Japanese Kids

I am quite shocked at how unsupervised some Japanese kids are after school.

They go home, dump their school bags, jump on to their bicycles and meet up with friends. They then cycle all over the neighbourhood. That is not a terrifying idea if you stay in say, a wide-open English village or even Singapore with its wide pathways. But here in Japan, esp in and around Tokyo, where practically all corners are blind and by the time a car sees a bike zipping across the road it is already too late to stop, and where the only thing that separates a narrow road and a pathway is a white line on the road.

The routine for Kai is to walk home and the babysitter will be waiting at home for him. He then spends the rest of the day with the babysitter and Taiga either at home or going to soccer/music/English class. He has now realised that his friends go home and meet up again on their bikes. His friends tend to meet up behind our house and Kai asked if he could join them. I said OK but the babysitter has to hang around. The babysitter told me they played behind our house for 30 mins then they all wanted to bike elsewhere. Kai wanted to bike with them but the babysitter said no. And I have seen these 6-years old young fellas just zipping across the roads on their bikes, oblivious to the danger. There is no way I am going to let Kai join them, unless supervised. I do feel badly for Kai as so many of his friends are zipping around like that and he feels left out. Should I get my babysitter a bike so that she can follow him around? I say that half in jest only. The other mums must think my kid is too precious. And I am a weird foreigner!

I have said to Kai he can play with his friends, and I don't mind him going around the neighbourhood, but can he walk please? No biking. Or better still, invite all your friends to our house, I don't mind and will even provide snacks. So one Friday, a little friend called Yamazaki (they call each other by surnames!) came and played a few hours in our house. The next morning, at 9.30, our doorbell rang. Tomo looked at the intercom but could not see any face. The he noticed some hair peeking out at the bottom of the screen! It turned out to be Yamazaki. He came in and played for a bit. We had to go to our new house by 10 for a ground-breaking ceremony, it is a shinto ceremony with an altar and a priest in robes, the whole bit. We asked where he wanted to go next and if we could send him home. He never really gave us an answer, so we brought him to the ceremony with us! The ceremony has rituals, done individually. Like one by one, we had to step before the altar, bow, clap, clap, bow etc. He did all that too! When we finished, he still did not want to go home so we brought him to out house again. At 12, he said he needed to go to another friend's house, so Tomo dropped him home. As Tomo was turning his car around, he saw Yamazki coming out of his house again with his grandma nearby, and then he jumped on his bike and rode away. At 4.30, Yamazaki's mum called us and asked if he is still with us!

Then since the school holidays started, Kai met this 8 year-old boy, Ryusei, at a toy department near our house. This boy roams around from 10 each morning till 8 at night, equipped with a cellphone which connects him to his mum. One evening, I took over the boys from the baby-sitter at the station. The boys were playing with Ryusei. It was already late and the boys wanted Macs for dinner. Ryusei also wanted Macs and I landed up getting dinner for 3 boys!! It started raining and Ryusei had no umbrella. He called home and from what I could make out from the 1-sided conversation, his mum refused to come out and bring the umbrella. I think she asked to to just walk home. He went to a shop and got a paperbag. He wanted to cut out holes for the eyes. Kai brought Ryusei to his music school nearby where they could help him with a pair of scissors. I was getting quite horrified and was thinking either to walk him home or buy him an umbrella. In the end, the music school had a spare umbrella and they lent it to him.

The next morning, Ryusei was looking for a playmate. He went to the music school and asked them to contact Kai!!! The music school called my husband and he called Ryusei. Now that Ryusei had Tomo's phone number, he called him a number of times that day to make arrangements to meet Kai later in the day! Tomo said he was in a meeting and had so many calls from a little boy just to arrange a kids playdate.

Then a couple of days later, the babysitter was with Kai and Taiga around the station when they bumped into Ryusei again. This time he was with this mum who was shopping. Apparently, the mum had a few words with the babysitter where she said it must be taihen (difficult) to look after 2 boys. She then promptly turned around to say bye to her son and left to go home! So my babysitter was left with 3 boys!! And when Kai had to go for his drum class, Ryusei insisted on going in to the studio to play the drums too.

When I took over the boys from the babysitter 2 nights ago, Ryusei had found the boys and all 3 were playing together. For 2 hours, I was hanging around supervising. Then the boys said they were hungry and we walked towards the foodcourt. I was surprised that as we neared the food court, Ryusei ran up to a table and lo and behold, his mum was there - chatting with a group of mums!

Ryusei is a decent little chap but he is not aware of danger. During my watch, as he was halfway down an escalator, he decided to run all the way up against the flow. Or he would walk down the escalator on the sides. Or he would jump the last 4 steps of a moving escalator. Or he would push himself up on banisters. All things that I want my kids not to do. So there I was having little heart attacks over a boy who is not my kid and whom I hardly know. I would tell him not to do it. But at the same time, I am getting stares from other strangers probably thinking MY kid is so ill-behaved!

Comments

[Jen]

It's hard for me because to my friends in North America, I am this kind of parent. But here I am such a helicopter parent compared to my neighbours.

My 4 year old is allowed to play outside in the culdesac with his little friends. He has a boundary and sticks with it or loses his outside playing priviledges. His friends think I'm so strict for giving him this boundary, but my friends back home think I should shadow him all the time. I'm happy I found a good medium but can't please anyone (especially my kids!!!)

It drives me nuts that kids come to my house and don't tell their parents where they are. It makes me so angry when they leave the culdesac standing on the backseat hanging out the window. But I'm happy not to live somewhere like the US where they'd call child protective services because I let my kid cut his own sausages.