Kids on TV: exercises and public security

Para aqueles que preferem posts em portugues, foi mal. Mas to com uns visitantes internacionais agora (quem le ate acha que to podendo...) e vou ter que aumentar um pouco o numero de posts em ingles. Mesmo assim nao vou deixar de escrever na minha lingua materna (... pq esse vocabulario agora?). Os relatos das ferias de verao serao mantidos em portugues. So quero ver quando acho tempo pra mexer nas fotos... Daqui a pouco chega o inverno e ainda nao terminei os albuns de verao...

Ok, back to English. During some idle time on Monday I decided to watch TV (a decision that I sometimes end up regretting... Here too seems like most of the good stuff is only on cable/satellite channels). There was a report about the Sports Day (yeah... and it's even an official holiday). In this day some schools test their students' physical ability (elementary and junior high schools mainly, I guess) and the results showed that, although certain features like avarage height have raised/improved, seems like physical abilities are decreasing. To arrive at that conclusion they compared data such as "Average time taken to run 100m" or "Average distance they can throw a ball" with the results of those measures years ago (with other students, of course).

Uh... I don't know... but I think such tests weren't necessary to get that conclusion. Kids don't play outside so often. Some barely have time to play because of activities such as cram schools. Even at university not all students are members of some sport club or even exercise frequently. And that's not only for Japan. That applies to many other countries (Brazil included). Here there's also another thing. This is the land of Game Boys, PlayStations and other eletronic enterteinment... I was not that surprised when I saw on the news other day something about the revival of "analog toys". The point was to improve communication and exercising.

Another thing I saw on TV was a show in which two kids (brothers and/or sisters) go shopping alone for the first time to buy somethings mom asked (simple things. The point is the "adventure"). Note: I know that some Japanese look lots younger than they really are, but none of the kids seemed to have more than 5 years old.

That's to think about public security. I don't think this kind of thing would be possible in Brazil... I've been writing about strange things in Japan. Time to praise a little. Although the fact that Japan is a relatively secure country is well known, we usually aren't aware of that, only realizing the difference after returning. Yep. It's easy to get used to good things to the point you don't even notice them anymore...

And Japanese kids are cute... Like when returning home, a boy whom I guess was no more than 3 years old (and tripped falling on the floor at least 5 times) just sat in the street saying "tsukareta" (I'm tired) and not willing to move. Much to the despair of her sister (around 5yo I guess). And later the crying of both when returning home and seeing mom and dad again... Hum... maybe I should review my opinion. Seems a little tough to the kids... But the boy saying "tsukareta" was funny...

Strange thing: I wonder if nobody really tried to help the kids or if they cut parts on which somebody offers to help. Can't imagine that nobody would try to help two children sitting on the walkway and crying...