Peter the Japanese Writing Teacher

I’ve been in “teacher mode” a lot these days, spending time helping my daughter write essays in Japanese. She’ll be taking the entrance test for a private Junior High soon, and one of the requirements of the test is that she be able to write a good essay on a topic like, “What kind of Junior High School student do you want to be?” or “Name an event in your life that moved you emotionally.” Historically, tests in Japan have been all about rote memorization, for example knowing that the city of Heian-kyo (modern Kyoto) was established in 794, or that the angles of a triangle always add up to 180, but as educators see that students lack written communication skills, essays and other kinds of writing have started to become more common. Like Japan’s society itself, the essays have a strict framework to them, written on special “essay writing paper” with columns of squares to write characters in. In addition to writing kanji and kana correctly, the essay tests knowledge of how to properly write using the form, including some seemingly arbitrary things like knowing that the title must be indented three squares, and so on.

This is what the special paper, called genko yoshi 原稿用紙, looks like:

Recently spotted on Twitter: “Got my bento toys from J-List last night in the mail. Even cooler than advertised. My husband will never guess what’s for Christmas!” That makes us so happy. J-List is a great place to search for really rare and fun items from Japan, whether it’s anime toys and figures or bento boxes or unique 2009 Japanese calendars or our trademark Wacky Things from Japan.