High School Search

Over the weekend my family and I went down to Yokohama to check out a high school we might be sending our son to next year. He’s a jukensei right now, lit. “taking-a-test student,” and we’re in the process of reviewing various schools that would be right for him. The idea of choosing a high school as one would a university is very strange to my American mind, but in Japan compulsory education stops at junior high, and students compete to get into the high school of their choice. I’ve been quite amazed at the complex strategies my wife and son have been coming up with — take the test for school A in February then school B in March, with school C acting as a suberi-dome (“stop the slide”) in case the first two prove too difficult. Although it’s extremely rare, it’s possible for students to fail all their entrance exams and become “high school ronin,” the word for a masterless samurai that’s been repurposed to mean a student with no school to go to.We’re scouting for high school for my son, maybe as far away as Yokohama.