When school ends, fifth-grade classmates Rika Satake and Haruna Oe don't head straight home but visit a local radio station in Shirahama, their hometown in Wakayama Prefecture, on the Pacific coast.

They are disk jockeys at FM Beach Station. Their one-hour program goes on the air every Thursday. Known to their listeners as Rikappy and Haruppy, Rika and Haruna talk about a wide range of subjects, including what happened at school, what they think of stories that appear in newspapers, and the results of questionnaires they've taken of their classmates. They have been getting a lot fan mail of late.

They record the weekly program after school on weekdays and sometimes on Sundays. "We never feel tired. We love it," said the young DJs with beaming smiles.

They first visited the radio station in June 1999 as part of a school trip. When they were asked by a staff member about what they thought of the station, their answer was, "We want to go on the air too!"

The worker talked to the station's executives, who decided to give the girls their own program. The company said it wanted to become a radio station for all townspeople. The station opened May 1998 as Wakayama Prefecture's first community FM station.

The program was launched as a 30-minute show in June 1999. But the girls now can talk twice as much because in January 2000 the program's slot was expanded to one hour following a favorable response.

Regular listeners include Yasuhiko Nakata, the principal of the school the two DJs go to. "It's important that children get involved in many kinds of activities in the community," he said.

Rikappy and Haruppy are in full control of the program. They sometimes consult with station staff members, but most of the time they come up with their own ideas. The girls get a lot of input from their classmates, though. On one program, they reported on the survey of what pets and flowers the classmates have at home.

They say they don't know whether they'll try to become professional DJs. What they do know is, "We want to keep doing this even when we go to middle school."

Photos: DJs Haruna Oe (front) and Rika Satake; The two girls recording a show. They are now familiar faces in the studio. (Nanki-Shirahama Community Broadcasting Inc,)