Hi there! I’m part of a Facebook group for a university in Japan, and I often see people post a new thread introducing themselves as “3期の太郎です”. I’m wondering what the 期 means in this context. My initial guess was something like “3rd period” or “3rd term”. However, I’ve seen some people introduce themselves as 14期のX, so that doesn’t really fit.
I had another thought just now, though. Could it be something like their graduating class? It’s a relatively new school, so I could see it making sense if it meant “I’m X from the 14th graduating class [of this university]”.
Just seeing if anyone else has come across this usage before, thanks!
Yeah like Leebo said, graduating class, or something similar.
It would be the third iteration of something. I was apart of an exchange program, and if I was in the third group of people to participate I would be 3期.
Yea or like term/year as something or something similar. I was in a union meeting and everyone was introducing themselves in the same way. Basically saying it was their X term in their current position. For example 2nd term as a regional representative.
Yup, they used to do the same on my college. Each department knew the year when they were created, so they had the count of all the years (and students groups) since then.
I belong to the 32期, students who entered one year before us 31期, one year after us 33期 and there it goes. You can use it for schools, Japanese companies and anything else where people enter periodically.
I’ve seen some people translating it to English as “batch”. Like, “What is your batch?” “32nd”, but I guess it only makes sense for people who are in Japan and aware of the context.
If you have watched 食劇 の ソーマ (Food Wars!) , when referring to graduated student they alwas refer to their “generation”: in the original they use 期 as counter for that.
