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.