Tourism Foreign visitors offered a taste of the Japanese high school experience

With his black school jacket slung casually over his shoulders and his feet propped on a typical Japanese classroom desk, 29-year-old New Yorker Jason Wu fully embraced the role of rebellious student for a day. Wu participated in a one-day immersive event at "Kimino High School," a repurposed campus in Chiba Prefecture, around 60 kilometres southeast of Tokyo. The programme invites foreign tourists to experience a day in the life of a Japanese high school student—complete with uniforms, traditional lessons like calligraphy, and sports day games such as tug-of-war and beanbag tossing. Participants also participate in earthquake drills, serve lunch, and clean their classrooms, just as Japanese students do. For Wu, a software engineer and avid anime fan, it was a rare opportunity to step into the world that has long fascinated him. As tourism surges amid a historically weak yen, visitors like Wu seek experiences beyond the usual sightseeing.

The classroom experience, organized by event planning company Undokai, also dovetails with a government plan to coax more visitors outside of destinations like Tokyo and Kyoto suffering from "overtourism" and into rural areas. Many manga or anime such as supernatural drama "Jujutsu Kaisen" and romantic comedy "Ouran High School Host Club", both of which have aired on Netflix, are set in high schools and for anime fans in particular, getting to experience high school is a peak Japanese experience. "Lots of animes will feature school life being this ideal part of your childhood," said Wu's wife, Parina Kaewkrajang, 27. "It's a type of nostalgia that we wanted to experience for ourselves.

Click to expand...

I wonder whats next, "A day in the life of a salaryman"?