Education

The government has basically settled on a plan that aims to have junior high night schools established in every prefecture by fiscal 2022, to create an environment that will enable an expected influx of foreign workers and their families to better assimilate into Japanese society.

Ideas are shifting about what constitutes the nebulously named concept of “peace education” in Nagasaki, the second city ever to suffer an atomic attack, as its educators look to create a new approach to learning about their city’s difficult history.

I teach a class of 38 at Hamamatsu Higashi Senior High School in Shizuoka Prefecture, and earlier this month I tried out a gender-themed lesson from Alexander Dutson and James Hill’s “Thinking Experiments.”

If you’ve ever taught English at a Japanese school, you’ll likely be familiar with a certain kind of silence — pervasive and tinged with teenage ennui. Authors Alexander Dutson and James Hill want to recommend breaking the ice with philosophy.

The central government will strengthen its financial support for programs in which elementary, junior high and high school students stay in the countryside in communities centered on farming, forestry and fishing.

The education ministry said Tuesday it will not provide any subsidies to Tokyo Medical University for this or the next fiscal year after the institution was found to have discriminated against female applicants in its entrance examinations.

Mathematics teacher and puzzle creator Tetsuya Miyamoto says he’s probably watched Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon” at least 20 times.Miyamoto, whose numerical and logical puzzle KenKen has achieved worldwide success over the past decade, was inspired as a teacher by the iconic scene in which Lee’s character fools a bully who has picked a fight with him on a boat.

A group of elementary, junior high and high school students in the city of Fukushima are taking part in an initiative to develop original recipes using local agricultural products as part of a broader project to highlight the city’s recovery from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.

Whether you’ve been here for several days or several decades, listening to fellow expats, immigrants and other non-Japanese residents groaning about their dissatisfaction with their language abilities is nothing new. The advice I’ve received on how to improve, however, sometimes skews toward the exasperating.

Rurika Koike, 18, is a one-of-a-kind champion. She won the all-Japan high school tournament this summer for excellence in the art of making soba.