All Summer They Were Up at 5:30 No Matter What. On the First Morning of Term, Nothing Could Move Them

What's going on

The Japanese school year starts in April and runs in three terms. The long summer break sits in the middle of it, lasting roughly forty days, and across most of the country it ends on August 31 — which makes September 1 the first morning of the second term, arriving on the same date for millions of households at once.

A parent posted on the morning of the first: all through the break, the children had been up and awake at 5:30 or 6 every single day, no matter how much they were begged to sleep a little longer. Not one lie-in in forty days. Then term started, and now no amount of calling will get them out from under the covers.

The replies came in from every direction, all reporting the same thing in their own households, and most of them landed on some version of the same metaphor — that a switch had been thrown somewhere. A fair number of adults then quietly admitted that the switch is still installed in them too.