Field day figure of speech in Japaese

運動会 (うんどうかい ) Sports Day
The explanation for this word sounded familiar. Sure enough after a little googling, I found that it is equivalent in the USA to Field Day. Apparently Sports Day if the British term. Down the rabbit hole I went… and started to wonder if the idiom using field day is translated using this word in Japanese or does it have another phrase.

e.g . When the boss left his phone unlocked at the office, the workers had a field day looking through his private photos.

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You cannot use it in that sense, no. 運動会 is just the event.

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Yeah, “field day” in the sense of “having a field day” is different to the US usage of “Sports Day” even in English. If for no other reason than the fact that “having a field day” is not restricted to US English.

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I recently learned this expression that means ‘when the cat’s away, the mice will play’

鬼の居ない間に洗濯

Not exactly the same, but comparable.

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せっ、洗濯⁈ I guess that says something about priorities. :smiley: Thanks for sharing!

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I found this which does make it seem to be a near fit.
Screenshot_2019-05-19%20Google%20Translate

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… why does it say “oki” instead of “oni”?

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Given the general… oddness of some of the rest of the entry (e.g. I have no father or mother tomorrow), the whole thing doesn’t seem to be super thoroughly proofread.

But at the very least, they do explain the meaning of 洗濯 there correctly.

Here’s a Japanese resource for the proverb.

https://proverb-encyclopedia.com/oninoinumani/

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Would probably also apply to a sentence like “The press had a field day when the Minister for Silly Walks was observed walking normally on his way home from the pub.”

I found やりたい放題 = “all (you) can want to do” (?), made up of やる (to do) with -たい (“want” suffix) and a suffix Level 13+ WKers should know: ~放題 as in 食べ放題 (all you can eat). That seems pretty close.

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