Now, obviously, I’m not going to name the school that I am teaching at but I will describe it for you because it is like I’m working in an anime. You know the things that high schools in anime have? Well, the school I’m teaching at has it all!

First up are the classrooms. There are up to forty students per class and they sit in rows in assigned desks. These desks contain some of their books and have a hook for students to hang their school bags from. The students also have a locker outside of the classroom for bulkier items. These desks are easy to move to get into groups but the chairs are awful! They have metal legs and make a racket whenever the students move them without picking them up completely. When all forty of them stand up for the bow the sound pierces my brain!

The classroom is very utilitarian. There is a blackboard at the front and back of the room, both magnetic, and a projector is mounted at one end. The projector screen is a magnetic sheet that sticks to the blackboard because, obviously, you can’t project directly onto a blackboard. I feel like the walls of the classrooms look bare compared to the classrooms in New Zealand (and probably other countries as well) as there isn’t any student work on display except for the chalk drawings that students draw on the rear chalk board (or the value of pi to over 100 digits).

During breaks students will usually go on their cellphones, chat or eat but during class time they are pretty attentive. Sure, you get the occasional students who have a conversation or try to pretend that they aren’t actually on their cellphone, but overall the students are respectful as a high percentage of them aim to attend university.

At the end of the day the students are required to clean the classroom and then there will be a handful of students still in class, doing homework or socialising, as the rest will have gone home or are participating in club activities.

Now, obviously, the school doesn’t look completely like this, but there are similarities. Each year group is on a different floor with all of the classrooms on one side of the school and the specialist rooms on the opposite side. There are vending machines, a rooftop area and links between the different sides of the building with a green area that students can’t enter in the middle.

Unlike Shujin Academy, there is a fourth floor with more specialist rooms and a pool. There are more sports facilities besides just the large gym where the badminton, volleyball and basketball teams practise. These include large courts and fields for sports such as tennis, hand ball and soccer, as well as small gym-like rooms for club activities such as naginata, Ping-Pong and dance. A large proportion of the students at my school bike to school, so there is a large bike-storage building near the student entrance which is where the students store their outdoor shoes and put on their indoor shoes. I don’t know if any of my students have ever had a love letter put in their shoe locker though.

The teachers’ office is pretty accurate, except the staff I work with have much tidier desks. I have never seen a soccer ball on anyone’s desk. There are also subject specialist offices that the different faculties have, so during the day many teachers will be in those offices while planning and marking when they aren’t teaching. My desk is probably one of the messier desks, but it is still organised and I know where the things that I need are. I’m not getting defensive …

At lunch time the teachers will eat their lunches at their desks. We have some basic kitchen facilities but no sandwich press (I miss my toasted sammies). If there is a staff meeting they go to a different room so my Co-JET (who is amazing!) and I get the room to ourselves. No wild parties though.

If you’ve seen the school uniforms in anime then you know the types of uniforms that my students wear. There is a separate summer and winter uniform but the students have some freedom in what they wear to accompany their uniform. I don’t know if my school follows the strict ‘Only these hair styles are acceptable’ stereotype but there are some students with hair styles that fit within those parameters and some who don’t. Just like you expect to see on the characters who are meant to stand out in an anime, there are a variety of different sock heights and styles and some students wear cardigans or jackets whose colours stand out against the uniform’s colours. During winter, many students also employ a blanket across their lap for extra warmth.

There are lots of club activities that the students can get involved with at lunch time and after school. These range from your typical sports, music and arts clubs to the more obscure. I like walking around and poking my head into the different clubs so that I can find out what the students are up to and get them to speak a bit of sneaky English.

There are annual events too, such as the school festival, marathon day, sports day, opening ceremonies and graduation. I don’t know why the marathon day is held in the middle of winter, its so cold! I enjoyed the school festival, it had lots of what you expect from watching anime: haunted houses, cafes, performances etc. The Calligraphy Club had a really cool demonstration where they used brushes of various sizes (including one that I would call ridiculously large) to produce kanji on huge pieces of paper. One piece was at least 2m by 2m … where do you even get paper that large? The classrooms were all themed and the amount of detail and props that went into some of the displays that they made must’ve taken a long time to make. There were lots of students who were at school during the summer break working on their classroom’s props. The students really buy into the school spirit and it seems a shame that it only lasts a weekend.

In conclusion, my life sim is currently in Anime mode but I have the dating simulator turned off as I already have the best husbando/partner!