children, children would start wondering about the real relationship between parents and them.
In the comments on the class blog page, a Colorado student said that the divorce rate in America is quite high. Though the number of divorce in Japan is increasing, the number of it in America is much higher than that of Japan. She said that the concept of divorce between America and Japan is different. I agree to this idea, though, I do not agree to the idea she said like, Japanese should change their minds about divorce. I think that changing the concept of divorce is nearly impossible thing to do. Moreover, I do not think that changing our mind is good for us. What I want to say is that marriage is one of the main issues in people’s life. If they can get divorced easily, the concept of marriage would change, too. Men and women will start to get married with no serious thinking about their future, and this might cause serious problems in Japan.

Hi, I'm Daichi Bando. I am a student of SILS in Waseda University. I am enjoying my life in SILS. Since I'm planning to study abroad in America next year, I really want to know the American culture which is different from Japanese one. My hobbies are both doing and watching sports, especially basketball.

初めまして。阪東大地です。私は早稲田大学国際教養学部に所属していてここでの生活を楽しんでいます。来年にアメリカへ留学をしようと思っているのでアメリカの日本とは違った文化を知りたいです。私の趣味はスポーツをやることと見ることです。
よろしくお願いします！