Lockdown

On Tuesday evening Cian arrived home from school with the news that (a) 7 of his classmates had been absent that day with influenza, and as a result (b) his classes for the remainder of the week had been cancelled.
To which I calmly replied, WT good F?!!!
Apparently in a effort to stave off a viral borne apocalypse, the school has decided to keep the kids at home until next Monday. This is standard practice in Japan, but also a reflexive rule carried forward from a previous generation when only fathers worked and mothers stayed at home. This has long since changed but the rule remains; as is often the case here the tradition of 'we-do-it-because-we-have-always-done-it' triumphs any sort of cognizance of practical necessity.
Sanae and myself were hoping to alternate days off to look after Cian but the principal at Sanae's school, in his usual gendered, job-before-family mentality scowled at her when she explained why she wanted time off and growled at her to find someone else to look after Cian. That someone ended up being me as, well, what alternative do we have? We have no relatives living in Muroran to call upon, and as Cian went to a nursery school, the friends of the family we would feel comfortable (or rather, least uncomfortable) in imposing upon are all working parents themselves and so in no position to look after the boy. To catch up with the work I have temporarily frozen for these three days means having to work this weekend so that's our planned return skiing trip to Rusutsu out the window. February is the end of the academic year here which means I am frantically trying to set, administer and correct exams, attend exam board meetings, coordinate repeat exams, review English translations of graduate theses' abstracts, and the all other 'No-it-can't-wait' stuff that marks the last week of February.
So it will be off to work I go on Saturday while Cian continues to bounce off the walls of the house because his teacher (or rather, his unmarried and childless teacher who to the best of my knowledge does not have a formal qualification in medical epidemiology) insisted that the kids could not go outside nor play with their friends inside the house. And apparently such teacher declarations carry more weight and authority than the utterances of his mere luckless parents.
Sometimes, this country drives me up the bleeding wall.