"My father likes beer and tobacco."

For two days every couple of months, I go to one of the local elementary schools and bask in the cuteness of Japanese kids. It's like a vacation for me: I don't plan any of the lessons, all the kids are willing to learn English, I have free time to study Japanese, and I get to run around and play with the kids during recess.

I'm always amazed at the difficulty of the English lessons. This school--Northern Izuhara Elementary--has an excellent English program, and it really shows. I routinely help teach first- and second-graders essentially the same lessons I try to teach my high schoolers. The single bigget difference, in my opinion, is the elementary students' complete lack of fear about English. Whereas the high schoolers shy away from speaking up and standing out in the crowd, the younger kids have no such misgivings.

Today, I was with the fourth graders. They had been learning the "I like ~"/"S/He likes ~" pattern. They had prepared a presentation about their families, bringing in a photo and describing each person's hobbies. Each presentation consisted of "This is my (mother/father/sister/brother). S/He likes ~." Most of the mothers liked chocolate, music, or (reportedly) cooking. Some of the fathers liked baseball, TV, or golf. Most of the students' description of their father, however, went like this: "This is my father. He likes beer." This was rivaled in popularity only by "He likes tobacco."

Nobody in class reacted with anything remotely resembling shock or derisive laughter. Most of the kids didn't react at all; the teacher laughed it off. I could tell that he wasn't trying to downplay it or anything--it just isn't a big deal to people here. They accept their parents' vices. I'm sure awful things like alcoholism and child/spousal abuse exist here, but the overwhelming majority of fathers simply play as hard as they work. And everybody's fine with that.

I haven't heard a single Japanese person claim to oppose smoking or alcohol. Of course, the legal age limit is strictly enforced, both directly (by the police) and indirectly (by the community). Occasionally, one of my high school students gets caught smoking, and it causes a stir in the staffroom as the student's homeroom teacher has to give him (or her) a stern talking-to, and inform the parents, and probably have a conference.

The message seems to be that, as long as you're a hard-working adult, there's no problem with drinking and smoking. I'm not advocating either, but I think people back home could learn a lot from Japan's example, at least when it comes to tolerance of the drinking habits of others.