Japan is opening its education system to world scrutiny by bringing secondary teachers from other countries and cultures to have a look - perhaps breaking down the barriers of misunderstanding. Brídín Gilroy, national co-ordinator of the Post-Primary Languages Initiative was there recently

Last November, with Maura McCarthy, Transition Year co-ordinator at St Joseph's College, Lucan, which offers a module in Japanese studies, I took part in the Secondary Educators' Study Tour of Japan with 76 post-primary teachers from 26 countries there at the invitation of the Japan Foundation.

Together in Tokyo, we attended lectures on the Japanese system of education and visited the Edo-Tokyo museum which provides an overview of the history of Japan from the 17th century to modern times.

A stunning kabuki theatre performance afforded a dramatic spectacle of colour, costume and voice with music on traditional Japanese instruments.

Our hotel was in Shinjuku, near high-class hotels, department stores and government offices. Nearby there are also discount shopping arcades, pachinko gaming parlours and sleazy strip-bars in streets aglow with garish neon.

In the evenings, we explored this district on foot, seeking out restaurants, frequently to be found on the upper storeys of high-rise buildings. We tried to decide what we might eat by examining the window-displays of wax models of the dishes that replace translations of the menu.

Next we went to Hiroshima, to visit Miyajima Island - a Shinto shrine and one of the scenic wonders of Japan - and, of course, the Peace Memorial Park.

An eerie silence prevails among the hundreds of visitors filing through the memorial building as they recreate in their imagination the infernal event of August 6th, 1945.

In the park we laid origami paper cranes on the monument to Sadako. Traditionally, the making of 1,000 paper cranes by a sick person is believed to restore them to health: this little girl managed to make only 644 before dying of leukaemia at the age of11, 10 years after the bomb was dropped.

The "bullet train" brought us to Kyoto and its magical palaces, temples and gardens.

The group then split in three and our group visited the western city of Fukui, a few miles inland from the Sea of Japan. This, in a strange way, was the highlight of the tour: an ordinary and uninspiring city on the surface, it was here, away from the tourist sites, that we caught glimpses of the real Japan - meeting warm and welcoming people, visiting schools, having a home stay with a Japanese family and spending a night in a traditional Japanese inn.

We visited a special school, a primary school, a junior and a senior high school - each operating within its own context but all having two features in common: firstly, an amazing level of discipline among the pupilsand pristine cleanliness.

Pupils progress automatically from primary to junior high school, where competition becomes intense to gain entry to the most reputable senior high schools.

At second level, the school day is long, with the core curriculum being taught from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. after which the special-interest clubs swing into action until 6 p.m. These are supervised or facilitated by teachers and include art, music, sport, martial arts and tea-ceremony. Indeed, pupils continue to attend school for extra-curricular activities throughout the summer holidays and at weekends.

The school week, however, is being shortened this year to five days under the current reform of the education system - a reform which many educationalists feel it will result in a deterioration of standards.

Priority strategies of the reform include a reduction in class sizes, increased emphasis on developing pupils' creativity, an awards system, special promotion for outstanding teachers, more parental participation on school boards and the implementation of school self-evaluation.

Our education system has made scant concession to the east, its languages or culture, but that is now changing in the light of global travel and the information society. In the words of President Mary McAleese in her message to the post-primary languages initiative: "our future lies with young men and women who are prepared to work hard to understand each other, to learn how to talk in each other's language and to break down the barriers which we all feel when we are not understood."