Japanese Students

One of the best things about SCTI was the opportunity to take a class with a few Japanese students. In Professor MacDougall's class, Japan in Contemporary International Affairs, we had 4 auditing students from Doshisha University and Kyoto University. It was a great way to meet more people and make a few Japanese friends.
I had heard that college students in Japan spend very little time studying, preferring instead to join clubs and participate in recreational activities so I was surprised with how well the Japanese students did in class. Part of our classwork included small presentations; the auditors' presentations were interesting, sophisticated, and at least as good (if not better) than most of the ones given by those of us who were actually taking the class for a grade, even more impressive considering everything was in English. Certainly it seems that Japanese schools are doing something right, especially if they can do so well in a class while studying so little, but I also suspect the caricaturization of Japanese college students as idle and not hardworking is probably not correct.