Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s recommendation that all elementary, junior high and high schools in Japan close through the end of their April spring break in order to prevent the spread of a new coronavirus caught nearly everyone in the country off guard when the news broke in late February.
No demographic was perhaps more surprised than the parents of school-aged children. The suddenness of the announcement coupled with confusion over what exactly their school’s board of education would end up doing forced many to scramble. For some working families and single-parent households, this meant they needed to find alternative child care solutions in March or spend more time at home.
Leave it to a Japanese mascot, Gunma-chan of Gunma Prefecture, to sum up the dilemma in a single tweet. The first photo in the post featured a picture of the horse-themed mascot frolicking in a field, accompanied by a caption that read, “How kids react to schools being closed.” In a second image, Gunma-chan cowers in a corner, which is supposedly “how parents react to schools being closed.”