it's not life that matters but the journey...

Unfortunately, I’m not very inspired today.  maybe I need my cat to give me inspiration or joy.  Or maybe it’s the weather – its not raining today, but its hazy – could only see the top of Mt. Fuji, which is by the way losing its beautiful snow cap already!  Hopefully that’s not a sign that it will be a hot summer.  I was told that last summer was unbearable . ..

Yesterday, I visited the home of a family whose daughter I used to tutor when I lived here before.  Satoko was a junior high school student then, and is now a second year student at a university in Tokyo.  The family’s two sons, Tomohiro and Akihito are 16 and 13, and both travel every day to a private school near Yokohama, which takes them over 2 hours by train and bus!  They leave home at 6 a.m. and don’t get back home until after 9 p.m. – and this includes Saturdays!  Sundays they also have to go to their school just for sports club – they both are in the tennis club.  So, though the family would like for me to tutor these boys, they just don’t have the time!   Its unbelievable to me how hard it is to be a kid in Japan – most kids have to travel long distances to their schools, even if they attend public school, and they often have to ride their bicycles.  They have to study very hard, and club activity is mandatory.  In addition, Tomohiro was telling me that as a first year student in high school, or “kohai” (lower class), he has to attend the tennis matches of his “sempais”  (upper classmen), and support and cheer them on, even though he doesn’t play in the match.   It makes me feel so lazy as I don’t remember ever spending a Saturday or Sunday doing school related activities when I was in high school! 

Its interesting to note that this family is quite rich and of high status, and they are spending atrocious amounts of money to send their three kids to private schools all the way from junior high through university.  These three kids had to take only one entrance exam, though, before junior high school and they are guaranteed acceptance into the connected university, which otherwise would be extremely hard to enter.  Oh, to be among the rich and privileged . . .

To get to their home yesterday, I had to get a ride to the train station in Fuji, 15 minutes by car, and then take a train to the neighboring community of Fujikawa, less than 5 minutes away by the local train.  It still amazes me how prompt Japanese trains are – not a minute late or early.  With the exception of last week’s train wreck near Osaka, trains in Japan are perfect, coming and going always on schedule, and so fast!   I only wish that I lived in the vicinity of one so that I didn’t have to rely on a car at all!  Life would be much more convenient for us if we could live in a city, right next to a train station; but then we would be working so much to pay the bills that we couldn’t even enjoy our freedom!  Such is life!