First a correction: In yesterday’s post I mistakenly called Showa Day by it’s old name Greenery Day. I’ve edited the post to correct that.

Although my students have a half day of classes before their holiday begins, most of them today acted like they were already on holiday.

I kind of joined them.

This coming week three Japanese national holidays collide in an event called Golden Week. They consist of Constitution Memorial Day on Sunday, Greenery Day on Monday, Children’s Day on Tuesday and “Crap, Constitution Day Fell on a Sunday So Let’s Give Everyone A Make Up Holiday On Wednesday” Day (not it’s real name).

Although the holidays are awesome, my students mentally enter holiday mode right after Showa Day. It’s even worse that this Golden Week this year is a five day weekend for me and a four day weekend for my students.

Today they were noisy and spent a lot of time talking in Japanese. Some of them didn’t bother doing the assignments and a couple of them tried to sleep. The worst were the high school 1st year students (10th graders), many of whom have never had me as a teacher before. As such, they are woefully unaware that 1) I really will give them homework over a major holiday and that this will happen because 2) I am a vindictive bastard.

This is especially true before a holiday. I get a break and I never have to actually read the assignment I give. I only have to collect it and mark is as “done” or “zero”.

Luckily, a few of my students had me as a teacher in junior high school and they let their new, naive friends know what things I am capable of. Also luckily for them, I couldn’t be bothered to think of a suitably cruel homework. (The worse ever: spell all the numbers from one to one-thousand).

Now I have to keep myself busy for the next few days. I could do a lot of writing, but I suspect I’ll just waste the time. I do this because June is coming. And June has no national holidays.