The hormone-fueled stupidity that characterizes the behavior of your average college student is a fact of life, and people who are bothered by the unsafe sex, nonstop boozing and mindless pranks that typify spring break in the United States usually advocate moderation rather than outright prohibition. They know there's little they can do, especially when you've got MTV glorifying this kind of knuckleheaded behavior every April.

In Japan, college students are no less hedonistic, and if there's a difference it's mainly in the way the public looks upon their misbehavior. Americans generally accept it as a rite of passage, while the Japanese see one's student years as a four-year break in an otherwise drudgery-filled life.

Traditionally, young Japanese worked very hard, starting in early childhood, in order to gain entrance to a good university. The reward was membership of the college-going elite and the perks included a winking acknowledgment that, unless you were a technology major or on track for an academic career, you didn't have to sweat the studying part, because the bureaucracies and name companies that eventually hired you didn't care what you studied since they were going to retrain you anyway. They only cared about the pedigree, and for that reason it was beholden to the universities themselves not to make too much of scholastic achievement, since dropouts and poor performance would somehow reflect badly on their image.