Joe Fenton wrote:

John Campbell wrote:

One thing I consistantly see people getting wrong in fanfics in 
general is how Japanese schools are set up.  From what I've gathered, 
unlike in American schools, the students stay in one classroom and 
the teachers move from class to class.  But that might depend on the 
school in question.  Not to mention that the school breaks are 
shorter and they have a completly different set of holidays.  Though 
I've never seen a fanfic that attempted to put any obviously 
non-japanese holiday into the Japanese school calendar....except 
Christmas and Valentine's day.  And I hear the Japanese have taken 
those holidays in a particularly Japanesque maner.
 

I've visited a number of home pages for Japanese High-Schools and
read journals of actual Japanese students, and yes, the students remain
in one class while the teachers move from class to class unless special
equipment is needed for that particular class (like phys ed or home ec).
If you are interested in How Japanese schools work, just google for
them. Many have put up home pages in English that give class schedules
and everything. Many students keep English blogs about school life.
If you look, you can find much interesting and helpful info.

Christmas isn't as big in Japan. The Ranma manga skips Christmas
altogether.

They made a big deal over it in the Anime.  They had a big party with a
stage presentation/song.  It was the Xmas special...  I've nosticed that
most present-day anime have an Xmas and New-Year special.

 From what I've read though, Xmas/New-Year seems to be switched from
what it is here in the US...  Xmas is where you get drunk and try to
have sex with anything that moves... New-Years is spent with the family.

For example, in Lum when we first meet Sakura, she tells them she
has a 19 and 1/2 year mortgage on the shrine. So? Well, in Japan
shrines are torn down and rebuilt every 20 years to keep them in
good shape. The joke was that she will have paid off her mortgage
just in time for the shrine to be torn down and rebuilt, thus 
necessitating
another mortgage. Little things like that slip right past most readers.

Yup.  would have slipped by me...  I did know about the Valentines day
though.


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