I know, I'm not a fan of her but if we do get to re-do things, I might as well polish her up. ^^;

Yeah, they were in different gangs. I think Kuwabara's friends saw Kuwabara as more of the softie while they knew Yusuke was a bit more hardcore with the fighting, where as they already knew about Kuwabara's cat and such. I do like the idea of them being rivals/friends but at the same time, it will need to depend how we assume the "afterlife" bit was handled. 

And I have studied Japanese (took 5 years) though they never touched too much on school systems but you can learn a lot from watching movies or anime, in terms of their classes and workload there. I would say summer may have a longer break but I know it's not nearly like the US in which they get like 2-3 months or something. 

In terms of Yusuke coming back, that is the real pickle here. We could have his mother do it, if he's older and helping out more, their relationship can be rocky still, but maybe have more points of stability? We do need to give Yusuke someone on the outside, if it's not Keiko (unless they're reconnecting after years of not being close) then it has to be someone else. I doubt Kuwabara would even give the dream a second thought. We could also give Yusuke another way out...he's given the egg, that will hatch Puu later...ya know we could do a cop out way (since it doesn't really matter how he got back) and assume his badboy nature has resulted in some "fangirls" or someone into the danger (either to piss off her parents or something) and that could be who he uses to kiss him?