So here I am, in my local education office at 10:30am, sitting in a pile of my own sweat and contemplating existence. Today had to be the hottest day I’ve ever experienced before. I go to the bathroom and that causes me to sweat out all the water that I drank ten minutes earlier. I just came from a staff meeting where it was discussed that people that work for the education office more than 25 years get 5 days of special leave.
Here is the funny thing about the Japanese. On paper, they get far more holidays then we’ll ever get in the west. The odd thing is that they never take them. They get 40 days of sick and holiday leave, plus countless national holidays. Culturally speaking, if they take any of them they are shunned by the group. Now I know this is generalizing, but I’ve talked to many people who have worked in education for more than 10 years and have never taken more than 4 days off. I think that’s kind of sad. Also, you’ll see Japanese people working from 7am to 11pm and they also work weekends as well. Many people never get a chance to unwind from a hard day at the office. It’s no wonder they have a word for death by overwork. They call it “karoshi”. I just need to rant about that for a while. I’m all for hard work and effort, but I also enjoy my free time as well. I’d like to see everybody enjoy their free time.
Also, for those who don’t recognize the girl in the picture, her name is Youko and we’ve been going out for 2 months now. We have sort of a contract going on. I’m teaching her “English” and she’s teaching me “Japanese.” So far I’m happy to say that there is a lot of “Education” going on.
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