10 Million Clubs, One Gym
"How many freakin athletic clubs ARE THERE?" newbie teacher
*For more posts similar to this one, see School Culture
This is a short informational post.
The first thing you need to know about the club activities in Japan is that they are year-round!
This creates a lot of scheduling problems for practice time. For the most part, each athletic club meets almost everyday after school and sometimes even before school (yes, in the morning).
Here are the main clubs that need to share gym time: boys and girls basketball, boys and girls volleyball, kendo, boys and girls table tennis (ping-pong), boys and girls badminton and judo. Not every school has every sport, but we're still talking about 8 or more clubs needing the gym year-round.
So, all of the coaches meet once a week or so to settle the gym schedule. This takes place at a meeting that takes, at the more maniacal schools, up to an hour a more.
Most of the time the gym will be split in half by an enormous net hanging from the ceiling, with teams practicing on both sides.
The only problem with this set-up is the damn ping-pong team! The little balls keep going through the net and getting stepped on by the team on the other side!
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