My policy is that from time to time I check out a topic or an area of Japan that I am not exposed to in my daily life. This approach has for me the advantages that I am forced to keep an open mind, become familiar with a topic I have had possibly no interest at all, plus learn more what is going on with the Japanese economy, society or learn potentially about a new trend.
A popular magazine for Junior high school girls was my focus this time. A recent issue of Pichilemon magazine (ピチレモン) showed the results of the response of 1000 junior high school girls being questioned about their daily habits. The results of this poll was then considered to represent the average female Japanese student: 155cm in height with 44.4 kg weight and having medium long hair.
To make the picture perfect with the school uniform – definitely a part of Japan, plus furthermore a crucial part of confidence of a high school student – let me announce the average the skirt ends 7.5 cm above the knee.
A junior high school girl gets up typical at 6:40, after having slept for an average of 7.2 hours. Apart from the time spent at school, 69 minutes are used for homework, 147 minutes spent watching TV, plus an additional 93 minutes are allocated for online activities. Although it might be surprising how little time is spent for homework, I have to say I did not expect that more time is spent for TV than the Internet. Then finally after a long day at 23:20 the average junior high school girl goes to bed.
For sure I had the wrong image, because a high number of 99% of junior high school girls enjoy going to school. Roughly it takes about 17 minutes for these girls to go to school.
Junior high school girls have an average of 4.4 close friends. As it should be expected nowadays, 80% of the students seem to have a boyfriend. For 89% of the girls their boyfriend has roughly the same age, when 10% have an older partner. Plus guess what, 80% have already kissed a guy. Looking out into the future, these junior high school girls expect to get married at 24.8 years old, which reflects an age just out of university with potentially some basic job exposure.
Apart from these social aspects, the most exciting food is bread/patisserie, curry rice or then sweets.
How were your teen years? In my case I had no school uniform, at least double the time spent on homework, little TV and no Internet. Most of the free time was used up chatting with other girls, drawing and reading. I had not been “lucky” enough to have a boyfriend with 15, so the kissing part came later too. To be honest, I had no idea about the age I might get married. It was somewhen in the future, but no clear image about it. At that time it was more important for me to make sure that I am ready and notice if the fairy tale price passes by…
Brought to you by Sibylle Ito (伊藤シビル)
This is the second post today I have seen saying that teenagers spend more time with TV and texting than another electonic media. And here we were thinking we had lost them inside the internet!
Dear Granbee,
what would I do without your comments
I guess TV is still a focus of entertainment for all generations. Personally I try to cut down my time watching TV, but it is not so easy.
Looking forward to seeing you again here.
Sibylle
Very interesting! That’s a lot of tv.
Dear Perogyo,
I agree with you the time spent in front of the TV was much higher than I expected for teenagers.
Hope to see you back here again,
Sibylle Ito