Japanese school teachers spend all of their time at school. A good percentage of the teachers that I work with I've never seen enter or exit the school building. When I get there at 8 they're running around looking incredibly busy, and when I leave at 5 they look like they have about 12,000,000 times the work that they had that morning. I don't know what they do. I know that in the good old USA teachers go in to teach their classes, maybe have a couple of planning periods throughout the day, then when they're finished they go home. Japanese teachers may not go home. I wouldn't know because, as I said, I keep reasonable hours.

I have seen teachers sleeping at their desks. A teacher in my office often rambles incoherently when speaking. This could be due to the fact that he is being kind enough to speak a language that he doesn't know how to speak, in order to be welcoming to me. So basically, I'm the asshole in this situation and I should just end it here.

Here's the thing though: I make fun of the work-a-holicness, but really something is working well in Japanese schools. Teachers spend all their time there, and the students spend a huge percentage of theirs as well... and everyone knows each other really, really well. Huge emphasis is placed on the bond of the "home room" group and most of the kids seem to get it. When a teacher is in the room the kids act respectful. They don't act scared or intimidated. They just act the way that someone would act when someone whom they admire is nearby. I think education in America needs to take a cue from this... I know it's not a hugely novel idea. But the way we approach it in the US is that a teacher's job is to disseminate information and that's that. In a world where less and less students are actually finding practical ways to use what they learn in a classroom on the outside, wouldn't it make a whole lot of sense to re-focus education towards giving young people a sense of stability and the feeling that someone actually knows a little bit and cares a little bit about them, and that they're not just pieces of data?

By the way, since I only work from 8 to 5, and have a little time to go home and chill, I get to be an anime superstar.