One of my team-teachers told me that she's having problems with some students who are balking at coming to school due to conflicts with classmates. Since Japanese students generally don't select their classes individually the way American students do, and instead spend nearly the entire day with the same homeroom, this is a huge problem. Every school I've been at seems to have at least one student with this behavior. Some of them actually show up at school but then spend the entire day in the nurse's office rather than going to the classroom. At one school I remember sitting in on a faculty meeting where they debated whether such a student should be considered absent or not.
In more cheerful news, I finished the potholders. Now, on to the next project...