summer kids top

Oh summer vacation. For little kids (and big kids too!) it’s a time to finally throw off those backpacks, forget about homework, and have fun all day long running around outside or playing video games. If you’re the mom or dad of one of those kids, though, you’re often left to clean up in their wake.

And the same is true in Japan too. For the most part it’s moms who’re left to run after kids giddy with the freedom of no school. They’ve even started a Twitter hashtag for it: #SummerVacationStupidKids.

What kind of things do Japanese kids do to drive their parents crazy? Are they the same as the rest of the world or completely different? Read on to find out!

The actual Japanese hashtag used for moms to complain about their kids is #AhoDanshiHahaNoTatakauNatsuyasumi, which literally translates to something more along the lines of “Summer Vacation of Moms Fighting Their Idiot Boys.” There’s one for girls too, but it seems that when it comes to complaining on Twitter, moms prefer making comments about their boys.

So let’s get to it and see what those summer vacation-crazy Japanese kids are doing to drive their moms crazy!

1. “Digging through his backpack to find all the important papers given out before summer vacation.”

https://twitter.com/sha_anme/status/623851411025989632

Ah yes, the old “not worrying about summer vacation homework until mom forces me to” trick. It’s important to keep in mind that summer vacation doesn’t mark the end of the school year in Japan. It’s just the halfway point, so kids typically have plenty of homework to do over vacation since they’ll be coming back to the same classes.

2. “Wearing nothing but underwear from morning to night.”

▼ Mom, don’t come between me and my green tea fragrance underwear.

summer underwearFlickr (James Creegan)

3. “I throw out his finished juice at McDonald’s and he says, ‘But I wanted to eat the ice!'”

Nothing better than cold ice on a hot day. And come on Mom, you paid for that ice! Gotta get your money’s worth anyway, right?

4. “They keep asking ‘Is the summer festival tomorrow?’ even though I’ve told them when it is a hundred times.”

https://twitter.com/kirirunemom/status/624488483717931008

▼ Just bear with it mom. It will all be worth it when you see them in their adorable summer yukata and your heart melts.

summer festivalFlickr (MIKI Yoshihito)

5. “They suddenly get too tired to do anything when I ask them to clean up.”

https://twitter.com/akka616/status/624810906740899842

I feel like this is an all-year-round thing. I mean, my room’s been a mess since…when did I move in?

6. “My daughter runs off to play somewhere else right after getting back from the pool, then comes home hours later and hands me her bathing suit and towels to wash…after I already finished laundry.”

What happened to the time-honored tradition of just hanging your bathing suit and bath towels out a window or from off a balcony, and just using them again the next day? I mean, no need to wash them if you’re just going to go swimming in it again, right?

7. “He asks what we’re having for dinner…at breakfast.”

And for good reason! Summer vacation is the time for summer dinners of hotdogs, hamburgers, pizza…or, if you live in Japan, cold noodles I guess. You’ll see what I mean later.

8. “Using a paper fan as a fighting stick.”

Haven’t you ever been a little boy before? Anything can be a fighting stick. Paper towel rolls, water bottles, pool noodles, watermelon rinds. You put it in our hands we will whack you with it.

9. “Cooling off by standing in front of the open fridge.”

▼ “Yeah, if you could just leave that door open for, oh, the next month or so, that’d be great.”

summer freezer catsFlickr (Alisha Vargas)

10. “Hanging up socks to dry after washing them and sand comes pouring out.”

Hey, the more sand that got in the socks, the less sand that got in far more undesirable places.

11. “Even in the changing room they’re still firing at each other with squirt guns.”

▼ You’re going to wish they’d fire at each other in the changing rooms once you see the living room downstairs…

summer squirt gunsFlickr (eyeliam)

12. “He says, ‘Save your watermelon pits! I want to plant them.’ Uh, we live in an apartment so please don’t do that.”

https://twitter.com/mametan0801/status/623843748120637440

Well at least this kid understands basic agriculture and doesn’t think they’d grow inside his stomach. It’s not his fault the landlord would get mad if a watermelon farm suddenly sprouted up in the communal trash area.

13. “I can enjoy a few moment of peace just by giving him a freezepop.”

▼ Japanese freezepops are chupetto, these things below.  I’ll be the first to admit I’d have no idea what to do if given one.

summer chuupettoYahoo! Blogs

14. “I have to make a ton of mugicha (barley tea) every day.”

Barley tea is the favorite drink of hot/sweaty/parched Japanese people. It’s not uncommon for moms in the summer to turn into little more than mugicha dispensing stations for the children running in and out of the house.

15. “When I ask what he wants to eat the answer is always ‘Somen!'”

▼ And what better way to eat those cold noodles than by shooting them down a bamboo tube with running water so everyone can pick them out with chopsticks and dip them in sauce and try to get in their mouth while dropping most of them on the ground? Oh nagashi somen, you were truly invented to make little kids happy.

summer somenFlickr (NAVFAC)

16. “…how long is summer vacation again?”

It depends on who you ask. It’s always going to be either “way too long” or “not long enough.”

So that’s what Japanese kids have been up to this summer, but how about you? Even if you’re too old to be driving your parents crazy anymore, do you have any juicy summer vacation stories of terrible things you did as a kid? Let us know in the comments!

Source: CuRAZY
Featured/top image: Flickr/Emran Kassim