Japan has a very different culture from ours, so some things that are normal for them may be surprising to us and vice versa. But there are rules of Japanese society, which even the inhabitants of Japan themselves, find very strange and nonsense. Such as certain school rules, which users shared on social networks following a news story about a high school student whose natural hair color was brown and who was forced by the school to dye it black. This fact caused quite a stir, so many people took the opportunity to communicate more of these curious guidelines they remembered from their student years. What others do you think exist? Read on to find out
The 10 strangest school rules in Japan
- Girls’ underwear must be white: Women are gathered in separate rooms to open their uniforms and check the color of their underwear.
- Scarves are not allowed, even if they have a sore throat, but using a towel is allowed.
- In the summer, they can’t cool off with a fan, your clothes or your hands, even if they are in a school assembly all gathered together. Students have no choice but to try to hold it in; however, this has already caused one girl to have a seizure.
- When they enter the school, the school provides them with a helmet and emphasizes that they must take care of it, since it will be the only one they will receive until graduation. This makes us think for a moment, how much the safety of the students really matters to the institutions, since they must continue to use it, even if it breaks or they suffer an accident, because they will not give them a new one. But how well can it protect you if it no longer works properly?
- For swimming lessons, girls are forced to wear tampons on their period. This can be quite uncomfortable, but if they choose not to take the class, they will have to attend supplemental classes during the summer and swim 500m.
- Regardless of the distance or how heavy their backpack is, they must walk to school every day, even if it takes them 40 minutes.
- Wearing skin-colored or white socks is permitted. However, this garment may not be worn in black, there is no particular reason for this.
- No noise is allowed during lunch preparation time and the last 10 minutes of lunch. Otherwise, you will not have the option to order a second portion or order less the next day.
- They are forced to join an after-school club. This might be something we have already seen repeatedly in anime, but in real life it is also like this.
- They can be denied entry to school every morning because of a perm and a brown hair color. After showing a certificate to prove that her hair is natural, one girl was not allowed to enter school because her skin color was darker.
Surely, there are many more of these weird rules that we didn’t mention in this note. If you are curious to search for them, you can do it on Twitter/X with the hashtag #こんな校則いらない (we don’t need this kind of school rules), but keep in mind that all of them are in Japanese. Still, if you want to encourage you to dig, just copy the hashtag in the search engine of this social network and translate the answers.
Without a doubt, some of these rules seem to have no logical explanation and can make students’ lives much harder. Probably, some of these things you had already learned if you are a fan of anime or in general of Japanese culture, but it is really surprising that it is not only an invention that we see in fantasy stories or that they are just a myth, but that they can be applied in the daily life of students in Japan.
Leave a Reply