Grouch

There must be some good explanation for the fact that in Japan, a country notorious for allowing its citizens to work themselves to death (such that there's even a special term for it karoushi 過労死)—there are more public holidays than you can shake a stick at.

Grrr! As  someone at the other end of things in terms of employment conditions, it's completely infuriating and frustrating: it seems like hardly a week goes by but there's yet another public holiday when I can't get anything done because the children are off school once again, asking what we are going to do today? In point of fact, Sean doesn't return to school until the 18th January, while Julian has an extra day off nursery this week just to ensure that I cannot prepare classes or do any research. I love my children dearly, but it would be nice to be able to get through a two week period in the calendar without another scheduled interruption.

Of course, it might be well argued that if I stopped grumbling and did some proper work, now, instead of writing this, I could enjoy the public holidays. There is something to that argument, but even so, I'd still have a lot of dead time on my hands. I just checked, you see: of the five countries surveyed Japan leads the world by far:

1. Japanese Public Holidays 15
2. French National Holidays 11
3. US Federal Holidays 10 (11 in Washington DC)
4. German public and religious holidays 8-12 (varies by federal state)
5. England & Wales Bank Holidays 8

Now, I know that many Japanese workers don't take all or any of these holidays, and that even if they do, they may well have no other personal holiday time in the year—which partly explains the apparent discrepancy, also that "pulling a sickie" appears to be as alien to the Japanese mentality as marmalade and brie sandwiches are to the Japanese palate—actually, this one might be just me!—but still, enough is enough, and it's only the middle of January. Bah! Humbug!