In Japan, it is up to students to clean their classroom, not cleaners. So while cleaners may come in once a week {or even less}, students will be selected to stay back on particular days and clean. Alternatively, your homeroom teacher could just show up and order you to clean, as happened to me recently. Even 桜 and 莉莎子 had to chip in, despite being from a different class {北}.

Each classroom has a closet outside of it, next to the lockers, that contains cleaning supplies such as brooms, dusters, etc. There are several jobs that need to be done, and this post is about a small clean, so one with not many jobs involved. Below is a photo of the supplies cupboard outside the classroom.

Students who clean need to sweep the floor and collect all dust, dirt and hair {there was so much!} from under the chairs, as well as cleaning the blackboard and placing all rubbish in the bin. These jobs can be divided in to three categories.

By far the best out of these three jobs is cleaning the blackboard, and though time consuming, it is much nicer to do that picking hair off a seat. When cleaning the blackboard, first erase all notes/messages, and collect any papers stuck to it. Place the papers on the teacher’s desk, and the magnets in a neat line at one end. Then, grab the duster and move along the blackboard, cleaning it again by running the duster from the top to the bottom, and then moving along a foot and repeating the process.

If you are stuck with the second best job, placing rubbish in the bin, don’t fret. Grab the duster collector and look busy until the sweepers have brought up some dirt. If anything looks disorderly in the classroom, then this is the time to fix it, less you too will be picking up hair.

Finally, other people have taken the desirable jobs, or you are new to cleaning and are stuck with the worst job, like me. Grab your broom and sweep up everything efficiently. Japanese brooms are slightly different to Western ones, and are made out of straw {sometimes}. When picking up hair, lift the chair and try to dislodge it with your broom or foot. If worse comes to worse than you might have to use your hands, but don’t whine. Be light hearted in your cleaning and it will make the whole experience more enjoyable, for everyone. Sweeping can be heaps of fun, especially when you can pretend to ride your broom as a Harry Potter character, or Kiki, a famous Japanese witch from anime.

I hope that this post has provided a little insight in to how Japanese classrooms work, and please remember that this is only relevant for a small clean, one that is delegated randomly by a teacher, rather than a designated cleaning time. My number one tip is: if the classroom is dirty, don’t hang around alone, or a teacher will find you are order you to clean it! Good luck.

-H