AI is a 9th grade student in junior high. She lives in Nagoya and goes to school in a suburb city Konan. It takes her one hour and twenty minutes to get to school, and she gets up at 6:00 am every morning. Her mom gets up even earlier to prepare her breakfast and pack her lunch. AI leaves home to catch a city metro at 6:50 am, changes to an express train to Konan city at 7:20 am, and walks twenty minutes from the train station to school. She arrives at 8:10 am, and the class starts at 8:30 am. So, she walks 40 minutes every day, and that make her legs very strong.AI's school is one of the best private schools, and many Japanese parents prefer private schools to public schools for their children. AI takes 6 classes everyday, and each class lasts 50 minutes. When the schoolwork is done, students clean their classroom for 15 minutes before they head home. When AI arrives at home, it is about 5:30 pm. After eating supper at 6:00pm, AI does homework or enjoys herself watching TV, reading books, or listening to music. She takes a bath before she goes to bed at 10:30pm. (She doesn't take a shower in the morning.) During an exam week, she stays up till 12:00am.
AI goes to school on Saturday too. She comes home at 2:00 pm and attends a supplementary school in the city called "the crammer" for four hours from 4:00pm to 8:00pm. She wants to go to the best university in Japan and she has to do well in the entrance examination. She would have to work very hard for the next three years. She started attending crammer courses on Saturdays from when she was ten years old. In order to be admitted to her junior high school, she had to do well in the entrance examination. Once she goes to college, there will be no entrance examinations, and she will be home free!
Once they get into a college, the students do not work as hard. That is opposite to the students in the united states. I would rather like to have time to do things for myself when I am in elementary school, middle school, and high school so that I can do what I really want to do in college.
Crammer school for me? No thanks.