Mitsubishi - the Japanese Volkswagen

You may have got echoes of this over the ether these past few days, but Mitsubishi motors has followed Volkswagen in revealing that it too had, gasp, falsified its emission figures for its cars.
And not to be out done by the Germans, the company admitted today that it had been at it for nigh on quarter of a century. Yep, since 1991, the mileage figures touted by Mitsubishi for all those millions of sold Pajeros, Shoguns, Lancers, Outlanders, etc. were as believable as the Easter Bunny.
In fact, the company had been manipulating the numbers for so long that they went from being 'falsified' to 'accepted company practice'. This, according to the Japan Times, is how the President of Mitsubishi Motors (pictured above) explained the remarkable longevity of the company's malfeasance:
“We are not sure if they were even aware that it was the wrong method. When it started, they might have thought it was correct, and that thought was then passed down, so it is possible that they did it without questioning why”.
This is a classic Japanese answer to a typical Japanese problem - 'the tyranny of tradition' as I like to call it. We've always done it like this so why should we change it, even if the method is shamelessly wrong/illegal.
Or rather, mind-blowingly, expensively illegal. For the four most recent car models affected (sold domestically since 2012), the financial damage to the company is estimated to top 100 billion yen. And the accountants can't get their heads around the last 25 years and the millions of cars sold worldwide because, like, man, those, numbers, are like, just, like, cosmically freaking big, man.
I'm glad to be driving a Mazda, but we are thinking about (gasp!) changing cars to something a tad bigger and right now, if you think about it, there may be no better time to buy a ... Mitsubishi.

Sankanbi

Well, that went surprisingly ... well. On a lovely, sunny Saturday morning I strolled up to Cian's school around 8:30 and found myself the first parent there.
Such is the enthusiasm of the foreign parent.
Cian's teacher, no doubt impressed with my enthusiasm, beckoned me inside the classroom rather than have me mooching around in the corridor, scaring all the other parents away. Plus the kids in his class kept coming up to the door window and making faces at me. As I was happily making faces back at them, the teacher probably thought it was best if I was in the class where she could control all of us.
Cian was sitting in the back right corner of the classroom so I decided to stand behind him so that (a) I could observe his behaviour during the lesson; and (b) subsequently apologize to his teacher for his behaviour during the lesson. Cian usually ends up sitting somewhere along the back row of the classroom. This is due to the fact that as he is so big students sitting behind him can't actually see the blackboard. He is also too big for his chair and his desk. By 6th class he will be lucky to get through the classroom door without banging his head off the top of the frame.
The lesson was about what the students are planning to achieve in the coming academic year. In groups of four and five, the students came to the front of the class and read out a summary of what their aims are as 4th year students. These were broken up into:
gakushuu: educational or academic aims
seikatsu: school life
kokoro: personal development
For gakushuu a lot of the students opted for learning to read and write more kanji, or doing better at Maths. Cian hoped to do both. Nothing from nobody about learning English. So nul points from the hairy foreign parent about that aim.
Seikatsu was dominated by a burning desire to win at this year's sport's day. Cian's class had been humiliated by the other fourth year class in last year's games. In the intervening twelve months, revenge had curdled into a bile so bitter they were spitting it out as they announced their intention to annihilate their neighbors in the next classroom. It was almost North Korean in its hysterically baroque intensity.
Kokoro was all about helping the new first year students, those innocent little tykes who still didn't know how to get to the gym and were convinced that the toilets were haunted. No mention of who had convinced them the toilets were haunted, but I could spot a few of the usual suspects from where I was standing.
At the end of the school year the students will be held to account as to how close (or far) they came to achieving these aims. In fact it will be included as part of their report card, along with their progress in maths, Japanese, science, etc.
After the class it was off to the gym for the PTA meeting.
I was only foreigner there.
And more surprisingly, one of the few men there. If you ever want a quick indication of how progressive a school is, check the gender ratio at its PTA meeting. Unfortunately, the parents at Cian's school were solidly in the conservative education-is-the-mother's-responsibility camp, with us new age men types conspicuous by our presence. Daddy's work, or, as this was a Saturday morning, go off to baseball practice or whatever, but they sure as oestrogen-filled hell don't turn up for no emasculating PTA meeting!
Goddamn!
Which is unfortunate, as the PTA meeting was quite informative and provided a sort of behind the curtains peek at the priorities set by the school and the parents. For Cian's school this meant expanding the school library, safety patrols in the morning and afternoon when the students are coming and going from school, and hiring teaching assistants for maths classes.
By contrast, in Sanae's old school (she was transferred at the beginning of this month - more anon), the priority was keeping the kids out of the local borstal and confirming which parent had custody of the kids after the latest round of divorces.
I, thankfully, wasn't chosen for anything - yet. It is still early in the year and I may well have to 'volunteer' for events as they arise.

The new school year

The new school year started for Cian this week. Hard to believe but he's now in 4th class. Where did the time go? And what was I doing when it went?
As usual after his first day Cian arrived home with small forest's worth of paperwork: timetables, school lunch menus, explanations, forms to be filled. Among the highlights were:
1: His year long schedule, from now until March 31st, 2017, with all the events of the year from school days to holidays, sports day parents' days, etc. already decided and dated. Most impressive is the fact that Cian will attend school for a total of 208 days this coming academic year. That's nearly over three weeks longer than the slacker páistí back home who can only manage 183 days. For shame. No wonder the country is such a mess.
2: His daily timetable. Every day school starts at 8:20 (though Cian is usually there by 7:45 in the morning such is the boy's enthusiasm for educating himself. Actually, that's not true. He goes that early so he can play dodge ball in the gym before classes start). On Mondays and Tuesdays he has five classes which means he's finished around 2:15pm. On the other days he has 6 ("feckin!") classes which means he doesn't finish in school until close on 3:30. Then its over to Daddy's office in the university for some world class English language education ("for fecks sake!").
3: Entreaties and/or veiled threats to 'volunteer' to join the Parent Teacher Association. The PTA is akin to the Teamsters in the US in the 1970's: seemingly friendly enough and concerned with the betterment of the school and students, but God have more mercy on your doomed, bloody soul should you ever cross them. In Japan the PTA isn't just a forum for blowhard parents to sound off on whatever minor inconvenience irks there little Satoshi. Rather, it is integral to the smooth functioning of the non-academic aspects of the school, particularly sports day, the graduation ceremony, after-school clubs, and eh, flower planting in spring. However, their zeal can be a bit full on and many parents, like myself and Sanae, who work full time, are loathe to give up what little free time we have, particularly on the weekends. This seems to be a bit of a trend as in the new school year letter/threat from the PTA, they stated quite forcefully that all parents are expected to volunteer for at least a minimum of 2 years while their children attend the school.
The first PTA meeting of the year is on this Saturday morning and in a very canny move, Sanae has decided to dispatch me to see how they react to having a big hairy foreigner in their midst. She has also warned me that I can't let on that I understand Japanese. Not something I should find particularly hard to do. I will let you know how I get on in the next post.
4: The map. Yes, a map. Every year we have to submit a hand drawn map to the school showing the route Cian takes from our house in his epic 800m journey to the school. As neither we nor the school have moved since he started you would think the cartographic powers that be would be content with the map we submitted in his first year, but no. Every year requires a newly drawn map just to confirm that (a) Cian still knows where he is going; and (b) that in the intervening 12 months no new topographical features like a sudden mountain range have popped up along the 800 metre route. I was highly tempted to submit a copy of a map from Middle Earth showing Cian traversing the Misty Mountains before cutting south through Mirkwood, and heading across Dagorlad before arriving at Mordor (or Mizumoto Elementary School to give it its official title). But Sanae didn't think that was funny.
She is a hobbit after all, so she probably took it a bit personally.