Everyone wears a uniform, and the girls uniforms look like sailor suits. They all have pleated skirts. These skirts are unfashionably long. The cool thing to do is to roll your skirt up at the waist. If you don't, you look like a middle school girl, and would probably be forced into suicide by peer pressure and ridicule. The kids interviewed in the article I linked above said they'd rather DIE than wear their skirts the real length. Which I find a bit overblown.I've only once seen the true length of the skirt at my school, and I swallowed some coffee down the wrong pipe and spew-coughed it out all over my shirt, I was so surprised. Id had no idea the skirts were that long, because NO ONE WEARS THEM THAT WAY. Not even the nerdiest of nerds. Of course, it was clear to me from the start that many students were adjusting the length, as skirts range from mid-thigh to oh-my-sweet-Jesus-if-you-bent-1cm-over-I-would-see-your-bum! but really. We had to have an emergency school assembly because the Board of Education had received complaints from community members of our students violations of dress code (this includes not only shortened skirts, but piercings, dyed hair, colored contact lenses, untucked shirts/no shirts etc.) Some girls even re-sew the uniforms so that the hips are really tight, though since you get yelled at occasionally to roll down the skirt, it is a bit risky to permanently adjust that. Some of the first useful phrases I learned in Japanese at this school were `tuck in your shirt!` and `where is your shirt?!` (those 2 are just for the boys, girls have sailor uniforms that don't tuck in, nor would they walk around without shirts on). Anyway. Take a look at the article! We`re number ONE, YAY!
