In additional to nonstop activity during the school day, children also have busy extracurricular schedules. According to a survey conducted by Rengo Sohken in 19xx, today's young children have rather busy schedules. This means a significant portion of the children's time is already reserved for the educational and training programs the parents have bought for their children. Children's daily life becomes further fragmented because some of their scheduled programs require traveling long distance and take them away from their neighborhood. These programs cut into children's free time after school during the week and on weekends.
Children have much less time they can spend following the desires they happen to have.
For Japanese children today spontaneous activities that children typically engage in are replaced by well-structured programs from a relatively young age.