Forget Janitors! Let's SOJI

School janitors are nonexistent in Japan. So who cleans the school? You got it: THE STUDENTS! Not only is the school "creaning time" a group activity, (as everything is in Asia) but it is also a way for students to take more responsibility and pride in their schools. Would this ever fly in American schools? Highly doubtful, but there are definitely some good things about it. Kind of like school uniforms. Or maybe I've just been here too long....

At first, (two years ago, in fact) I found "cleaning time" to be very strange. I didn't know what was happening when a group of students came into the teachers room after lunch and started emptying out the little trash containers by our desks and sweeping up the floor. I thought maybe they were in trouble and this was their punishment or something. That's how cleaning usually feels to me, anyway!

But then, the "genki" (high-energy) cleaning music started. I looked out the door and realized that other students were cleaning the hallways, classrooms, bathrooms, and even outside. This is what is known as SOJI ("Cleaning time") in Japanese. "SOJI" time is amazingly planned out and efficient, like everything is in Japan. Certain classes are designated to certain places all around the school and school property, and homeroom teachers "rotate" their students' schedules so they're not cleaning in one place the whole year long.

Every day after lunchtime ends, the bell rings and students go to their SOJI spots. Like Pavlov's dogs, when the music starts, they know what to do. They roll up their sleeves and they clean. They sweep, they scrub, they erase every last bit of chalk off of the board. (By the way, not every school has their cleaning time after lunch. At my friend's school, it's at the end of the day, which almost makes more sense.) This phenomenon goes on in every school across Japan, from elementary to high school. And the kids learn how to clean, because in Japan there is only ONE proper way to do everything. (Sense a little underlying frustration on this point? Right you are, but more on that later...)

Sure, the students fool around and talk with their friends during SOJI. In fact, it IS kind of a social time. But at the same time, they know what they are supposed to be doing, and they do it. And the teachers (who are mainly supervising, but usually cleaning, too) have every right to scold them if they've missed a spot...

When I first came to my school, I just helped the students who were cleaning up in the teachers room because no one had told me where else to go. When the next school year began in April, I was "assigned" with another English teacher to supervise the cleaning of two girls bathrooms (kind of a joke if they could see my own bathroom!) As you can see, it mostly turned into a time for chatting with the girls who came there to clean. And hey, they learned some good "cleaning" expressions like "mop," "dustpan" and "Gross! A fingernail!"

Since April of this year, I have been cleaning the classroom with a different English teacher and her homeroom students. Cleaning the classroom is quite a procedure, let me tell you... First the students move all the desks to one side of the room, sweep up the floor, and then get down on their hands and knees and clean the hardwood floors with a cloth. Then they move all the desks to the other side of the room and do the same thing over again.

A friend of mine, Jamie, who's a junior high school ALT, got creative in his boredom last winter and talked the Student Council kids at his school into helping him make a video called "Time of The Soji," sung in karaoke version with his own lyrics to a song I'm sure all of you will recognize... It's YouTube quality, and it definitely shows the spirit of cleaning time in Japan. Please enjoy! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1167660123204589634&q=soji