YAMATE GAKUIN Junior Senior High School

: Yamate Gakuin was founded in 1966 as a private boys’ boarding school, in what was then the outskirts of Yokohama. Girls started attending in 1969. In the early days students came from all over Japan and almost all were boarders, but this balance gradually changed over the years and boarding was discontinued in the late 1980s. These days students come from all over Yokohama, as well as from southern Tokyo and nearby cities in Kanagawa Prefecture.
: Yamate Gakuin is located only 10 minutes from Konandai train station and shopping centre but has been fortunate in maintaining its semi-rural appearance. It has a large, green campus with over 7,000 trees and shrubs, and has hills, farmland and designated green areas on two sides. It takes around 25 minutes by train from Konandai to central Yokohama and about an hour to central Tokyo.
: There are around 500 students in the junior high and another 1,400 in the senior high. The average class size is around 38. Classes run from 8.50 to 3.10, Monday to Friday. The Japanese school year is from the beginning of April until mid March, with summer holidays in late July-August, winter holidays in late December-early January, and spring holidays at the end of the school year in March. Extra-curricula activities, such as sporting and cultural activities, are held after school, on weekends and in holidays and many students come to school on days other than regular class days.
: North American Homestay Programme Every April the entire Grade 11 class travels to North America for two week homestays. Students are split up into a number of groups, which travel simultaneously to host cities in the United States and Canada. They stay with families and on weekdays spend some time at school and some time on excursions and other outside activities. In late July students and chaperones from the places visited that April come to Japan for a reciprocal two week homestay. They are hosted by Yamate students and their families. The programme started with a visit to Dayton, Washington in 1969, and has continued every year since then. Edmonton, Canada joined the programme in 1987, and our current partners are Dayton, Walla Walla, Yakima and Pasco (Washington), Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer and Medicine Hat (Alberta), Saskatoon and Regina (Saskatchewan), Lancaster (Pennsylvania), the Conejo Valley (California) and Victoria (British Columbia).; One Year Exchange Programme Yamate Gakuin has a one year student exchange programme with schools in Canada. It began in 1970, when the first students from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States came to Japan and Yamate students went to those countries. Around 650 Yamate students have spent a year studying overseas, while their counterparts studied at Yamate in a programme specially set up for them to learn Japanese language, and about Japanese culture, history, etc. In recent years the one year programme has been confined to exchanges with Canada.; Grade 9 Australia Homestay Programme Japanese schools have a trip for students in Grade Nine. Since 2002 Yamate has taken its Grade Nine class to Australia for a five day homestay in November, to Melbourne, Sydney or the Gold Coast.; United Nations Student Conference Since receiving its first invitation in 1993, Yamate has sent students every year to the United Nations International School Student Conference, held in the General Assembly Hall of the U.N. and attended by distinguished speakers from various fields. Yamate is one of only four Japanese schools invited to attend.
: Yokohama was one of the first ports opened to overseas trade when Japan’s isolation from the rest of the world was ended in the 1860s, and was the site of one the earliest foreign settlements. Today it has large Chinese and Korean communities and its Chinatown is the biggest in Japan.

Situated next to the capital, Tokyo, Yokohama is Japan’s second largest city, with a population of around 3,500,000. Like most big cities in Japan, it is well served by its public transport system of trains and buses, and the majority of journeys are made by public transport rather than private car.