Recommended Recreations and Indoor Games for High School Students
When you become a high school student, you get busy with studying, club activities, romance, and more.
Even so, there are times when you end up with a little free time while hanging out with friends during breaks or on days off.
In this article, we’ll introduce some easy and fun activities you can enjoy in those moments!
This time, we’re focusing on indoor recreation and games, ranging from things you can do right away without any equipment to card games and board games.
There are options for different group sizes and time lengths, so try finding the ones that suit you best.
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Recommended Recreational and Indoor Activities for High School Students (11–20)
Taste-testing one-shot gags
When you’re friends, you generally get a feel for each other’s sense of humor.
As a game to play with close friends, “Guess the One-Shot Gag” is highly recommended.
In this game, each friend performs a gag they’ve come up with in turn, and everyone guesses whose gag it is.
Since everyone’s gag style is different, it’s really fun when you try it.
Lyrics hijacking game
It’s a game where you sing a favorite song and pick out words from its lyrics to connect to a different song.
It’s perfect for killing time during breaks, since singing puts you in a good mood.
It’s also really interesting because your partner’s song choices show their personality.
Try adding a penalty game if someone fails to “hijack” the lyrics to make it even more exciting.
Antonym Game
This is a game where you keep saying antonyms of the given word, and it’s best played with two or more people.
For example, if someone says “mountain,” the next person answers “river,” and then the person who answered gives a new prompt to the person next to them.
You repeat this process.
It’s also fun and exciting to raise the difficulty by using not only single words but longer phrases.
You don’t need any materials, so feel free to give it a try.
Eiko Game
Do you know the Eiko Game? It’s an easy, indoor recreation you can enjoy anywhere.
It’s a simple game where you keep associating words to a rhythm based on a prompt—but it actually makes you think more than you’d expect.
It’s fun like shiritori, but since you need a sense of rhythm too, it can get a little nerve‑racking.
It’s perfect for when you get together with friends.
You can play with any number of people, so it works for small or large groups.
Even University of Tokyo students have taken on the challenge, so why not give it a try? It’s sure to be a hit!
A game where you guess the rules of a game
This is a game where people who don’t know the rules join in with those who do, participate for real, and try to infer and guess the rules.
It may sound complicated in writing, but if you watch the video, you’ll quickly understand how it works.
It’s important to closely observe the actions and patterns of the people who know the rules and use that to reason things out.
At the end, explain the rules as your answer and compete to see how close you came to the original rules.
Bobu Jiten
Bobu Jiten is a game where you explain a single word without using katakana.
It’s played by multiple people.
When you draw a card, it has a word on it, like “subculture.” You then explain that word using related terms without katakana—for example, “the culture of places like Akihabara, Nakano, not the main stream, sub…”—and if the listener arrives at the word “subculture,” you succeed.
Although it’s a game, it helps train vocabulary and the ability to choose alternative expressions.
Lateral Thinking Quiz
Do you know the lateral thinking quizzes popular among high school students, like the so-called “Umigame no Soup”? You can start this game without any special tools, so it’s perfect for killing time during breaks or after school.
It’s fun to ask questions and reason from a specific scenario, and the unexpected answers can be surprising.
It’s great mental exercise and makes conversations with friends livelier—two birds with one stone.
If you play it with your class, it’s fun for everyone to put their heads together.
How about making the most of short free moments by getting excited with friends while putting your brain into full gear?
Tasting/Comparative testing of XX
Tasting games are one of those party activities that really get people excited, aren’t they? For foods, choosing familiar items with lots of varieties—like potato chips or chocolate—makes it more fun.
For drinks, you could use green tea, black tea, or coffee.
These days, convenience stores offer a range of coffees from different brands, so if you’re a coffee fan, why not give it a try? Will people say, “As expected!” or will it turn out you were all talk? Depending on the results, things might change going forward (lol).
Grab a blindfold and give it a shot!
mind games
As a game you can play during short breaks like recess or while commuting, “personality quizzes” are a classic.
A popular genre of these quizzes involves inferring things like personality traits and views on love from your answers to questions.
Recently, many different kinds of personality quizzes have appeared, so it’s fun to look around and see what you can find.
Cola-making showdown using only imagination
This is a recreation activity where you make cola that every high school student loves—except you do it using imagination alone, in a cola-making showdown.
It really makes you realize how difficult it is to create something without a recipe.
Drinking what you’ve made will only make things even more exciting.
