Graduations in Japan

Ken Lee writes about graduations in Japan.

Recently I've had the opportunity to attend a graduation ceremony. A couple of my friends were graduating and I was there for the pics. ^^. Not to be in them, but to be the one behind the camera taking photos.

So. About graduation ceremonies in Japan. Graduations are held twice a year (at least for my university). In April during Spring and in September during Autumn. Always during the school holidays. I've been to 3 so far, 1 of them my own; all at the same university. There's no real dress code. No academic dress, no graduation cap.

You don't get your degree in a roll, but rather in a booklet. It starts off with a big ceremony. The president of the university will hand degrees out to representatives from each batch; he's a busy person, can't individually give out degrees to everyone.

Once the main ceremony is over, graduates separate into different groups and head off to different halls to receive their respective degrees from the head of their respective schools. *phew*. Photos here are from the smaller ceremony which includes everyone... except that representative.

As soon as I saw these pics it reminded me of when I graduated from university. Graduated with first class honors which only another 1 or 2 others in my class out of 30 or 40 (cant remember exact number) managed to get ^^;

My mum was extremely disappointed that I didn't want to attend the ceremony - she said that she wanted to see me in a black cloak and one of those square hats and kept going on at me for weeks!

I was over the moon that I got the top marks and enjoyed learning Japanese at university but to me personally it wasn't anything to celebrate - because I still hadn't made it to Japan yet.
Graduating was just a small goal which I needed to complete to get to my bigger goal which drove me every day - to live and work in Japan.
After graduation I joined Japan Airlines as a Computer Engineer and made it to Japan just over a year after - more of my story in the Japan Work Benefits article.

Did you/will you attend a graduation ceremony?