Keio JR High School’s Entrance Exam

Are you smarter than a 6th grader?

An on-again, off-again student of mine recently entered Keio University. A Keiko U. High School student, he didn't have to take the entrance exam as all students are guaranteed a place at the prestigious university. As a result, he didn't really study that much in junior and senior high. He couldn't, for example, name any of Natsume Sōseki's novels when we talked about the author the other day.

He did, however, study his nuts off in elementary school. From the fourth grade to the sixth grade, he attended juku (cram school) seven days a week. He said, he would wake up early in the morning study for a few hours at home, then go to school where he played with friends. Immediately after school, he would run off to the juku to attend several hours of classes. Upon returning home in the evening, he would have dinner, take a bath, then resume studying until he conked out at midnight.

All the effort paid off--he got into Keio Jr High and was set for the rest of his life.

Pictured are some of the questions from Keio JH's entrance exam. For an adult, they are not that difficult. If you have a lot of different experiences and have read books and been curious, you can solve them. (I could, at least.) For a 12-year-old, however, they must be staggeringly difficult.

Private Schools

What percent of junior high school students go to private schools?

Nationwide, about 8% do, but at the prefectural level there is a big difference. In Tokyo, over 25% of students go to private junior high schools. Here in Fukuoka, only 6% do. In the prefectures of northeastern Japan, less than 2% attend private schools. The prefecture with the lowest private junior high school attendance rate is Yamagata at 1.4%.

https://todo-ran.com/t/kiji/15306

I'm the Sole Survivor

The kids are now in their second week of school after Golden Week, which is always a tough time for any student here. Gogatsu-byō, they call it. (Lit. May Disease, but can be translated as post-vacation blues.)

One of the kids in my elder son's class has stopped coming to school altogether, much to my son's delight. (The two go to the same dojo and have hated each other since kindergarten.) The kid hadn't been doing his homework (of which there is a pile every day) and was doing poorly on the tests. (This is all hearsay, so I can't really verify.)

Seems kids like to push buttons at the start of the year to see how much they can get away with and my sons, because of the way they look (i.e. not Japanese) tend to get picked on first, which is one of the reasons I had them take karate from such an early age. One kid made fun of my elder son's name, so he went up to him, stared him down, and in his deep voice--a la Robert De Niro--said something like, "You talking to me?" And that was the end of that. He can break baseball bats with one kick and the other kids know it, so he is able to manage these little pests fairly easily.

My younger son is more the lover than the fighter type, slightly more sensitive than his big brother, but still scrappy. He said that one of the kids called him "Amelika-jin". Now, I'm not the rah-rah U! S! A! meathead type, but this kind of thing just pisses me off, especially when you consider history, geopolitics and so on.

When my son told me about it later, I told him that the next time some idiot says something like that, say: "Hey, twinkie, would rather be speaking Russian or Chinese?"

Fact of the matter: if it weren't for America--warts and all--Japan would be a very different country today.

My wife was listening and said, "You're Daddy's right. You boys are lucky to be American. Those passports alone, Do you know how much those are worth???"

I turned to my wife and said, "From now on, I would like you to greet me in the morning with 'Thank you, America!'"

And we laughed it off.

From experience, these little trials don't last very long. Again, it seems kids like to see how much they can get away with before the teacher steps in and puts a stop to it. We've been lucky with our teachers in that regard.

Yesterday, during our morning walk, I noted that our elder son's school load sure was ratcheted up since entering the fifth grade. He has I think 10 subjects now and all of them really demand a lot of the student. Math, which, is taught sometimes 6-8 times a week in the earlier grades to really make things sink in, is only taught 4 times now, but the content is much more difficult. The typical American high school student would probably be stumped. And that's just math. Then there's Japanese and even more Chinese characters to remember how to not only read, but write. Science and Social Studies are also vigorously taught, if you can say that. At any rate, they really take each and every subject dead serious.

We're fortunate, though. The boys, while they wouldn't mind having less homework every day, seem to be enjoying their studies and keeping up well enough.

I told my wife that education in Japan reminded me of a game I used to play as a kid called Stay Alive where the "sole survivor" is the one who manages to not lose his marbles and get into Tokyo University.

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According to the missus, of the 400 students at Shuyukan, Fukuoka’s most competitive public high school, only one or two are able to get into Tokyo University, the country’s most prestigious uni. Only one to three graduates get into Kyōto University, Hitotsubashi, Ōsaka. Half of them, however, are able to enter Kyūshū University. Among the 400 students at Jōnan High, the second tier public high school, only one can pass Ōsaka or Kyōto University. 50 get into Kyūshū U.

It’s amazing how competitive places at those top universities are.

Junior High Enrollment Rates

In 2019, the percent of Japanese students attending private junior high schools nationally was 7.4%. In Tokyo, however, a quarter of all students do. It is not uncommon for parents there to decide upon a place to live only after an oldest child has passed his/her private junior high school entrance exam.

Since 2015, there has been a slight, but steady increase of 0.1 percentage points each year. I suspect that with the household budgets being squeezed due to COVID-19, the percentage attending private junior high schools will drop somewhat.

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I was talking to a third year junior high school student yesterday about private junior high schools in Japan. She said that of her elementary school, only 20 out of the 200 six graders went to private junior high schools.

One went on to Nada in Hyōgo, considered the best in the nation; 5 went to Kurume Fusetsu, the highest ranked in Fukuoka Prefecture; 3 went on to Ōhori; 2 to Waseda Fusetsu in Karatsu, Saga; 2 to Seiun (don’t know this school); 3 to Jōchi, a Jesuit school associated with Sophia University in Tōkyō; and 2 went to Chikujo, a Buddhist girls school. She couldn't remember where the other two went.

To get into a private junior high school usually requires students to spend a lot of time cramming at juku (private evening schools) in the later years of elementary school. The girl I was talking to only attended in the sixth grade, which she admitted was too late. She had classes four days a week from 5 in the afternoon to 9 at night. She usually went to bed around 11 because of all the additional homework she had to do.

During the school breaks, she attended week-long overnight study camps, which she admitted were rather unpleasant experiences. The juku she attended cost about ¥60,000 a month. Her junior high school now costs ¥50,000 a month, plus other fees. So, to get into a "good" private junior high school, you'll have to fork over up to a million yen a year ($9,000), then continue paying a similar amount for the next six years for private school tuition, or $60-80,000 all together even before university.

While that seems a bit stiff, it’s still a third of the eye-watering tuition my Jesuit high school now charges. I really don’t know how people are able to afford it on top of their home mortgages payments and health insurance premiums, and car loans, and, and, and . . . And I'm not poor. Just fucking stingy.

Kindy Bus

I took my son, Yu-kun. to kindergarten this morning (by means of Mama-chari) and managed to arrive at the very same time as one of the school busses.

The kids all clamored out of the bus and were herded by two teacher to the main gate of the school where they put their hands together, bowed deeply, and shouted in unison: "Hotoke-sama, ohayō-gozaimasu! Enchō-sensei, ohayō-gozaimasu!" (Good morning, Buddha! Good morning, Mr. Principal!)

It was my first time to see this, and I must say it was quite adorable.

Yu-kun also takes the school bus from time to time depending on the weather and my wife's energy level. (He rode it yesterday but ended up vomiting all over himself and had to be sent back home.)

The “pink bus”[1] usually doesn’t come rolling into our neighborhood until a few minutes after nine in the morning (which is why we often just drop him off ourselves around eight).

When the bus comes to a full stop, one of the teachers hops out, grabs the kids and tosses them in like sacks of recyclables. Once on board, the kids are free to sit wherever they like. Yu-kun sometimes sits in the very front next to the driver, sometimes in the middle near a girl he has a crush on, and sometimes in the very back like yesterday (which may be the reason why he threw up).

The kids are usually dressed in a variety of uniforms. Some wear the whole get-up with the silly Good Ship Lollypop hats and all, while others wear their colored class caps. Some are in their play clothes, a few in smocks, and fewer still wear their school blazers. Anything goes really and that’s fine by us.

A year and a half ago, my wife and I were considering four different kindergartens. Two were Christian, one Buddhist, and a fourth was run by what appeared to be remnants of the Japanese Imperial Army’s South Pacific Division.

It was this fourth kindergarten that initially appealed to us. The kids were said to be drilled daily and given lots of chances to exercise and play sports outside, something that offered us the possibility that our son would come home every afternoon dead tired.

Well, in the end, that school didn’t want us. (So, to the hell with them!) We went for the free-for-all Buddhist kindy, instead.

I think we made the right, albeit expensive, choice.

The other morning, I happened to see the bus for the Fascist kindergarten. Although it pulls up at the very same place where Yu-kun usually catches his own bus, the similarity stopped there. For one, all the kids were wearing the same outfit with the same hats, the same thermoses hanging from their left side. When they got in the bus, they did so in an orderly fashion, the first child going all the way to the back, the second child following after and sitting in the next seat. The bus was filled from the back to the front and I wouldn’t be surprised if the children filed out of the bus in the same orderly manner. Once seated, the kids sat quietly. It was at the same time both impressive and horrifying.

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 [1] I still have no idea why it is called the “pink bus” because nothing on it is pink. Every time Yu-kun says, “Oh, the pink bus!” I scan it from bumper to bumper to try and figure out how on earth he can tell it’s the pink bus and not the “yellow bus” which is actually yellow.

The Buddhist kindergarten is popular with parents who are doctors. I once asked a mother why and she replied that she wanted her children to just play and play and play before they had to knuckle down and start cramming from elementary school for their entrance exams. Poor kids.

Boei Dai Blues

 It’s not uncommon for students at the private Baptist university where I teach to have transferred from more prestigious schools.

Two years ago, I had a freshman who was in his late twenties. When I asked what had happened, he explained that he had dropped out of Tōkyō University—Japan’s equivalent of Harvard, MIT, CalTech combined—several years earlier. Girl trouble he confessed with a shrug. Another student who ended up auditing my classes more than four times admitted with a maniacal laugh that he had been kicked out of Keio University, Japan’s oldest institution of higher learning. “I may get kicked out of this school, too,” he added with more nervous laughter.

Hiroshi’s case, however, was something of a novelty. The strapping freshman had been a student at Bōei Dai (防衛大), the National Defense Academy of Japan a year earlier. Similar to West Point, Bōei Dai is a four-year military academy for those who wish to serve as officers in Japan’s military, er, Self-Defense Forces.

“It was like hell,” he told me and went on to describe the rampant hazing and bullying by upper classmen. “Fifteen of my classmates quit after only three days. Three days!”

“How long did you last?”

“One semester.” 

He added that of the more than five hundred freshman who are accepted to Bōei Dai, only three hundred or so make it all the way through to graduation. A former graduate of the university wrote that out of the 530 or so students who entered Bōei Dai when he did, only 450 made it all the way to graduation. Most quit within the first week or so.

High drop-out rates are not unique to Bōei Dai. According to a New York Times article from 1985, West Point, too, has a high level of attrition.

“Through it all, the number of dropouts at West Point remains high," the article states. "Last year's graduating class of 986 officers began with 1,462 plebes, an attrition rate of 33 percent. It has been as low as 28 percent and as high as 40 percent. The academy considers 20 percent the minimum it should expect.” (The Baltimore Sun painted a similar picture of the situation at The U.S. Naval Academy.)

“It took forever to get anywhere on campus,” Hiroshi recalled. “Anytime you came upon a teacher or upper classman you had to stop and salute and wait until they passed. Walk three steps, stop and salute. Walk three steps, stop and salute. Walk three steps, stop and salute. It was bullshit.”

While Hiroshi was still a university student, he entered an extracurricular military school where he trained on weekends and during the long breaks, similar to the reserves, I guess. He also sported a buzz job, which made him stand out on campus even more. Well, I’m happy to say that all the hard work and perseverance has paid off because Hiroshi is now a paratrooper. When he graduated from ranger school, he commented on Facebook that had finally recovered his dignity.

Hiroshi’s a remarkable young man and I wish him all the best.

Student Loans, Japanese style

Look up the word shōgaku-kin (奨学金) in any Japanese-English dictionary and you will, more often than not, be told that the word means "scholarship". It does not. Unlike scholarships in the U.S. which are awarded on the basis of academic achievement and do not have to be paid back, shōgaku-kin is a student loan.

Of the thirteen girls in my class this afternoon, seven of them were recipients of these shōgaku-kin loans which ranged from ¥30,000 per month to as much as ¥120,000 per month ($285~1,142). The most common amount was ¥80,000 per month ($762), with three of the seven receiving that amount.

 As tuition runs about ¥450,000 ($4,286) per semester at the private college were I work, a loan of ¥80,000 per month is more than enough to cover the expense of education. (Now, compare that to my own university where it costs more than $60,000 a year to study.)

The loans must be paid back, of course. Students are given a grace period of six months before they must return the money, at which time they will start making monthly payments of ¥142,000 to ¥20,000 ($152~190). They have ten years to pay off the loan. Interest on the principal of the loan is negligible: less than one percent. (Again, compare that with the U.S. where I was paying a fixed 10% interest.)

All in all, it's not a bad deal.

For those of you like me who would like to avoid saddling their kids with debt so early in their lives, there is the gakushi hoken (学資保険) or yōrō hoken (養老保険) which is a kind of savings and life insurance plan. Many of these plans start at as little as ¥10,000 a month and usually have a fixed payment period of about five years. It’s a quick, painless, and safe way to sock away money for your kids’ education.

All or Nothing

Been thinking about attrition rates in karate recently. My elder son went to Kumamoto for a friendly soccer match early this morning. Every time I go to his practice, it seems the number of kids on the field has been getting bigger and bigger. Meanwhile, although the number of kids at the dōjō has increased, every year there are fewer and fewer of the older kids. And it's not just our dōjō. At last week's tournament, for instance, there were 27 third graders among the boys, 20 fifth graders, 11 seventh graders (中1), and only 2 thirteenth graders (中３).

I think there are a number of reasons for this, not least of which is that it ain't fun getting punched and kicked in the head on a regular basis. The biggest factor, though, has to be the all-or-nothing, total commitment mentality to your chosen hobby here. The notion of a season for a sport doesn't quite translate.

When I was a kid in the States, I played baseball in the summer, soccer in the fall, basketball and skiing in the winter, and track and field in the spring. Each season was just long enough to help you improve your skill, but short enough to keep you from burning out. If you wanted to take a break from sports for one season, there was no penalty. Thanks to that, a healthy active kid can continue playing the sports he likes all the way from elementary school through high school.

Here, it's the opposite: you join a soccer team or swim team or whatever and you do it all year long. If you are bumped up into a higher class, like my sons with karate, then you are doing it two, three, four, even five times a week all year long.

My wife and I used to have arguments about this. She'd get upset that our boys weren't doing better in tournaments or weren't focusing during practice. I would counter, "They're only five and eight. There's no hurry. Let them enjoy it and later on they can take it more seriously. I mean think about it: nobody is going to be impressed by a twenty-something-year-old who boasts: 'I was a karate baddass when I was seven years old!' It won't matter in the end. Continuing, however, will."

I wasn't very convincing, I'm afraid, but she eventually gave in and let them practice at their own pace which is twice a week rather than fourth. More before a tournament.

The other day, my wife and I were talking about what our sons will do when they start junior high school. She said she was thinking of letting them quit karate. Again, I said, "Why does it have to be all or fucking nothing all the time? I want them to continue. They don't need to go to the dōjō five times a week, but they should try to go at least twice a month to blow off steam. Jump into a tournament every few months where all they have to do is win one bout to bring home a trophy because everyone else has quit and there's no competition."

It was like an epiphany. "Oh, I hadn't considered that option."

So, my elder son is contemplating joining kendo when he enters junior high. I guess it looks like Star Wars to him. I'm hoping he'll try to stick to a team sport, like his soccer, so that he can have a good cadre of friends throughout his junior high school years.

School Lunch in Japan

My wife visited our son's elementary school today to attend a lecture about kyūshoku, or school lunch. The presentation ended up being more interesting than she had expected.

In Fukuoka City, there are 144 elementary schools (grades 1-6) with a total of 80,077 students. The schools are divided into five blocks to prevent shortages in ingredients as almost all of them are sourced locally from within the prefecture.

To my surprise, each school has its own kitchen and a staff of up to 8, including licensed nutritionists. (I had been under the impression that a central kitchen was being used.) Vegetables are hand washed and hand cut. Although most dishes are made from scratch, some of the items, such as today's paozi(steamed dumplings), are prepared in advance by third party producers.

The lunches, as I have noted before, include many international dishes as a way of introducing kids to other cultures ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and World Swimming Championship that are going to be held in Fukuoka.

Today's lunch included a Chinese style stir-fry, paozi dumplings, bread with locally grown fig jam, and milk.

Each meal costs on average ¥243 ($2.23) and contains about 530 calories. Meals for junior high kids contain 640 calories; those for high schoolers, 740.

And, no, the food is not gluten-free and may contain lethal quantities of peanuts.

Thai-style Gapao Rice and Japanese-style White Stew

Pork and Beans, Raisin Bread, and Cabbage/Kelp Stir Fry

Fish flavored with Sesame, Miso Soup, and Rice

Sparta, it ain't

I have been corresponding with the sensei of the karate dōjō in Central Oregon I took my son to while we were there.

As I noted here in my State-side Observations below, I felt that teachers/instructors in America (the ones I had observed, at least) were . . . shall I say gentle? with the students. Lessons were shorter, less physically demanding than what my sons normally have to deal with in Japan. Teachers spoke in calm voices, never yelled or criticized harshly.

In Japan (again in my experience), Spartanism rules. At my sons’ dōjō, practice can sometimes go on for two or three hours. Some kids go four times a week throughout the year. The air conditioning is rarely used in summer; the heater, only sparingly in winter. The kids spar and spar and spar, sometimes to the point of becoming black and blue. Yet, when the Japanese sensei praises a student, it’s genuine praise and the kids take great pride when they do a good job. That is often the first thing my sons tell me when they come home from practice: "Sensei-ni homerareta!"

When I mentioned this to the karate sensei in Oregon, he replied that American kids wouldn't be able to endure such training. "It's a difficult balance with east vs west philosophy in karate training since our students have western upbringings. I was raised training on the eastern methods and greatly appreciate the value but most Americans wouldn't accept it. There lies the quest for balancing the two sides."