Brace yourselves - its a wave!

In response to a query; we have 14 public holidays a year over here. The reason being that most salarymen in a company do not get holidays. They are afforded them in their contracts of course, but they realistically cannot take them, especially not consecutively. The times when they will take holidays are for the honeymoon, hence the frantic Jap style race around the world. And the rest of the time they take time off a few hours at a time for things like watching kids first day at kindy (this is the particularly attentive father). And they also work most Saturdays, so a public holiday is the only thing that will guarantee them a day off. Which also explains why an inordinate number of public hols are on a Saturday. But don't worry, there are no more public holidays for me until I leave Japan (besides 3 days off over New Year) so I will be working very hard just like the rest of you. haha.

Last night I had the tv on in the background while I was studying and heard the Japan v Saudi Arabia soccer match be interrupted by an announcement that there had been a massive earthquake up north somewhere and as a result Hokkaido and surrounds should buckle down for a 2 metre tsunami. Well, it turns out that the tsunami never came - or rather it did, but wasn't quite so bad as what they were expecting at only 40cm. Because they had interrupted normal broadcast I was expecting some huge damage report and when they switched to the cameras on the scene in Hokkaido there was nothing happening! They zoomed in on a river, which was as full of water as you might expect, and in the background you could see cars just driving around like normal. The reporter was struggling to come up with things to say, that much was obvious. He kept trying to wrap things up with a "back to the studio" type situation but the studio were having none of it and he just had to keep on talking. I felt a bit sorry for him cos it clearly wasn't his idea to report this non-event. This morning over brekkie I watched Minomonta go off about stations who report crap like non-tsunamis. It was funny.

This morning I was summoned to be an interpreter again for the host family of my work experience girl. She has a caught a cold, presumably from the sudden climate change she has endured between Oz and here - or perhaps from her sick host family's kids. Anyway, the host mum was really concerned about her and was asking me what she should do. ... She kept saying, should I make a special food, should I buy some medicine, what do you do in Australia when you get a cold? Will she be ok at school? The whole time I was just trying to say "It'll be FINE" but she was insisting that something had to be done about it - you can't just leave a cold to it's own devices! In the end I suggested that some people drink honey and lemon tea and that made her heaps excited and she was asking me how to make it and all that. Seriously it was kind of bizarre how concerned she was. I asked the sick person herself if she wanted anything and she said "Nah, I'll be right", just as I suspected. Apparently last night she was a bit tired and fell asleep while waiting for tea to be cooked and the whole family had conniptions and were trying to confine her to her bed for the rest of the evening! Geez, no wonder the kids are so soft if this is the treatment they get over a trifling thing like a cold. It brought up memories of dealing with overly protective host parents myself, back when my Japanese was really minimal and how frustrating it can be getting them to leave you alone! It's great that they care of course, but it is possible to care too much I reckon.