Golden Week, Jr. High, and Workaholism

Hello! What are your plans for Golden Week?

It seems that I no longer have the energy to go somewhere during the Golden Week holidays (a series of holidays, sometimes consecutive that give us about 4 days off: this year 4/29, 5/3, 5/4, and 5/5). This year I plan to stay home home home!! Woohoo!

My daughter will be off to a basketball tournament in Hiroshima and son will be busy playing basketball in and around Saga during most of the "holiday."

A funny thing about Golden Week being considered a "holiday." In my thinking, a holiday is a day that is free from any school or work obligations and therefore you are truly free to spend it as you like. However, my experience of Golden Week holidays with children of Jr. High age and above has been filled with very un-holiday-like circumstances. For any child involved in a club or a sports team, the "holiday" seems just an excuse to fill every moment with club activities. And for the Jr. High kids at my son's school, clubs are a requirement. Yikes! Every Jr. High kid has constant activities and every Jr. High parent has to become a team transportation volunteer (2 days out of 3 for me this time).

My theory is that once a student in Japan starts Jr. High, they begin the long and hard training that is necessary to produce the next generation of workaholics. When my older child first entered Jr. High, I felt that my child had been kidnapped by the school. She was required to spend all daylight hours, 7 days a week, at school or in some gymnasium. Fortunately, my son's generation at the same school only has to spend all daylight hours at school or in some gymnasium 6 days a week, and are allowed to come home slightly before sunset every Monday evening.

As Christians, this makes it difficult for my family to attend church together on Sunday mornings. My daughter chose to go to church on Sunday mornings with us when she was in Jr. High. This meant we drove by the school gymnasium with our daughter ducked down in the seat of the car so as not to be seen by the other children who were diligently spending Sunday morning with their sports clubs. Oh! The shame of it!! It would have been unbearable for her to be seen sitting in the passenger seat of Mom's car while others were busily training.

My son, on the other hand, has not attended church with us on Sunday mornings. Our pastor has kindly provided an evening service for us to attend on Sunday nights. So my son happily joins sports on Sunday mornings, but is often too tired (or Mom's too tired to go a second time) to attend the Sunday evening church service.

It can be hard to be a Westerner in this society.

Don't get me wrong, I love Japan. It's just hard when you sometimes disagree with the way things are done. One of the mothers on my daughter's Jr. High basketball team once criticized me for wanting to take my daughter to church on Sunday. She told me that my daughter would fall behind the ability level of the others on the team. I secretly thought to myself, "Who cares? This isn't the Olympics we're training for! It's supposed to be fun, right?!" But I was also secretly pleased when my daughter's skills surpassed her daughter's in spite of our church attendance. I'm sorry I felt that way. It's not very nice of me at all. But I think it's an emotion that gets stirred up in me when I feel that I have some evidence that the Japanese way is not the ONLY way to success.

Anyway, those days are over. I've made it through Jr. High in Japan so far, and I have less than a year to go!! Wooohooo!

Happy Golden Week everyone!! RELAX if you can.