In upper elementary school, I was sent to a cram school, but I failed the entrance exam for a private junior high school and ended up attending a local public junior high school.
At that time, school violence was a social problem, and at my junior high school, members of delinquent groups who were also involved with biker gangs were running rampant.
There was corporal punishment from teachers against students, and incidents such as delinquents beating up teachers during class also occurred.
I was short and not good at sports, but I did well in other subjects and was considered a top student academically.
My homeroom teacher in my first year recommended that we join a club activity, and I joined a sports club. However, after a while, I got bored and started skipping practice. I was called out by a senior student and subjected to physical punishment.
Because of that, I quit the club.
Later, my homeroom teacher told me, “You quit your club activity halfway through. You couldn’t see it through to the end and gave up,” as if I had committed a crime, which made me feel inferior.
I think it was around my first year of junior high school that I started to find it troublesome to hang out with friends my own age, so I often played with younger children in my neighborhood.
I don’t remember the details, but perhaps my interpersonal relationship problems began to sprout around that time.
I remember being teased about it by my classmates, and my father questioning me, “Don’t you have any friends your own age?”, which made me stop playing with younger children.
My father loved mountain climbing, and we would sometimes go hiking as a family.
As a child, I disliked mountain climbing because it was tiring, but in junior high school, I made two friends who liked mountain climbing and hiking, and the three of us started going hiking together.
I remember how much fun it was to do activities with just friends, without any adults.
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