Kids these days...

I just was sorting through the usual fall-out of random crumpled papers from Son #5's bursting schoolbag: papers from teachers, old homework, charts, etc., and then, among all that garbage, I found a couple standardized countrywide tests that he apparently took at the end of November. 99% in math. (He missed the ² in marking cm squared in the last answer.) 93% in Japanese, and 97% in Social Studies?! When I was a kid, I would have run to show my parents those grades.

Meanwhile, Son #4 has chosen this Sunday to tackle his reams of winter vacation homework.

"Why didn't you do it during winter vacation?"

"Because it was a 'vacation.'"

Schools in Winter

Driving back through the hail after dropping my son at his high school, I passed the little countryside elementary school and many students walking there - walking to school being the rule. The boys were wearing their regulation navy blue, short uniform shorts and the girls their skirts, all with bare legs and white ankle socks. These were topped with white button-up shirts. One plucky young lad even was wearing his short-sleeved summer uniform shirt.

Two of my children went to that school some years ago. Inside will be no warmer. In my kids' experience, the only rooms with heaters in the elementary and junior high schools they attended were the teachers' rooms and the libraries. Ditto with air-conditioning in the summer. I have been told it is to "toughen them up" - teach them to "gaman."

Then my work brought me to a kindergarten - a brand new shiny kindergarten - where, in respect to the clean floors, everyone takes off their inside slippers to go into the classrooms. It was like being in socks outside - the linoleum felt icy. The kids, of course, are in socks, some barefoot, and they're very small - so they're right next to the floor, that is, the ones who are not sitting on the floor. My feet were completely numb for the rest of the hour I was there. I lost feeling in them after a minute or two.

"What doesn't kill them makes them stronger"?

Never seen a Frenchman, Never seen a Foreigner

I was a little early for my class at the handicapped home, so I pulled over to get some vegetables at a road-side stall where you put your money in a lock-box and help yourself to produce. Another lady had also pulled over who, I supposed, was one of the people who sold vegetables there. In the car, I had had been listening to a history course where professor had just told the legend of how the the lone survivor of a French shipwreck during the Napoleonic wars was a monkey, dressed in a French military uniform (which apparently it was wearing to amuse the Frenchmen who kept it.) Scots took this monkey, and having never seen a Frenchman, having only heard that they were barbaric and spoke a strange, unintelligible tongue, after repeated questioning, decided that the monkey must be a French spy and summarily hanged it.

Still chuckling over that (while pitying the poor monkey), I got out and was greeted by giggles from the flustered woman. "Konichiwa," I greet. She continued to giggle nervously. My mind went to the French monkey. She blurted out, "I've never seen a gaijin in this area before!" I smiled and told her I live in a neighborhood not far away, then went about my business of choosing vegetables. After thinking a bit, the woman again approached me and said, "Oh, I'm sorry I was so rude to call you a 'gaijin.' I should have called you 'gaijin-san.' Would you like this daikon? And here, take these long onions." I offer to pay, but she would have none of it.

It was hard not to compare myself with that monkey. I had a much happier outcome, though.

Plastic Trash

The other day I was late taking out my plastic trash. I know that plastic trash is picked up early, much earlier than on the other trash days (burnable trash, or cans and bottles, etc.) So when, already dressed for my walk, I saw the truck out the window, I grabbed the trash and thought to head them off at the pass by unloading the trash at what was usually one of their last pick-up spots. To my surprise, they had already picked it up from there!

Now what to do?!

To my joy, I saw the truck stop at another spot, about 100 meters up the hill. Off I ran.

Then there was a kei-car beside me, driving at my running speed. It crept along, old woman driving and peeking over at me from time to time. I wondered if perhaps she was thinking of giving me a ride.

Anon, from the top of the hill came running down the street to meet me, one of the garbage men! Like a romantic scene from a cheesy movie, we were running toward each other - me with garbage bag in hand, he with white-gloved-hand outstretched.

He met me on the way, grabbed my garbage bag, and ran back up the hill to the truck. My hero.

And yes, the lady was thinking of giving me a ride. She exclaimed out her car window after the drama, "Wow! What a kind garbageman! I've never seen that before!"

I'm sure she hadn't.

New Year's TV

Imagine a TV show where men wear weird wigs, get herded from location to location on a bus, people do outrageous things to make them laugh - and when they do laugh, strange men with dark coveralls and ski masks on come out and spank them with rubber bats.

Well, that's what's on TV right now. The Dec 31 tradition. My boys think it's hysterical.

Just now, the non-laughers had to not laugh when men wearing g-strings took turns putting out a candle with their naked derrieres. Of course they laughed, and out came the spankers.

Welcome to my world.