After people learn that I’ve spent a stretch of time in Japan, they will inevitably ask something along the lines of “What’s the craziest thing you saw over there?” or “What’s the craziest thing that happened to you over there?”. I know exactly what to tell them. We visited a handful of all-girls schools when we studied abroad in Japan, and never before have I felt so much like a rock star. It was surreal.

All-Girls Schools

When we went to Japan for our 10 week study abroad, we were paired up with students from an all-girls college. Related to this all-girls college was an all-girls middle school and high school. We visited an elementary school as well, but students of both gender attended that one. But at only one of these schools did the students go gaga for me and some of my classmates.

Can you guess which one? I had no idea it would happen before it did – but let’s go through the schools I visited, I’ll tell you about each one, and eventually we’ll get to the place where all the magic happened.

All-Girls College

The first school we went to was the all-girls college, because that was the school that all our language partners came from, and we spent a lot of time there, not visiting the other schools until later in the program. As a college aged boy, I was pretty excited about being at an all-girls college almost every day for the next ten weeks.

However, it wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary. There weren’t girls fawning over us at every turn, vying for our attention, or throwing themselves at us. It was just like being at any other college really, except there were no guys (besides faculty) there.

While at the college, we helped out with the English classes, helped our language partners with their English homework, conducted English study tables, and made friends with as many people as possible. It was a really great experience, but I didn’t feel like a famous American superstar. Not yet, anyway.

Mixed Elementary School

The first school we visited after the all-girls college was a nice little elementary school with both girl and boy students. Now, I’m the youngest person in my family, so I’m not used to dealing with little kids. These little Japanese kids were hilarious though. They all spoke way too fast for me to understand properly, so the day of visiting the elementary school involved more than a decent amount of smiling and nodding.

We played some games, ate a school lunch, ran around outside at recess, and answered some of their questions about America. Most of their questions were simple and ordinary little kid things like “How many friends do you have?” or “What’s your favorite fruit?”.

The kids also seemed to love saying “OH MY GOD” for whatever reason. Confusing, but hilarious.

A bit of the question and answer time was actually pretty awkward though. We were split up into rotating groups, and in these groups a lot of the kids were asking about World War II and the atomic bombs and what we knew about what happened to their country and the reasons behind it and the aftermath.

I asked my friends if they could remember any more about these questions than I did, but the consensus was that the kids were mostly interested in how that period of time was taught to kids in America and how their version of history differed from what we were taught.

Since the kids were so young, we couldn’t use English to explain the already touchy and difficult subject with them, so trying to articulate our thoughts on this subject was incredibly awkward and uncomfortable. Who would have thought the kids would be so interested in asking us about that? I was all prepared for questions about American cartoons and toys – geez.

It seems everyone in our group pretty much just gave generalizations about the subject and kind of just awkwardly waited for the teacher to have us move on to the next topic and rotate to safety. I think the awkward stress experienced during this time has prevented us all from remembering it very well. Sorry.

Anyway, no kids really went crazy for us at the elementary school. I did have one kid who became strangely attached to me and kept wanting to give me hugs, but that was it. Nothing too out of the ordinary – kids like to hug things. The best is yet to come.

All-Girls Middle School

The middle school wasn’t all that exciting either, unfortunately. So much so that I don’t even remember it all that well. Some of the girls got excited about our one red-headed friend and kept calling him “Ron”, like from Harry Potter, but that was about it. They also got kind of excited about one of the girls, but I think they just thought she looked like an anime character.

If you have red hair in Japan, you are Ron Weasley.

We got put into rotating groups again and talked with the girls in English. They were supposed to talk to us and ask us questions in English and then present what they learned about us (in English again) to the rest of the class.

I mostly got asked whether or not I had a girlfriend and what qualities I looked for in a woman. It was pretty hilarious.

All-Girls High School

Oh. My. God. I’m famous. I was completely and totally unprepared for this. Word that there were a handful of Americans in the building got around this school fast. I mean, really fast. Before I knew it there were girls peeking their heads out from classrooms trying to make eye contact. If I did so much as look at them, acknowledge them, or God forbid, wave at them – they would instantly go into a smiling and giggling hysteria and disappear back into their classroom.

They tried to keep us out of the hallways between classes for fear of us getting mauled by these teenage Japanese girls, but it inevitably happened a few times. I had girls handing me notecards with their names, phone numbers, and email addresses on them – asking me to please contact them

When we were walking around outside the school being shown the tennis courts, I heard some shouting from one of the upper floors of a building behind me. Looking up, I saw a handful of girls leaning out the window and heard them shouting something. They were shouting “JOHN! JOHN! JOHN!”. What? How do they know my name? Well, guess I better smile and wave at them. *Cue endless fit of giggles*

At one point I actually got separated from the group of Americans and they were afraid I’d been kidnapped by my admirers. I was dawdling around in one of the classrooms after we were done distracting the students with our presence because a couple girls were talking to me and asking me for my contact information. Somehow I got left behind, and together with a blushing and giggling group of girls, we searched for my classmates.

Eventually we found them, but not before I had a solid 5-10 minutes of girls bombarding me with questions about what kind of girls I like, if I had a girlfriend, and just wanting to know anything and everything about me. To some, this might sound like an ego boost, or like I was just living it up over there, but at the time it was just really, really weird. I didn’t know how I felt about it. At points it was neat and felt pretty cool, but at other times it made me think of how weird things must get for people who are actually famous.

This is where I experienced my first tea ceremony, mentioned in this previous post here.

And then the icing on the cake was when we left the school and were sent on our way back to our dorm. The students left at the same time we did, and maybe 10-20 of them had to take the same way back that we did, so we had a gigantic group of girls following us on our way back home.

We were asked many times where we were staying, but we never actually told them where our dorm was. Partially just to give them a hard time, but partially because I think all of us were a little paranoid having these “raving fangirls” actually knowing where we sleep at night.

I talked with some of my friends again for their opinion on that wacky experience, and also their experiences with schools at times other than when we all visited together. Here’s what they had to say.

The girls at the high school went nuts and were screaming John’s name from like the 6th floor while we were walking through the courtyard. It was crazy.

Unsurprisingly the all-girls high school went nuts for older foreign boys and were noticeably less excited to meet the foreign girls.

Looking at my experiences from the past couple of years, I think it depends a lot on the schools that you go to. If you go to a very rural school with very shy kids (like one of my schools) students try to avoid you at all costs because they are terrified that you are going to try and talk to them in English. If you go to a school with a lot of outgoing students (like one of my other schools) you feel like a rock star.

Students screaming your name in the hallways, everyone wanting to talk to you and give you a high five whenever they see you, not only at school, but everywhere. I even had a girl came up to me last week and say ‘先生、駅の前に見たよ！’ (Teacher! I saw you at the train station before!). I then said to her ‘Oh really?! When??’ To which she replied ‘あの〜。一年前かなぁ〜!’ (Umm~ Like a year ago~!) And I just stared at her as she ran off giggling with her group of friends. I mean, who holds on to that kind of memory for a year?

But yeah, the never ending ‘カッコイイ!!’s (cool) and ‘イケメン!!’s (cool, good looking guy) never get old either.

Rock Star Status

So if you want to feel like a rock star, visit a Japanese high school. I dunno how you would go about doing this unless it was part of a school trip or something – you can’t exactly just waltz into a school without looking like a trespasser or a pervert, but if you have the opportunity to visit a Japanese high school, definitely do not pass it up. It is an experience.

One thing I did really wonder though was why it was really only the high school girls that flipped their lids. Why didn’t the college girls or the middle school girls react in the same way? Were they just better at keeping their excitement in check, or were they just not as excited as the high schoolers for whatever reason? Maybe this is the age when boys become “interesting,” but by the time they reach college they’re over it? Perhaps it will forever remain a mystery.

I’ve heard of other stories from other people as well with similar experiences too, so I don’t think it was just us. What about you? Have you heard of or experienced this yourself? What about any girls out there visiting all-boys high schools?