School Life in Japan

To help learn life skills and responsibilities, students clean their school with rotating duties. At the beginning of each year, the class is divided into groups called han. These groups do all activities together, ranging from studying to cleaning duties. During lunch, the cooking staff portions out each class's food and sets up carts for each class. Then students on lunch duty take the cart to the classroom and serve the class. A han does all activities together, including group study during classes, cleaning duties, team activites and serving school lunches. The duties are rotated between han throughout the year.

To operate the han, students are organized with a nitchoku (leader of the day) or shuban (leader of the week) who is in charge of class tasks such as roll call, announcements and keeping the class journal. Each person in charge is assigned a specific task to help keep the flow of class activities running smoothly. This includes cleaning the blackboard, passing out handouts and helping the teacher. 

After classes end at 2:20 p.m. (3:15 p.m. for those in third through sixth grades), most students walk home in big groups, often stopping at local parks with other students. These community parks are filled with students most afternoons from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Some students do after-school activities such as swimming, dance or English classes, but it's not really seen as a requirement until the fourth grade.

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