A view of Tokyo
I arrived at Narita Airport, Chiba (near Tokyo), at the end of July 1999. Although I had experience teaching freshman composition as a T.A. in graduate school in the U.S., I had never taught Japanese students (one of my freshmen students in the U.S. had been a native of the Philippines). Nevertheless, I was anxious to jump-start my teaching career.
I was based at a senior high school for the first year. “I’ll give it a year, maybe two,” I promised myself. (This is how all ex-pats start…)
Ten years later, I’m still in Japan, and I’m still teaching English. In the interim, I have moved four times within three separate prefectures, taught English from elementary school age to senior citizen, and earned a second master’s degree in education.
Oh, and I also got married. This past year, my wife and I had a baby girl, who is the pride and joy of our small family. My wife works full time, but she was granted child care leave; she was even paid 30% of her salary for the year (much of which had to be paid back immediately for pension and health insurance, of course).
“I’ll give it a year, maybe two,” I promised myself.
However, when she returns to work, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to find a day care center in our area…let alone a day care center that is willing to take care of an under 1-year-old infant that can’t walk or talk yet.
So, what to do? We talked it over, checked out our options. I found out from my school that, technically, I could take child care leave until the child is 3, provided that my spouse was working full-time and no close relatives were living in the local area. Great, I thought. Why not?
And so the adventure began…
i just happened to find your blog, which i found very interesting to read. also i learned that you you took a year baby leave. when you have time, why not vist us with your cute toddler. very recently we had a two-month- old puppy, another labradre reteaver dog, who we named Hana. do you remember we had a dog named Tama, who recently died after 15 years of living with us. a 15-year-old dog is probably about 100 years old in human age. amazing long life!
Hi, long time no see! Yes, the year long child care was quite an experience. I intended to write once a week, but I was just too busy looking after my (very active) daughter! I hope to add some more stories to this blog…but also I’m considering putting together a book in the near future, when I have the time. I’m sorry to hear that Tama died recently. I remember her as very active; she gave you quite a workout during your walks as I recall. Maybe this summer we can visit and introduce our toddler. She enjoys meeting new people!