えにっき & じゆうけんきゅう - What Japanese Summer Homework Taught Me
If you have watched enough anime, you have probably noticed it too.
As the school year pause for the summer vacation, Japanese elementary school students get sent home with a summer homework project - other than just worksheets, but something a little more creative and personal. I always noticed it in the background of scenes and got curious enough to look it up.
Turns out, there are two main ones:
えにっき - Picture Diary
- A journal where students document their summer through drawings and writing. Think festivals, day trips, family moments, where a student will be practicing both observation skills and handwriting at the same time. Essentially: draw what you experienced, then write about it.
じゆうけんきゅう - Independent Research
- It’s more like an independent project assignment, where students choose a topic they are interested in and chronicle their findings, for example, observing how fast a plant grows each day, or monitoring the weather and temperature through the whole summer period.
Both concepts are simple, but honestly? Really charming. There's something about the combination of image + reflection that I find really appealing.
Trying It Out in Digitally
I have been wanting to incorporate something like this here on Jen's Gentle Days - a casual, low-pressure way of pairing a photo with a few honest thoughts about it and an excuse to practice Japanese on the side, depending on the context. No heavy editing, no polished captions. Just a moment, documented.
So this mini section below is a little bit of a trial run to see how it feels and how photos work from a free account, and non-technical (a.k.a. non-coding) standpoint:
こんにちは。おげんきですか。
Now that sakura (cherry blossom) season in Toronto has officially wrapped up in early May, and I'm still not over it, honestly.
This photo was taken in 2025 by yours truly, and ended up being one of my favourite shots of the whole season. Something about it just stuck with me even after the blossoms were long gone.
Thank you for reading.
ありがとうございました。🌸