Jul 13, 2026
AC in the school gym?
I was wondering does your local school (or the school you work at or the school your kids go to or any school that you are personally familiar with) have air conditioning the gym? My four children are all at different schools this year, and not one of them has AC in the gym. They all have AC in the classrooms now, but as you know, that has only been the case in recent years. I presume all schools have AC in the classroom now? For your reference: https://www.city-cost.com/blogs/BigfamJapan/zKnyR-living_medical_education_saitama_tokyo
Former nickname was "Saitama". Changed it to save confusion on place review posts! Irish, 20+ years in Japan! I also write on my personal website: insaitama.com
Best Answer
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on Jul 18
My children are at the one (elementary) school and while yes, they have air conditioning in their classrooms, their gym does not have an AC, nor did the school where they used to do karate lessons. Like in your case, they both use those big industrial fans, but they really don’t do as much as you hope they will :/ My kids’ school gym does have heating in the winter, so here’s hoping they might better appreciate the value of cooling in the future as well!
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on Jul 14
The private high school I work in has two gyms. The second one is a recent build, meeting all the current safety standards and has a powerful air conditioning system. The old gym, dating from the mid-1980s, was retrofitted with air con two years ago. Some regional municipal gyms with martial arts dojos were built without aircon. One in Kasukabe City I trained at a few years ago with no aircon was a sauna. When I threw my partner, he landed with a splat and left a puddle of sweat on the mat. We were all drenched. Fun times.
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on Jul 14
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on Jul 15
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on Jul 15
@BlueButterfly I hope my children's schools follow suit. Thankfully, the older two don't have gym at all in July - SHS, so they've half days already. But my JHS daughter in particular has had gym. I think the ES tries to avoid the gym in the heat, thankfully. They will be on school holidays from Friday, which is a relief to me.
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on Jul 15
@TonetoEdo so long as I live, I will never forget the unbearable heat at the annual July karate tournament where the gym had no AC. And I was only spectating! They did have large industrial fans on the courts for the karate-ka, which was better than nothing, but still hotter than it should have been. They installed air conditioning during the pandemic - it made all the difference.
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on Jul 15
@genkidesu same for us!
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on Jul 16
@BigfamJapan It's dangerous to do martial arts and even spectate in this heat! The hombu dojo for the martial art I train in has both aircon units and rotating fans to circulate the air. We couldn't do year-round training without that hardware. We'd expire!
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on Jul 18
@Lyssays its incredible really when you think about it - if you are doing sport in cold weather it is very unlikely to kill you, but if you are exercising in extreme heat, it could well kill you. Gyms get dangerously hot in summer in no time due to the humidity. Yet they put in heaters rather than AC. Mind boggles.
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on Jul 19
@BigfamJapan and mental health suffers, too! https://www.city-cost.com/blogs/genkidesu/GogZ2-living I blogged about this last week but it was relating to an article I read about the correlation between heat and youth mental health.
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on Jul 20
11 Answers