Beetle-keeping and Idea Banks
The trials and tribulations of summer vacation in Japan
Growing up as an American, school vacations were a time of freedom. I could play or watch TV or do nothing as much as I wanted. In fact, my brother and I had so many idle hours, we sometimes got bored and looked forward to going back to school.
Here in Japan, the breaks between semesters are busy. My kids were sent home for the school holidays with reams of worksheets, charts for keeping track of toothbrushing and chores, and a calligraphy assignment. Sometimes they would have to take care of the class pet for a week or so.
When my daughter was in kindergarten, she volunteered to take care of the class stag beetle during the first few weeks of summer vacation. She was supposed to feed it and moisten the soil with water from time to time. I guess we were supposed to change the soil, but no one said anything about that, and I didn’t get around to buying any.
My daughter was quite enthusiastic for the first few days, remembering to feed it the smelly jelly even when I forgot. But then, it crawled out of the plastic box once and she was freaked out. She said she wanted to give it to her grandmother. Since then, she had fallen in love with the kindergarten’s hamsters, and had decided that she wanted one of those.
I’d been feeding the beetle and sprinkling water on the soil. Up until the last night, I heard it scrabbling around. But one morning, when I checked on it, the jelly was uneaten and the beetle was belly up in the box. Nothing happened when I tapped the box. I was pretty sure it was dead.
My daughter was supposed to take it back to school the following day for the hand-off to her classmate. I figured they’d be having a beetle burial instead. But we went out for awhile, and when we came back, the beetle had moved! Phew! I reached in and turned it over so it could burrow into the dirt. We never kept a beetle as a pet again.
In addition to pet care, there was also, typically, a craft assignment. For instance, every summer, as part of her elementary school homework, my daughter was required to make a bank. I wondered why she had to make the same thing, year after year?
What were we supposed to do with all of those banks? Was some sort of lesson in money management embedded in the task? She was supposed to come up with an original design, and the result was entered in a contest. Of course, as the head teacher reminded us parents, the kids needed help.
At the beginning of summer, I would try to think of ideas. Maybe a papier mache rabbit? Or some kind of house constructed from all of the popsicle sticks we’d accumulated over the past couple of months? At the end of the vacation, with only a few days left to go, I would be casting about for something quick and easy that we hadn’t done before.
We’d stop by the bookstore to look for a craft book. At the beginning of school breaks, there were oodles of such books on display — books intended to give parents and kids inspiration for how to while the days away. Just before school started, they would be gone. In Japan, everything has its season.
My son went to a different school which had different requirements. The kids made banks only once, in first grade, many of them using ready-made kits. One summer, my son was supposed to paint a picture on the theme of “freedom.”
I was thinking doves, or maybe of people of many colors holding hands, but he needed to come up with the idea on his own. I tried to help him out a bit. “What do you think of when you hear the word ‘freedom’?” I asked.
“Getting out of jail,” he said.
Now that my kids are out of school, my idea of freedom is not having to nag them to finish their homework, or fill out their charts, or feed the class beetle — or, especially, to come up with an idea for their summer crafts.
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