May 18 (soranews24.com) - The Japanese school year starts in April, and one high school in Tochigi Prefecture wasted no time in scheduling a two-night class trip for its new crop of first-year students.
Their destination: the city of Nikko, nestled in the beautiful mountains and one of the top sightseeing destinations not just in Tochigi, but all of Japan.
Nikko boasts numerous attractions of natural beauty and cultural significance, including Tosho-gu Shrine, dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the shogun who founded the three-century Tokugawa dynasty, and the picturesque Lake Chuzenji and Kegon no Taki waterfalls.
However, for a large number of male students on the trip, the body of water they really wanted to see was the women's outdoor hot spring bath at their hotel.
With hot spring voyeurism being one of the most common stock scenarios for risque fantasies in Japan, the teachers warned the students against peeping at the start of the trip, which began on April 24. School staff was even posted outside the entrance to the women's changing space, to keep any of the boys from trying to infiltrate the area.
However, over a dozen boys (who, as first-year high school students, were 15 or 16 years old) figured out another strategy. Both the men's and women's bathing areas at the hotel have outdoor baths, with a wall separating them and providing privacy. So on the second night of their stay, 13 boys who'd entered the outdoor men's bath climbed up high enough on the wall to look over at a number of their naked classmates.
The female students spotted their peeping classmates and informed their teachers, who also implicated more than 15 other boys as "jeering" bystanders who did nothing to discourage the peepers, even if they didn't look over the wall themselves. That 30-something contingent is a pretty significant portion of the group, which consisted of a total of roughly 250 students and teachers.
The principal of the school, the name of which has not been released, has offered an apology, saying "We have no excuse to offer our female students who were the victims of this incident. We will be taking measures to ensure this sort of thing never happens again." Though the school says the boys will undergo sensitivity lessons, no criminal charges have been filed, but considering the scandal, as well as the fact that not just students, but other female guests of the hotel were in the bath when the boys peeped over the wall, odds are the school won't be welcome back at the hotel the next time it wants to organize a trip to Nikko.
