international rite of passage
一昨日の記事ですが、日本人家族もとりあげられていましたので紹介しておきます。自然の中で過ごすのがあたり前のはずのキャンプのスタイルに富裕層があらたな形を導入したようです。rite of passageは「通過儀礼」のことですが、これにinternationalがついているのがミソです。（Koyamamoto）
Asian Families Travel a Long Way for Summer Camp
After hours spent performing cartwheels, American show tunes and a series of jazzy dance routines in a cramped studio on West 28th Street in Manhattan, 8-year-old Futaba Kawakami left TADA Youth Theater camp earlier this week, clammy and slightly hoarse. She pulled off her new camp T-shirt, the one with the slogan Sing! Dance! Act! emblazoned on the back, and marshaled enough energy to ask her mother for ice cream. Then they headed off to 16 Handles in Chelsea.
It seemed like a pretty typical summer day for a pretty typical New York City kid, except that when it was time to go home, Futaba and her mother, Keiko, did not ride the subway to Queens, or the bus to the Upper West Side. Instead, they piled into a cab that whizzed them past Macy’s, Times Square and a gaggle of 57th Street souvenir shops to a short-term, luxury rental apartment behind the Plaza hotel.
That’s where the Kawakamis, who are Japanese and live in Tokyo, are staying for the rest of the month so that Futaba can experience what many city youngsters take for granted: day camp.
With her summer sojourn, the fourth grader, whose father is a wealthy Tokyo investor, is doing her part to fuel a growing trend at the city’s day camps. Camp directors in and around the five boroughs say the children of well-off families from Beijing, Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo now annually descend upon the city’s acting studios, sports centers, science labs and swimming pools to join their American peers in what has become, for those who can afford it, an international rite of passage. And while the overall numbers may be small, they form a significant part of the camps’ clientele.
