A nursery where children can't play outdoors

In my last three posts I have been talking about the increasing number of restrictions and / or deterrents to children playing outdoors freely in Japan in recent years. In my last post, I mentioned how I myself have noticed an increase in limitations on children over the years. And I can tell you exactly when the issue was put on my radar and would you believe it was (almost) fourteen years ago.

Fourteen years ago, I had to temporarily put my son and eldest daughter into a nursery when I was at risk of preterm labor with my third child and was bedridden for a few weeks. After several days of notes from the nursery, in the customary nursery notebook,  to say that they hadn't played outside, a letter came home from the "encho sensei", head of the nursery, to say "for the unforeseeable future" the children will not be able to play in the nursery's playground, so they would be taking the kids for walks instead.

When my children were leaving the nursery permanently, after just a couple of weeks luckily, I asked a teacher what the reason was the kids couldn't play in the playground because there was no sign of construction or any sort of issue. I was gob smacked when she told me that it was because a person in the neighborhood had repeatedly complained, even called the police, because the children were "urusai", the Japanese for noisy. 

On this morning's television program this ("noise") was also mentioned as a key reason why many cities deter children from their parks these days. My opinion to that is the same as my opinion 14 years ago at the nursery - if you have a problem with noise when you live beside a park or a nursery - MOVE. I know it's not that easily done, but, in my opinion, it is not reasonable to expect children to be quiet during the day at a place that was designed for children to be, well just that, children!