This article draws on a study that inquires into what keeps girls aged 13-16 years in a high school basketball club in Japan with a focus on how the nature of their experience is shaped by socio-cultural and institutional context. The influence of context is of particular importance in small-scale, close-focus studies such as the study drawn on in this article and is emphasized due to the way in which the context is culturally distinct from Western settings. While the findings support those of some other studies on adolescent girls participation in sport they identify the influence of the institutional culture of schools and bukatsudō (clubs). Located within the larger Japanese cultural context on the nature of experience in school basketball and the learning emerging from it to identify the implicit yet powerful influence of the cultural learning that underpins Japanese education.