What's more Japanese than the government requiring all male city employees to take 40 days paid leave before their child's first birthday? How about that until now, no man has ever taken a day's paternity leave in the history of the municipal workforce? [Suddenly the national average for paternity leavers of 0.4% doesn't look so bad.]
Actually, the best part of the new program being instituted in the northern city of Ota: when they come back, the dads are required to give a report to their colleagues on what they learned about childcare.
The whole thing's a desperate effort to combat the "developing nation"-level (what we in humor call "third world") sexism of Japanese society. Yeah, good luck with that.
Fathers will be forced to mind baby [The Times of London]
