What Time Do You Go to Bed?

My first year junior high school students (ichi-nen-seis, comparable to American 7^th graders) are studying time expressions. Last week they learned “What time is it in London/Australia/China/Japan/etc.?” This week they are learning, “What time do you get up/have breakfast/come home/go to bed?” We play a quick warm-up game to get them shouting time expressions at the top of their lungs, T-sensei introduces the vocabulary and grammar, the students listen to T-sensei ask me about my daily schedule (and are fascinated that I go to bed at 11:00 and get up at 6:30!), then the students fill in a schedule in their books with their own answers.

For the most part, what they write is fairly standard. “I wake up at 7:30. I eat breakfast at 7:40.” (Everyone seems to hop right out of bed and run to the breakfast table, according to their schedules! Do they all take baths at night?) “I go to bed at 10:30.” There are a few “I go to bed at 11:30”s, but the majority of the kids—12- and 13- year olds—are getting about seven or eight hours’ sleep every night. One girl even goes to sleep at 9:30 and wakes up at 7:00. Now that’s a schedule I can get down with.

Then there are these other kids. “I go to bed at 1:00 a.m. I wake up at 5:00 a.m.” WHAT? Did I just read that right? “I go to bed at 12:00 a.m. I wake up at 4:30 a.m.” Sorry, come again?

“Why?” I ask one student, the cute girl with pigtails and bright red glasses who gets up at 5:00. “What do you do that early?” She doesn’t understand. I rephrase. “What time do you come to school?”

“Oh, seven o’clock,” she replies casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Brass band.”

“Why do you go to bed so late?” I turn around to ask the kid who goes to bed at 1:00 a.m. and gets up between 4:00 and 5:00. He always seems awake enough in class but his eyes do look tired.

He doesn’t have enough English to really understand my question, but my incredulous expression passes straight through the language barrier. He answers me in Japanese. “Benkyou,” he says. Studying.

“Do you go to juku?” (Juku is cram school, a place where a lot of junior high and high school students spend their after-hours and weekends cramming for extra subjects or to get extra help.)

He nods. I inwardly gasp.

I point to the schedule where he had written, “I come home at four o’clock in the afternoon.” “Do you sleep at 4 o’clock? Do you go to bed then?” I ask.

Either he doesn’t understand me or he really just doesn’t sleep, because he shakes his head. He points at, “I go to bed at one o’clock.” “I go to bed,” he tells me.

After class, as T-sensei and I are gathering our materials, I ask him, “Why are the kids going to bed so late and waking up so early? They are so busy!”

“This is the life of a Japanese junior high school student,” he says dryly. He doesn’t say anything more, and I don’t feel like it would be appropriate for me to scream, “But that’s crazy!” So I am quiet.

Earlier today, one of my ni-nen-seis (2^nd year students) had told me he had gone to bed at 1:00 a.m. the night before too, because he was doing his homework. In this case, I would believe that he had just slacked off until the last minute, instead of having a legitimate excuse. (He’s the student who won’t get his work done during the 50 minutes of class time, the 20 minutes of extra time at the lunch break, or after school. You could give him the rest of eternity and he’d be too busy goofing off to actually do his work.)

But these other kids. Is it common that Japanese students wear themselves out studying? There is a lot that has surprised me about the school system here, but nothing seems quite so shocking as the fact that so many students are stretched so thin. It’s not just school. It’s school, cram school, piano lessons, tennis club, judo club, private tutors, Sports Day, speech contests, entrance exams . . . the list goes on and on. Most kids are wearing their uniforms seven days a week! Drive down Highway 25 in Takasaki at 8:00 on a Saturday morning and it’ll be bustling with uniformed students on their way to cram school just like it was a weekday. When do they rest? When do they sleep? When do they have—heaven forbid—free time? How do they get to love Arashi and AKB48 and One Piece if they’re always glued to their notebooks?

It’s not that I’m not an advocate for education. (I mean, look at those double negatives! Of course I want children to study!) But I wonder when can kids be kids here?

I think back to when I was a junior high school student (except we call them middle schoolers) back in the mid-90s. Sure, the school was in the middle of nowhere—there was only one middle school and one high school for the whole county—but there were still plenty of clubs and teams to participate in. I ran track in seventh grade and took piano lessons once a week in town. In high school I was in the drama club and the Spanish club and sang in the Chorus. But that was about the extent of my WCMS/HS participation. And I don’t ever remember feeling exhausted as a child. I mostly remember coming home from school, doing my homework, and playing outside until it got dark. And you can bet my parents had me in bed before ten o’clock when I was thirteen years old, too!

So why are Japanese and American students so different? It’s not that Japanese kids are particularly smarter or more well-behaved than American kids. There are plenty of students at GMJHS who don’t take school seriously, who talk during class, who do their homework at the last minute (or not at all), who slack off. But their lifestyles seem to be different. In Japan, kids’ lives seem to revolve around school. In America, school is something to put up with until you’re eighteen.

I guess there are American kids—most of them mid-to upper-middle class—who are just as busy as the kids are here. (Read Unequal Childhoods by Annette Lareau for a really good comparison between the kids who have strictly regimented weekly schedules filled with soccer and music lessons and trips to Europe and the kids who don’t.) But those kids don’t make up the majority of the population in America like they do here.

Am I so backwards that I don’t think filling a child’s every minute with activities is the best way for them to have a healthy, happy life? Kids need sleep. Kids need to play. Kids need time to be creative and fill their free time the way they want. I can’t imagine being twelve and having so many expectations put on me. What if school is hard for me? Do I just study more?

Do I say, "Oh, it's just the way it is?" I can't help but feel sorry for my students. Are they used to it, though, so it's okay? Am I being too culturally-centric to understand the deeper meanings here? What do you think?