At the supermarket today, I saw a junior high school boy in school uniform, but wearing an apron. He waved to me, so somewhat puzzled, I went over to see who it was. It turned out to be someone I knew and, somewhat incongruously, he was stacking shelves.

Now, you may well ask why a junior high school boy would be stacking shelves in a supermarket.

Good question.

It turns out that he was actually doing work experience. There is a system, certainly here in Higashihiroshima City, where local businesses have third grade junior high school students do work experience for, I think, two weeks.

The interesting thing was that the boy in question actually goes to a fairly high level junior high school, yet he was doing work experience stacking shelves. I think that’s actually a really good thing. Of course it’s also good to match students to the sort of job they’re likely to be doing in the future, but I’d say it’s equally important for students to get experience of jobs they’re less likely to do after graduation. I don’t think the student I saw today is likely to be stacking shelves in the future, but nevertheless, it’s still excellent that the scheme allows students to experience many different kinds of work, such as stacking shelves.

So, to whomever came up with the scheme, well done.