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“Terrible, amazing things my teacher said”: Tweets from the Japanese classroom

Did you used to think that your teachers all lived in the school on the weekends? Lots of kids are shocked to discover one day that their teachers have private lives, families, and even friends outside of school. This collection of tweets are all from Japanese students – whose sometimes-cynical, sometimes-exhausted, pretty-much-always-awesome professors probably just wanted to remind them that teachers are people too.

That’s right – it’s time for a snappy little segment which we’ll be entitling, in honour of its Japanese hashtag equivalent, “This devastatingly amazing thing my teacher just told me!”

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These awesome university dining hall breakfasts only cost 100 yen

When was the last time you spent 100 yen (US$.98) on breakfast and felt satisfied? Sure, your dollar menu Sausage McMuffin tasted good, but after hitting your stomach like a greasy, calorie-laden brick, did it really keep you going until lunch? I thought not. Prepare to be jealous (and perhaps say “OC desu!“) of the following parade of filling breakfasts purchased at Japanese university dining halls, each for an unbelievable 100 yen.

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Cosplay fever spreads to Hokkaido, students leave pants at home

Twitter user higedi (Ryūta Kitamura) racked up more than 10,000 retweets with this picture of incoming students who were refused entry to Hokkaido University’s entrance ceremony. The students are generally expected to wear formal clothes for the ceremony, so naturally they got out their best cardboard, body paint, and fundoshi (traditional Japanese underwear). That’s just one more way Ronald McDonald is unsettling.

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Is Japan overworking its teachers? One exhausted educator says, “YES!”

Japan has a reputation for overworking its employees, though it’s hardly the only country! But when it comes to education, you’d expect Japanese teachers, whose students often score among the top in the world on standardized tests, to be solely focused on their classroom materials. But you might be wrong!

One public middle school teacher has recently gotten a ton of attention online for a blog post about her impossible-to-manage duties as a “club leader” and her desire to actually change occupations due to the intense schedule. Read about her experience and the intense reactions below.

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Japanese university seating plan meme submitted to web for approval

The internet is a vast ocean of small infographics, flow charts, and images with the aim to succinctly present the truths of life to the masses. However, not every clever doodle is worth being held in our hard drives to be pulled out during a relevant discussion later on. These images sink into the deep abyss of the internet ocean, only to be found when James Cameron finally gets a good enough sub.

Let’s watch as one humble netizen submits their typical Japanese university seating arrangement to others. Will the chart hit home with other students, or will it fall flat? First let’s look at an English translation of it.

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Kids these days don’t want to poop!

It’s a fact of life: everyone poops. And yet society seems to have evolved some sense of embarrassment over letting people know that you’ve dropped a stinky load. We try to assuage these issues with things like private bathroom stalls and air fresheners in public restrooms. In fact, toilets in Japan will often have automatic noise makers to mask any embarrassing sounds that might slip past your posterior.

And yet still, a recent study shows that more than half of Japanese school children refuse to go number two until after they’ve returned to the perfect privacy of their own homes! They’ll hold it for hours rather than respond to nature’s call, their embarrassment about bodily functions eventually causing them to become chronically constipated.

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Teacher beats student over flippant comment, only loses 1/10 of salary

We can almost, kind of, maybe a little bit, understand why some teachers get angry enough to hit their students. When thinking about high school, there are enough cringe-worthy moments of complete jerkery where one wouldn’t blame a teacher for reaching out and slapping certain students across the mouth.

That’s not to say that such behavior is acceptable, of course! Only that, in some cases, maybe we can kind of get how infuriating students can be.

This is not one of those cases.

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LDP’s Education Revitalization Headquarters Compiles Draft Proposal

In an effort to develop individuals who will be active in global society, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan’s Headquarters for the Revitalization of Education has compiled a draft proposal which includes making it a prerequisite to score above a certain number of points in the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam before being allowed to enter university.

The proposal states, “The development of human resources is essential for achieving the Abe Cabinet’s most important issue, economic revitalization. Moving away from egalitarianism, strategic human resource development aimed at strengthening top achievers will be undertaken.”
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