It`s the height of summer in Japan, with the mercury consistantly scoring in the mid 30s - even after the sun has set. As such, you`d expect the nation`s children to be out kicking football, breaking windows and capturing butterflies, or at the very least, sitting at home in front of their Playstations.

Not so, however. Instead, though term time has ended, the schools are full of teachers and students. The students are there for their club activities, and are insessantly drilled for hours and hours every day. The Japanese approach to sports offers an interesting insight into their psyche - prior to the introduction of Baseball with the opening up of the country, sport simply did not exist in Japanese society. The closest they had were martial arts, and in many ways they based their approach to sport around their approach to martial arts.

 As such, kids stand out in the hot sun all day repeating the same activity again and again and again until they improve. It`s an approach that is completely at odds to the Irish mentality, and seems to value achievement and self-betterment over enjoyment and the social aspect.

 While the students are outside fainting in the heat (and sadly, even dying - as happened to one local Junior High School student recently), the teachers are inside working. Except that, with no classes on, there`s no work to be done. And so, they just pretend that the`re working - putting on a magnificent, if not thoroughly convincing, spectable as they rush around the office (but not too quickly!) , photocopying documents, filling in various unimportant forms and writing feverishly on their word processors.

 The mask does occasionally fall, however. Notably, if two teachers share a quick joke, everyone in the office makes a bee-line for the offending couple and try to join in the merriment. More notably, a look around the office will typically reveal at least one teacher sleeping with their forehead pressed against their laptop keyboard.

 And yet, nobody will admit that they`re not working. It`s a big charade that everybody is in on but that nobody will acknowledge. And so I must play along…