07-02-11 - Day 1 in a Japanese highschool　日本の学校で

Hey everyone~!
I'm procrastinating from doing my essay right now so I thought I'll do another Japan post, it's been a while!

This post is going to be about my first day in a Japanese highschool experience (kind of). I only attended the home room "class" and that's it since the teachers were taking us out.

Anyway, I had to wake up at 5.30 since Chiho lives a city away from Shizuoka and it takes about 1 hour to get to school every morning (Crazy! O_O). The night before I was really tired from the shinkansen ride that I fell asleep at around 9pm so I did get a good nights sleep. It was hard waking up early but Chiho's mum had prepared breakfast for us, onigiri and some bread from the bakery:


She also had some green tea which I had, but I'm a coffee addict (I know it's bad) so I had to find a place who sells coffee at the Shizuoka train station (not really hard to find in Japan, vending machines are everywhere!).

Her mum drove us to the bus stop, and so we took the bus to Shizuoka train station which took about an hour. I then went to get my coffee in the train station then took the train to Higashi-Shizuoka station. It only took about 5 minutes and then we took a bus to Shizuoka Gakuen. We finally got to the school so I finally managed to have my coffee haha.

A Japanese highschool is really different to a regular highschool in Australia. One of the things that you can't wear your normal shoes into the classroom. You have to change into indoor shoes which are normally slippers. I bought my slippers when I was back in Tokyo for 100yen (Around $1.20 haha) because I was being cheap and didn't want to spend more than 300yen for shoes that I know I wouldn't wear back in Australia. The downside was that the size I got was too small so it was painful to walk in T_T


This is the shoe shelf we had, they had a little section specially for us


This is Chiho's classroom. We were early so no-one was in the classroom

We were then taken to the teacher's office where the teachers introduced themselves to us and gave us the schedule for the time when we were at Shizuoka. On the first day the teachers were going to take us to a mountain area where we will be able to see Mount Fuji. Unfortunately it was really cloudy the day we went so we couldn't see it very well.



You can sort of see it in that photo but barely T_T





We didn't stay very long since we couldn't really see mount Fuji. We headed back to the car, on the way we saw some really pretty flowers. This was the first time I saw flowers blooming in Japan since we arrived in the middle of winter and it was then starting to go into spring. These flowers aren't sakura, I think they're ume trees (plum).






The teachers then took us to a temple. We had to walk up so many steps to get there, I can't remember how many but it was a few hundred or so at least. I really didn't want to climb that many steps but I had no choice T_T





Finally reached the temple! This temple was just renovated and only opened up again recently. We had to pay 400yen I think for entry with a tour guide, we managed to get student prices hehe.




Apparently this is a sakura tree!






The tour guide took us around the temple explaining what the different areas were for but I forgot most of it T_T so I'll just post pictures :P














We were told that this was painted by using real gold paint, and the black paint was something really expensive but I forgot what it was :/




The group!


The teachers made me sit in here and take a photo, I can't remember who's camera the photo was on though.. haha

Ater that we went to have some lunch. The teachers took us to an onsen park (hot springs park) but we didn't go inside (I really wanted to though T_T). We had lunch at a ramen place instead. I had some pork ramen with gyoza!


When we finished lunch the teachers took us to a beach near Shizuoka. Japanese beaches aren't as beautiful as beaches in Australia unfortunately :(









We walked back to where the teachers parked and went to a souvenir store where they had Shizuoka green tea. Shizuoka is famous for its special green tea. The owner of the store has a child currently attending Shizuoka Gakuen (the school the teachers we were with were teaching at) and gave us free green tea!



After that we went strawberry picking! I was really looking forward to this. For 1 hour, you go into one of the strawberry houses and you can eat as much as you want for 1,500yen (around $20). Kind of expensive but was good to experience. We were given sweetened milk to dip our strawberries in! Unfortunately I was still full from lunch so I didn't eat a lot











We went back to the store to look at soveniers. I decided to buy a handwarmer since you can't get them in Australia xD






It was almost the end of school time so we headed back to the school to meet up with our host students again. Chiho and I decided to go to see the famous Gundam statue first in Higashi-Shizuoka before going back home.





So finally finished my post on the first day in a Japanese highschool. We were only at the school for about an hour so nothing much happened, but the day after is when we spent most of our day in the school so look forward to that!