Hints and Hiking home

Until April 1992 all public Japanese primary and secondary school students had a 6 day school week. From April 1992 one Saturday a month become a holiday and in April 1995 two Saturdays a month became holidays. In April 2002 the 6 day week was completely abandoned and a 5 day week started. Recently there have been some murmurs about the need to bring back at least a partial 6 day week system as the teachers are finding it difficult to cover the whole curriculum in one year.
Today my children finished school at 1:40pm because the teachers were having a meeting. This happens reasonably regularly, and school always finishes at 2:30pm on Wednesdays here so the teachers can have their weekly meeting. I have absolutely no idea why they need so many meetings and why they can't do them after school finishes - having sat through a few of the meetings they seem fairly pointless and very repetitive. It would seem logical to me to cut out a few of these interruptions to the school day and actually do some TEACHING during those times rather than even think about bringing back school on Saturdays. I could go on for hours about how many other ways I think they could get more hours in the classroom, but I think I'll leave that for my first book!
Back on track.... because the children finished at 1:40pm today we decided to walk home from school - a mere 5.7 km or so. Fortunately my son decided he couldn't really be bothered doing it all so we drove about about 2km down the road and walked home from there. If it wasn't for all the really noisy trucks passing us and blowing out their horrible fumes on the way it would have been a really nice walk. We discovered a few new things, had some funny conversations and even sang some songs. For some reason my children are currently obsessed with Manhattan Transfer... if I have to hear "The boy from New York City" one more time I think I am going to go crazy - I completely blame my husband!

Thank you for attempting to guess the contents of the bag from the school principal. Still no correct guesses yet, but some funny ones all the same! The contents were not really very exciting, but have put me in a dilemma as to whether I tell her that I REALLY don't need the contents to prevent her giving them to me again (this happens to be the second time I have received them) or whether I continue on with my now very well perfected "smile and nod" routine and just keep accepting them. Hint..... I probably would have been very grateful for them a year ago. Size - in a normal plastic shopping bag - but not filling too much of it.