Sex Education!

Guess who got to sit in on a SEX EDUCATION class yesterday?

I had no idea what I was in for, since my JTE said "so many" students have babies these days. Well I don't know about other JETs, but I haven't seen a pregnant student yet. In fact, they barely seem to like the opposite sex. Maybe I'm just too oblivious to see students making out in dark corners. Or maybe I just want to believe that they are innocent...*cough* right...

I remember sex ed from my middle school years...the girls learn about reproduction while the boys "learn about aftershave," Erich says. The basic premise is: scare the crap out of us. Teach us about STDs, and show us the "Miracle of Life." That video still gives me nightmares and the occasional..."why the hell do I have to be a girl?" syndrome. So I expected it to be somewhat similar.

It was not.

In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The girls and the boys sat in the room together and were shown a Japanese version of "The Miracle of Life" with a happy couple about to deliver their second child. There were no screams of pain, there was no blood. They did show the delivery on screen, but it wasn't graphic. Surprisingly, the students didn't giggle or squirm at all. I didn't understand every word, but I know there was no rhetoric to scare the kids into abstinence.

Then they broke out the pregnancy suit.

If only I would have brought my camera for the hilarity that ensued. Boys were quickest to try on the suit, and most of them were so skinny it looked like it might break them in half. Utter chaos. Then they pointed to the suit, and pointed to me: "Erica-sensei!" Oh, god. I told them that I am already fat, but they still insisted. Great. I guess it can't hurt to know that I can touch my toes while pregnant.

So what is the point of this story? There isn't one, except for my final thought about Sex Education and Japanese society: Japan has a serious birth rate problem, so they want to depict childbirth in the most favorable way possible. But is teen pregnancy really on the rise here? That remains to be seen...