JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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What do you think are the main reasons why U.S. car sales are so low in Japan?
( 19 )
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What can be done to ease escalating tensions between the West and Iran over its nuclear program? And should Japan join sanctions against Iran?
( 14 )
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What do you think of the revised plan to realign U.S. forces in Japan by sending some Marines to Guam, and rotating others to Australia, the Philippines, Hawaii and possibly Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture?
( 17 )
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Why are there so many deaths due to snow-related accidents (people falling off rooftops, for example) in Japan this winter?
( 15 )
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Sony is forecasting a 220 billion yen loss for fiscal 2011, its 4th straight year of red ink despite massive cost cuts and restructuring efforts in recent years. What do you think are the main reasons for Sony's decline?
( 32 )
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1
Water temperature rising in No. 2 reactor at Fukushima nuclear plant
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2
Why do Japanese change their attitude when they communicate with foreigners?
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3
Confrontation
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4
U.S. Navy investigating how parts fell off aircraft near Atsugi
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5
California court to decide if SeaWorld whales are illegal 'slaves'
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- Assistant Language Teacher - TOKYO - late-March start
- Interac, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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- Assistant Language Teacher - Kanagawa Prefecture - late-March start
- Interac, Kanagawa
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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- Part Time Assistant Language Teacher - Kanagawa Prefecture - late-March start
- Interac, Kanagawa
- Salary: ¥9,000 / Day per 4 class shift
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50 Comments
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0
memyselfI
Hmmmm !!!! It's hard to say.
Loving and nuturing is not done in japan very often. I don't understand why mothers have the baby or infant on thir lap while driving at high speed, low speed, turning left or right in an automoblie.
I don't understand that.
Some parents cann't really communicate with their kids. That's the main problem.
I heard 80% of Japanese parents don't hug their own child.
That's very sad.
It is not just Japan but a GLOBAL SCALE Alot of idoit parents around the world not just Japan.
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outofmydepth
very very very lax. they let the kids do whatever they want. don`t watch them. never scold them - although we hear of parents abusing. maybe they should scold every once in awhile. never talk to them, eat a meal together??? you have got to be joking. no restraints in cars. leaving them in cars while shopping, at work or playing pachinko - get ready for alot of those coming up. i could go on....
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hotbertaa
I suggest if you have any interest in Japan you change aspects of your life, because with that outlook your probably not see the country as I do.
I spent some time this sunday with a Japanese family, mum, dad and three young girls. Mum and Dad did a great job, the kids looked happy, a good example of a happy family.
I know a few other Japanese families, including my brother-in-laws (a family of four kids), I don't notice any difference from the families I know in other countries. The parents I know in Japan are doing a good job.
Saying that though I do think more awareness should be made regarding seat belts, for both children and adults. From my personal experience in Japan it could be better. There are a lot of road safety commercials in England, they show the consequences of driving without a seat belt, drink driving, that kind of thing. The commercials are quite graphic, and have a strong influence.
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bbqtatsujin
I agree: carseats and seatbelts in general are rarely used. It`s a sad reality.
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smartacus
I would say it is much worse in Japan than any other country I have lived in. The news is full of stories of children being killed or injured due to lax parental supervision. Too many Japanese parents seem to regard their children as little more than pets.
Here are a few tips for Japanese parents: Never leave children unsupervised near water, on train platforms, near escalators, automatic gates, in parks, shopping centers or on the sidewalks.
Now if this means sacrificing your free time, not texting messages on your cell phone, or not having your afternoon nap, then so be it. Responsibility comes with having children. My wife and I have kept a vigilant eye on our two children, by doing the above and they have never come close to having an accident. And that doesn't mean mollycoddling them and keeping them in a box. They do all the things kids their age do, just with supervision.
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hotbertaa
Speak from experience not from what you've read and seen in passing.
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hotbertaa
Are any of these Japanese parents, people that you know?
Too many 'commentators' are dismissive of people and the world around them. Grow some humanity people!
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smartacus
hotbertaa
I always post from experience. Having been in Japan for more than 25 years, I have seen and know countless Japanese parents (usually under the age of 25) who act exactly as I described.
The mothers' vocabulary for admonishing their children in public seems to be limited to three phrases: "Abunai," "Dame!" and "Yamenasai," after which the mother resumes playing with her cell phone.
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womanforwomen
Yes. I am living in Japan and I have Japanese friends from my school days. I must agree with smartacus about the negigent attitude of the Japanese parents.
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hotbertaa
Smartacus, I said
to the people who already have dismissed all + 1 million parents living in Japan on this post, and to the people who will, based on what they have read and seen in passing.
I've just returned to Japan, and have been living in Japan for just 6 months. In that short amount of time I've met some good Japanese families and parents. Smartacus and womanforwoman, from your comments you've been close to Japan for some time, yet you don't have a good thing to say for your friends and family who have children?
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neverknow2
I agree. It seems children are a just a piece of fashion not unlike a new pair of shoes. All the parental supervision seems to belong to teachers. Bad child = bad teacher.
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dammit
Some are good, others less so. I can't judge proportions as I only know about what I see. All of the people whose kids play with mine take good care of their kids, I don't let my younger kids play with the sort of child who is left in a group of kids while their mums yak together or text, smoke over a nursing mum, turn their backs while their kids walk off with other kid's belongings or push or kick other kids, play badminton and leave one of the mums to watch all the kids while she's cuddling her mobile phone, or generally huddle in an all important discussion while their 18 month old is climbing the ladder of the slide unattended. I see those people in one of the local play parks. They do it every day.
But on Sunday I saw 2 outrageous examples of how not to supervise kids. First a 20 something man was encouraging about 6 kids to vandalise some play equipment. They were all having great fun. Apparently 2 or 3 of the brats were his, and the mothers of the others were yakking on a bench facing away from the abuse. They actually thanked the man for helping their kids have such a good time afterwards. Just as well it was wanton vandalism and not drugs.
The second example was just afterwards, I saw a man riding his bike with his son in the child seat behind him. The man was behaving strangely though, he was holding the handle on the right, but his left hand was holding his son's left leg. The reason became apparent when I saw the straps that were supposed to be holding the child in the seat - they were just hanging loosely over the back of the child seat. He hadn't even bothered securing his son, and of course the boy wasn't wearing a helmet.
Those two examples are unusual though, off and on I've lived here for 4 or 5 years altogether so far and the only other thing I've seen that matched was some woman who'd put a bicycle seat on the pillion of her moped. I'd like to believe that it was a special one for mopeds, but I don't actually believe such a thing exists.
The trouble is that we only really notice extreme examples, so I'll never forget my outrage at those criminally neglectful cases, but I'll never remember all the decent parenting I see each day.
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kyourin
based on the recent news about 15 year-olds killing another, graduate students being overly laxed on job hunting and gang rapes .. well you could conclude it yourself.
lack of discipline .. lack of love
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DeepAir65
largely non existent - that's the schools role neh?
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EUgirl
I think too much attention is paid to how the kids do at school and not enough to their physical and mental happiness. The result is these hikikomori kids.
But I am happy to see in the trains and on the town many Japanese young fathers tending their kids - this is a new generation of different fatherhood.
Biking with kids front and back without helmet seems to be a common thing here - abunai really.
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Richard_III
I get the impression that a lot, if not most, kids here are spoilt. Parents pay for juku, school, sports, even university. I can guess that a lot of them don't even pay any rent even though they're over 16.
As they don't become adults until 21 kids here can get away with a lot from their parents I think.
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timorborder
Getting lazy mods? Convenient how this topic came up for discussion after everybody hooked into the story yesterday about the eight year-old abducted by another Japanese nutjob. OK. I will bite....
Generally speaking, however, I have to say that I have been shocked by the rather naive attitude of parents and schools in this country to issues of security. The general premise on which peoples' ideas are based seems to be reactive rather than proactive. When S hits the F, how many times have we seen schools apologizing in cases of bullying or kids dying as a result of heatstroke, etc. The excuses usually start, "I didn't think......" And what about the parents? Locally we had a kid knocked off her bike at night. A night that it was snowing and she shouldn't have been out riding with no lights, carrying an umbrella and not wearing a helmet. In other countries despite their loss, the parents would have been down the police station trying to avoide questions regarding child endangerment. Indeed, this isn't just a mentality of "it can't happen to me." It goes deeper than this. It is more a case of naivety on a mass scale.
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DJJapan
Richard III: Are you really sure that they don't become adults until their 21? I find the age gap mentally between me and my Japanese peers (most of the time) about 10 years at least younger than me. The following story only represents one individual that I saw and the majority of Japanese parents that I do know are pretty good. I was walking along the street and a young mother was riding her bicycle with 1 kid on the front and one kid on the back. At the same time she was using her keitai to send mail. She had to suddenly stop because of an oncoming vechile off a side street which was more of main street as she was on a side street. She fell over and hit a fence. The kid on the back got injured and fell out, she put the bike on the bike stand and put him back in with his head slightly bleeding and just said "Daijoubu da yo" The kid in the fron was O.K as it was that big of a fall, but even more unbelievable is the fact that she just continued to do the mail on her keitai while the kids were in shock and crying. WTF!
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telecasterplayer
A couple of years ago, my friend and me went to that mall near Osaka Castle and sat at the corporate coffee shop near the rear door on the first floor. A bunch of real little kids were playing right next to the door, and their mothers were nowhere in sight. I mean, maybe they were just a couple of years past "guru guru dokkan".. THAT young. I expressed my concern as the door opened and closed and person after person came in and out that way. ANYONE could have been the bad guy. I insisted on staying at least until the mothers showed up which they did a few minutes later. From the third floor, I saw them get onto the elevator. The potential for getting caught in the door, nabbed by a bad guy, falling down and beaning themselves on the concrete floor.. truly horrifying. I don't take the incident as 'typical' but my friend says it happens pretty often.
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30061015
What parental supervision?
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Tahoochi
From what I have seen (not in the news, but from personal accounts), many young parents and parents all the way up to say, 45-50 do not discipline their kids enough (or at least as much as I would). A lot of parents these days in Japan seem to have the "let kid be kids" attitude, which in my opinion only stands true until either they risk hurting themselves or others, or risk burdening others. My father is Japanese, he is 75 yrs old now, but he was a VERY strict father. Even though he was only a kid during World War 2, my guess is he and other parents close to his age could appreciate the simple things in life, and discipline was absolutely necessary in order to achieve and acquire those simple luxuries in life, especially during and right after the war.
I believe many Japanese parents these days probably never had to earn anything when they were kids, and had many things given to them, thus, this is act is passed on to their children as well. Japan went through so much growth after the war, that few children have to earn anything anymore... everything is just given to them, and they are allowed to 'run wild'.
With that said, not all parents are like this. Of the 5 Japanese families that I have a pretty close relationship with, 3 of those families have very well-behaved, disciplined children, but all of them seem very happy.
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tasha77
Just this morning I saw a mother walking down the street with her child in tow behind her. They were both in their usual morning attire: pajamas. She had just picked her daughter up from the "all night child minding center" so she could go and chat up drunk business men all night and get rolling drunk herself. Problem being was.....the mother was too business tapping away on her cell phone as she walked like a cow in the field to notice her daughter was way way behind...so far in fact that the mother had crossed an intersection and the daughter hadn't even reached the intersection before the lights changed. Upon hearing the honking sounds of cars did the mother realise that her daughter was in tears at the lights having dropped her overnight bag (which she was lugging) and began crying because the big cars were blocking her view of her mother and she was scared to cross the street. The child is not yet 3 years old and the mum IS a night worker because she lives in the same building as me. What was the mums response.......she shouted at her daughter "Hey you idiot don't be so slow"....without moving a step back to help her now bawling child. What was my response??? I don't think it would be printed but you can kind of guess the barrage i gave the dope. So "What's your impression of parental supervision of children in Japan?" going on that one only example.........pathetic.
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tasha77
And you have got to love the way the darling little angels bounce around the cars like dogs as mummy or daddy drive along..........real great supervision there on the parents part folks!!!!
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Tahoochi
Dammit:
I agree, bad parenting is far more noticeable than good parenting. Amidst all the critical posts, this is good to remember.
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Toecutter
t smoke when the kids are around - dont you know it stunts their growth, which makes them easy prey for the school bullies, which in turn turns them into withdrawn sociopaths.re going to watch your kids, WATCH them, dont be texting while your child is playing near the river bank.t smack them and tell them theyre stupid.0
parforthecourse
Bwaaaahaaaahaaahaaahaahaaaaaaaa!
That is my impression of it. A joke.
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ca1ic0cat
It's about the same as anywhere else, really....
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kurtp
Overall for sure better than many other places - lived in London before and there you see far more out of control scumbag kids, unlike Japan. Generally, if anything, most mothers are too affectionate and spoil their kids too much.
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wibble
piss poor on average. The word no, and the phrase 'don't do that' do exist.
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n3312
Parental supervision?
I'd like to share what I saw on the train last Sunday night. I assume it's a family of 4, one early teen girl and a younger boy. The person I assume to be the father gets along pretty well with the kids, while the person I assume to be the mother justs sits (she's the only one sitting by the way) busy with her keitai. When the girl was able to sit beside her after the seat became vacant, the girl is rather affectionate with the mother - who is still pretty busy with her keitai at this point. Can't really judge what happens in their family but I found the preoccupation of the mother with her keitai a bit strange - for non-Japanese standards.
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womanforwomen
n3312, could it be that the mother spends about 5 1/2 days with the kids and the father only the Saturdays and the half of Sunday? This pattern is quite common here. And ofcourse, the mothers and the keitai are insperable, before the keitai it was the tamaguchi! For some reason, I feel that this was preconceived and preplanned to keep the masses without revolting.
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jonnyboy
i think this is a good point. i wonder how many parents, regardless of country, take the time to explain to their children about the effects their actions have on others. ie;
don't shout and run around on trains. trains are public places and there are tired and busy people here who only want to get to a destination without trouble. if you want to play and run around you can do it in the park
such a simple thing but it would raise children who think clearly about the negative (and positive) consequences of their actiosn, rather than just doing what their superiors tell them to do
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jonnyboy
another point that comes to mind is that i think many, if not the majority, of parents in japan have kids in order to fulfill their "obligations", to get their parents off their back about starting a "respectable" family. so, rather than making a cool, carefully considered decision about wanting children and feeling prepared and ready for the commitment, they just do it in order to tick a box, get something out of the way
also, i don't think relative comparisons between quality of child-rearing in different countries is all that useful. all child-rearing is challenging, and i think there are different challenges in different places. japan certainly raises some unique challenges of its own
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ninjaboy
In this culture, kids are left to fend for themselves. They grow-up learning to adapt to their environment from the 'school of hard knocks.' I've always found this difficult to understand in Japan ever since I was a student at a university in Tokyo many years ago and did home-stay. The parents would allow their three young children to play outside unsupervised for many hours in the carpark or run around the neighbourhood. Maybe it was the only time the mother could get some peace and quiet so she was glad to see the back of them (???) Whenever it rained and the kids had to play inside, they would run riot around the cramped apartment playing with (and throwing whatever they could find at each other), even knives from the kitchen. Their mother did nothing to warn them of how dangerous this was. But it wasn't just the family I stayed with, it's like this with pretty much all Japanese families I've ever met. There have been no end of times I've had to alert shop, restaurant, onsen, or security staff of an abandoned child crying their eyes out because the parents have wandered off to do something after telling the child to 'stay put - don't move,' ... Yeah.., like a child at such a young age is going to do that! Irresponsible parents are chiefly to blame for all the tragic and needless deaths we read about on this, and other, Japanese news sites.
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Disillusioned
Only one comment:
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ultradodgy
If I hear one more mother yelling "abunai" at their kid while a) walking b) running c) playing or d) lying on the ground doing nothing, I think I'll lose my mind.
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jackfish
If we look at the outcome of Japanese parenting, rather than anecdotal observations, maybe we'll come to a different conclusion. Japanese people are gentle, hard working, respectful, humble, polite, and highly social. Its parenting that instills these values.
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dracpoo2
Its not good enough. Enough said.
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jonnyboy
you're kidding me, right?
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Disillusioned
did you read this in Lonely Planet?
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gogogo
Nothing, Japanese treat their kids like pets.
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imacat
There's all kind of parents in Japan, just like your country or mine.
Why can some people only see the bad parents? There are some really great mums and dads here... I've learnt a lot about parenting from them.
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shanabelle
What do I think of parent(al) supervision??? All for it....clearly a lot of young parents need supervision badly!!
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madammiz
Its all relative...good and bad in every country.
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lordomni
My general experience is that children are ignored until they hurt themselves, then they are either scolded or laughed at depending on the age. Its just amazing sometimes.
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jacquii
I agree with imacat, >
there's all kinds of parents in Japan, just like your country or mine. However, recently I was with my kids in Tsurumai Koen in Nagoya & was absolutely disgusted at the behaviour of a group of pre-teen boys (parents nowhere in sight) who were basically killing turtles from the pond, while other adult park-goers looked on impassively!! I was the big bad gaijin & went & told the boys to stop etc - I am sure that they continued on with their sadistic game as soon as we were out of sight... My daughters were shocked that this kind of behaviour was going on in plain sight at a public park at a pond that was dedicated to the exact animals these boys were terrorizing...a sad moment for us 3 for certain.
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greensatindress
I haven't read every single one of these posts yet, but I just have to say, based on my years of living here and being married to a Japanese man, I refuse to have children in this country.
I have confidence in my own ability to teach and discipline, but when I look around at parents (mothers for the most part) and the way children ARE NOT being raised and supervised, I don't want to be involved with that stratum of society and I don't want to expose my child to the result and influence of today's society.
Yes, I understand that sounds extreme but I sincerely feel there is something very, very wrong going on here... Every one of my family members and friends who have visited Japan have commented on the way kids/parents are here.
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inkjet
before i came to japan with our two young kids my wife gave me a book to read about what i might expect. sorry to say i can't remember the name of the book or it's author.
the writer had been in japan since the war. his main occupation over the years seems to have been helping foreign companies prepare their employees for life in japan.
in any case he opened his book with an anecdote from his first trip to japan. a group of japanese were speaking to him while their children were off playing in the background. they were running along a concrete wall with a tremendous drop on the other side. one slip meant instant death. no one seemed to care at all. he was shocked. that first impression was reinforced over and over for the rest of his life in japan.
his conclusion was the japanese people are extremely fatalistic. that deep seated world vision was formed during the samurai era. i won't go into the whole analysis but something has to explain it.
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