Report #6: Daylight saving time

Last week, I had a discussion about introduction of daylight saving time in Japan. As you know, several other countries, such as the United States, Canada and Australia, have already introduced this system. These countries decided to introduce this daylight saving time due to several merits. First of all, we can get back home 1 hour earlier. This means we can go home before dark, and it leads less traffic accidents and more safety of children. Secondly, it has something good to do with saving energy. In this system, we get up 1 hour earlier with the sun. So, we have another hour of sunlight until setting the sun. Since the hours of sunshine are longer, we can save energy like electric lights and so on.
Although the system has several good merits, it has some demerits at the same time. On the negative side, we need to change all clocks for the system. It is sure that there will be something wrong then. In addition, I have heard that it costs 100.000.000.000 yen to introduce the system in Japan. Next, it will give some damage to our life. We have biological clocks, and it is connected with our life styles. Under this system, our body clocks might get wrong. Then, it does harm to our health, and some students complain of sleepiness in class. There are many problems to be solved before the introduction.

In this discussion, I would like to agree with one idea. That is we do not introduce the system but we move up only time by 1 hour during summer. I mean we change only starting time of everything. Now our first period in this university begins 8:40. We move the starting time up for 7:40. I think it is easy to adapt and to reset the body clocks with starting it on Sunday midnight.