ethics

So, we had a party here for Thanksgiving last night. As you might expect, there were some smokers and my mom was complaining since I've pretty much forced her to quit since I arrived. The guests were all students of my mom's and some of them didn't know she even smoked since they don't allow it on their school campus. I was half listening to their conversation and my mom was saying that sometimes she would go with the smokers to the 'ko-en' to smoke. This word can mean either 'park' or 'playground' - so I asked which, not that either is a particularly good place to go smoke really. Anyway, these adults who aren't allowed to smoke on their college campus would walk to a local playground to light up. I'm not kidding. My mom said that sometimes there were even kids on swings and stuff. This from the same culture that has 20 people standing on either side of a single lane, one-way street waiting for the signal to say 'walk.' So, apparently it's okay to go smoke in front of little kids on what is essentially their turf, but jaywalking in any form is a no-no. Of course, at the crosswalk in question, my mom jaywalked anyway. I asked her if people don't jaywalk EVER in Japan, to which she replied, "Only on bikes."