Nice read. The one thing that shocked me in japan is like you said, the lack of general knowledge.

In my state we have an exam at the end of year 12 to receive a TER (tertiary entrance ranking). You pick 5 degrees that you would like to study from 1 to 5 then based on your TER you are given a course. This seems ok to me, but it has its problems. In australia though people do no ofter repeat years of school. Yr 12 sometimes....

Edit: The school I went to in Japan went from 8:20 to 4:00, monday to friday, 8:20 to 12:30 on saturday. 1st year high school/junior high kids had the occasional 'overnight' thing where they would have an extra 5 - 7 hours of study.