all photos courtesy yourhighschool_kimitsu
There’s a large swath of Japanese manga and anime that takes place in high school. There’s also a large and growing fan base of Japanese manga outside Japan. Plus, Japan just happens to have a lot of abandoned schools owing to their shrinking population. All those forces have converged, resulting in Kimino High School (君ノ高校), a full-day immersive experience that lets you live the life of a showa-era Japanese high schooler.
Kimino High School, which opened just about 1 year ago, lets you enroll for one day in a school nestled in rural Chiba. Taking place at the former Kameyama Junior High School, which closed in 2020, students begin their day by choosing their school uniform. They then proceed to experience a normal day of school, which includes an entrance ceremony, morning homeroom, day shift, calligraphy and history classes, along with school lunch, sports day, and a graduation ceremony.
The school is run by professional actors, who infuse the day with some anime trope drama, such a delinquents (colloquially known as yankee) barging in and disrupting class, as well as students being punished in the traditional format of having to hold buckets of water in the hallway.
Enrolling in Kimino High School will cost you 30,000 yen (about $200 usd) and includes a free shuttle between Shinjuku and the school. You can learn more on their website and Instagram.
your class may be disrupted by some rowdy delinquents
a fire drill
