It's called summer vacation because it's a vacation

Yasumi dakara natsuyasumi to iimasu

Haven’t posted in a while. Nothing really bad has happened, except for my dad’s Alzheimer’s progressing just like everyone knew it would. That warrants a whole post (or a series of posts) on another day.

Today I’m here to post that it’s the last day of summer vacation for my two offspring. I remember that summer vacation when I went to school was depicted as idyllic. Those 2 1/2 months began at the end of the school year, so you didn’t get any homework, so you ran around with your friends/ went to day camp/ went to summer camp/ had some intense clinics at the YMCA, that kind of thing. Of course, my parents were always anticipating Armageddon for me, so I went to Japanese Saturday School, which meant that I got homework during the six or so weeks of free Saturdays I got out of summer vacation of that. You got to do a whole bunch of math and language arts (Japanese) worksheets and you were also assigned either an essay or a book report or both (depending on masochistic overly optimistic enthusiastic your teacher was) and you also had the option of handing in some kind of craft or construction project. Of course, quite a few of us ended up doing things on the last Friday before the first Saturday of September, sometimes having to stay up past midnight to finish those darned worksheets, and lamented that Japanese Saturday School should be like American schools and not have homework. Then, our moms would reply that schools in Japan have summer vacation homework, and that was why Japanese Saturday School has homework.

My kids were pretty good about getting their summer vacation homework done. They had their workbooks done by the second week of August. Still, the journey was not without trials and tribulations. It would have been more vacation-y without homework.

Another thing about summer vacation for kids in this country is that there are required activities, especially in the final year. The Pumpkin Princess had marching band practice the first and last weeks of summer vacation. (Marching band is a required activity for sixth year kids in her school.) She also had juku (the standard translation is “cram school” but they aren’t cramming. They try to teach the kids how to analyze information and write out their findings in a coherent, logical manner) summer courses, and between those things, it worked out so we couldn’t go on any overnight trips during summer vacation. We managed to squeeze in a day trip to the theme park, but that was about as good as it got.

As of 8 pm on Sunday evening, everything is already packed up and ready to go, including the restocked glue and watercolor paints and colored pencils. But I still think that summer vacation should be homework and required activity free (well, maybe a small maintenance dose of workbooks..)