Being a teacher in Japan leaves even less time, since the time demands include evenings and weekends. My current school requires me to be in charge of at least one sports-related club and my committee work requires me to sacrifice entire weekends from time to time. My school additionally has various entrance exams during the year — five of them in total — which require me to give up holidays. There are also Open Campus days, School “Experience” days, Entrance Explanation days, and other administrative-oriented events…most of which take place on the weekend so that parents and prospective students can attend.

So, when I was recently asked to work a second weekend in a row, to chaperone students to a speech contest, I requested that another English teacher take charge, arguing that I hadn’t seen my daughter in almost 8 days.

My request rankled a few feathers. “We are all busy,” was the indignant reply. Yes, I thought, but I’m the only one  with a 2 year old daughter whose mother not only is pregnant but also has to work extra hours to cover classes she will have to cancel in January when she takes child raising leave.

Essentially, the Japanese attitude is that workers must give up all thought of family in favor of their workplace. All must be sacrificed for work, because it is mei waku (troublesome) to a coworker if they have to do extra work in your place. The peer pressure never to take time off, never to ask a colleague to give you a hand, is enormous.

When I was working in Boston, it was customary for a coworker to say, “Hey, something’s come up, can you handle this for me?” In return, it was understood that at some point in the future, when something came up for me, the coworker would return the favor. Almost an unspoken assumption. The unspoken assumption at my Japanese school is that you should never ask a colleague to do work that you should be doing; an unspoken assumption that you should never take time off for family, that you should always place work before family. Almost as if family is an inconvenience, a curse rather than a blessing, particularly for men.

Of course, some of my colleagues lament privately to me that they want to spend more time with their children. The conversation always ends with them sighing, “Well, it can’t be helped.” (shouganai)

Bullshit. If there’s one aspect of Japanese society and culture I have never gotten used to, and never will accept, it’s the defeatist, cowardly attitude of, “Well, it can’t be helped.”

It can ALWAYS be helped, but not by turning the other cheek or by allowing your superiors or societal mores run roughshod up and down your spineless back.

Children don’t stay young forever. People get old and die. Some things…MOST things…are more important than work. Two of my siblings have died, one at the age of four months, the other just two weeks before turning 16. I still remember vividly a series of funerals when I was 10, when practically an entire generation of my older relatives died from heart, lung, and other assorted diseases.

I won’t take my relatives for granted. It pains me that I can’t visit my family and relatives in the U.S. more often. I simply will not allow my workplace or my colleagues to take time away from my family here in Japan. One day my daughter is 2, the next she’ll be 12. Which is more worthwhile, being a part of my daughter’s childhood or staying as long as possible at work?

The ultimate irony of my colleagues expecting me to work during the past two weekends was the fact that November 11th was “Family Day.” In fact, the previous week was “Family Week,” so designated by the Japanese national ministry directly supervising my school. A prime example of tatemae, a characteristically Japanese form of saying one thing in public and meaning exactly the opposite…and everybody knowing the truth behind it all anyway.

Every day is family day. That’s not “tatemae” to me. I don’t hide behind my words; I stand in front of them.

"Nyuenshiki" (entrance ceremony). The sign reads "omedeto" (congratulations).

Starting April 1st this year (the beginning of the school year in Japan), I went back to work and my daughter started her first year at a nearby private nursery school. Even prior to the official first day, we attended an “entrance ceremony” (nyuen-shiki) complete with teacher and administrator introductions (a bit too long for most 2 and 3 year olds) and a couple of songs for the kids. Followed by a photo session. We later paid a few dollars for nice photographs taken by the nursery school’s contracted photographer, both posed and random shots during the ceremony.

To be honest, I was totally confused by the Japanese nursery school system and left most of the paperwork up to my wife.

Here’s my understanding of how the system works:

First, there are two kinds of nursery schools: hoikusho (保育所) and hoikuen (保育園). One is public and the other is private. Sometimes, however, hoikuen is used by public schools as well. The term “sho”（所) means literally “place,” and seems somewhat stuffy and rigid to some people, so schools try to avoid it for “en,” which means literally “garden.”

Second, there are two kinds of categories for nursery schools (both public and private). The first is termed “officially recognized nursery school” (ninka-hoikusho 認可保育所) and the second is termed “not officially recognized care facility” (ninka-gai-hoiku-shisetsu 認可外保育施設). I’m unclear what constitutes “official” approval. But there are some obvious differences between the two types.

Last year, during my child care leave, we occasionally left our daughter at an “unofficial” daycare that called itself a takujisho (literally, “entrusting infants place,” 託児所). The daycare consisted of two rooms – a play room and a sleep room – and often had up to 20 kids with ages ranging from 6 months to 6 years. We had to provide snacks and lunches each day.

The current “official” nursery school (a private school affiliated with a nearby Buddhist temple) provides all food and drink. There are also separate rooms for age groups (again, 6 months to 6 years), with some ages having two separate rooms. For example, our daughter is placed in “Squirrel 2″ because she was not quite 2 years old in April, while kids already 2 years old were placed in “Squirrel 1.” There are also many, many more teachers at the nursery school; at our daughter’s age, there’s basically one teacher for every 4 kids. The “unofficial” daycare had only 4 teachers total for all age groups.

Of course, the official nursery school is much more expensive, but it’s also much safer and the facilities are much larger.

The main drawback to the “official” system is the lottery system. We were rejected from the previous year’s lottery system, but because we were rejected we were selected this year…although we didn’t have any choice whatsoever as to which of the local six or seven “official” schools our daughter could attend. Considering the thousands of kids in some parts of Japan that are still on the waiting list for nursery school, we got off lucky.

Kindergarten (youchien 幼稚園), on the other hand, starts at 3 years old and is considered to be a sort of elementary school preparatory program…although not technically part of the system (and not required, either). And it only lasts roughly half a day (some places go to 2 or 3 p.m.). Many kindergartens are affiliated with elementary schools…some of which lead directly to prestigious universities. In one well-publicized case, a mother in Tokyo actually strangled her rival’s 2 year old, because the rival’s child got into a prestigious kindergarten, while hers did not. To my knowledge, there are far more “normal” kindergartens than so-called “prestigious” ones, but the lure of a school that helps kids learn to read/write and do simple calculations is strong.

But for us, since both my wife and I work full-time, sending our daughter to only a half-day kindergarten program is pretty much out of the question. Unless one of us were to quit full-time and move to part-time work. We’re concerned that the nursery school is primarily aimed at “taking care” of children rather than “educating” them, as is the kindergarten…but on the other hand, what kind of “education” can kids get that at such a young age? Our daughter can already read the entire English alphabet, and with all the books we have at home for her, I have no doubt that she’ll be reading words and even sentences before long (she can already read “cat” and “dog” at the age of 2 years 4 months).

There is a proposal in Japan to combine the nursery school and kindergarten system into what has so far been labelled “kodomo-en” (basically, kindergarten…こども園). A few “kodomo-en” have been established, but the requirements for teaching licenses (which include basic medical and nutritionist training) are complicated, to say the least. Seems strange that given the declining number of children in Japan that there should be an increase in demand for full-time daycare, nursery school, and kindergarten. But by and large the nursery school system seems well-run. Maybe in the next post I’ll be able to explain a little about how our local school works (as best I can figure out!).

Of course, not too busy to continue to take care of my daughter. I hope that goes without saying now.

I intended to stop writing on this blog, but found myself wanting to add more information. More about reactions of friends and colleagues. More about the transition between home care and day care. More about entering the nursery school (an adventure…).

I also found myself wanting to gather all the posts already on this blog, wanting to edit them into a more coherence framework, with the purpose of self-publishing a book about my paternity leave. Would anybody be interested in buying it, even for a dollar or two? Or even if free? Frankly, monetary concerns don’t bother me so much as the possibility that others…particularly fathers…might not be interested in reading about child care.

Hopefully, this post will mark the return of my dedication to writing about child care. I haven’t shied away from the topic in person, or from posting about random articles on my Facebook page.

(On the other hand, I did curtail my Twitter usage, basically due to my lack of understanding the whole point of texting minute details of my life to the world at large in pithy inanities that are far too short to contain much meaning other than “hey, look at me, I can tweet.”)

The immediate impetus was colleague reactions. Or in many cases, lack thereof.

When I decided to take the child care leave, there was a resulting odd, tense atmosphere but I only got one direct negative reaction, from a teaching colleague..let’s call him Professor Y…who begged me not to take the year off because it would increase the departmental work load. This turned out largely not to be the case, since I am unable to help with much of the administrative work in Japanese, and my classes were covered by two part-time teachers.

When I returned to work, Professor Y greeted me with a smile. And spoke in Japanese. In fact, he has steadfastly refused to speak English with me since my return, despite his above-average ability (far above my Japanese ability).

At least he speaks to me, I suppose. A previous full-time teacher who retired and became a part-timer during my first year…let’s call him Professor M…used to talk to me all the time in near flawless English. After my child care leave, he wouldn’t even look at me, let alone say simple greetings such as “good morning.” Total cold shoulder.

I never got to gauge the reaction of the head teacher, Professor H. I spoke with him for over an hour about the English curriculum about a month before my leave. At that time, Professor H referred to the child care leave as “you know, that thing” (な、アレだろう). He wouldn’t even call it “leave of absence.” Unfortunately, he had to retire in March, just before I returned, and now there is a new head teacher (who has openly admitted to me that he hates English, but that’s neither here nor there, and besides which is really quite common at colleges in Japan).

Other colleagues have mixed reactions, mostly unreadable. My being away for a year has probably just made it difficult for them to suddenly start talking to me as if nothing had ever happened. One colleague did react very openly to my comment that I might have to leave a meeting early to go pick up my daughter at the nursery school.

“Man, I hated having to do that,” he said, laughing. “Nursery school was such a pain. My kid would always kick his heels and scream when it was time to home. I was so glad when he got to elementary school.”

Evidently not the kind of father to take a child care leave.

But more about the nursery school in a future post. Soon.

It’s too early to write any reflections on the past year. I’ll need some time back at work to really think back on what last year meant, and what it will mean to my family and myself in the future.

I couldn’t help noticing, though, the articles and especially the photograph on the front page of the Yomiuri Shimbun this morning. One article estimated the number of “disaster orphans” (children who lost both parents) from the Tohoku Earthquake and related tsunami in the hundreds at the very least. The accompanying photograph was that of a 4-year-old who had written a short letter to her mother, who is missing along with the girl’s father and older sister. The letter was short: “I hope you are still alive. How are you?” It took her almost an hour to write.

This morning, after seeing my wife off at the train station, I took my daughter to a nearby park. Though not quite two years old, she doggedly attempted to climb up a rope ladder to a slide by herself and insisted that she play catch with at least two different balls at the same time (one in each hand). Later at home around lunch time, she asked me to draw a red heart on her crayon-scrawl-covered paper. She then asked for blue, yellow, black, and green versions in quick succession, and pointed to show me where she wanted them. “Red heart yatte, koko.”

A few weeks ago, I tried to figure out how much money I spent from last April to this March, but stopped before too long. Basically, I wound up pretty much emptying my savings for the previous two to three years (graduate school and a trip to the US did partially explain that, however). I didn’t bother figuring out how much there was in lost pay. But even calling it “lost pay” is a poor choice of words. The events of March 11 and afterwards have made clear once again the value of family over money. None of the relief money will bring back that poor girl’s parents and sister.

Yet even without the ongoing tragedy, I still feel I made the right choice for my family. No amount of money can bring back lost memories or re-create events that wouldn’t have occurred, had I been at work every day instead of raising my daughter. I have no regrets.

My daughter starts nursery school tomorrow, with the “entrance ceremony” on Saturday morning (yes, there is even a ceremony for babies in Japan). My child care leave will be over…but taking care of my child will still continue. I will continue to post occasionally here, not only to reflect on what happened last year (I simply didn’t have time to write about a whole lot of things), but also to ponder new topics and issues as they arise.

I’m still a newbie at being a father, and while I have learned a lot this past year I’m sure there is plenty left to learn. Thanks for reading about my experiences on paternity leave; I know that there is little chance that my decision to take a year of child care leave will encourage other men to do so. There are two full-time workers in my family (my wife and myself), which made the decision easier. Not receiving any pay and staying home while friends and colleagues went to conferences and published papers in journals and books was difficult. But what I got in return can never be taken away, and will never come again.

I have no regrets. None. And I hope that more new fathers will also choose to have no future regrets when the opportunity arises.

My last post, about something now that seems totally innocuous, was on Friday, March 11th, at 10 or 11 in the morning. Japan time.

We all know what happened just a few hours later.

To be quite honest, I have no new story to add to the umpteen “My Private Earthquake” stories abounding on the web. Some 450 miles or so away from the epicenter, my family only felt the tremors reverberating down the spine of Japan to the former capital area in the middle of the main island of Honshu. I’ve had to repeatedly reassure friends and family in the US that Japan (a) is not a single, tiny island and (b) is not in danger of sinking into a giant crevice in the Pacific.

(Contrary to popular media in the West, “Japan” consists of far more than Tokyo. Even Tokyo consists of more than “Tokyo,” which is generally shown as little more than the downtown Shinjuku or Ginza shopping areas. Those of us not near Tokyo, i.e., 60-65% of the country, have as much daily interaction with Tokyoites as New Yorkers do with Virginians.)

The true scale of what has happened, and what is still happening, slowly becomes more and more evident as the days progress. Rumors have spread online as various posts have appeared on Facebook and Twitter, many of which were contradictory and some of which were downright false. The vast majority stem from “reporting” by CNN, BBC, and other major international “news” providers…many of which seem designed to provoke fear, insecurity, and sometimes even hysteria.

“Food and fuel shortages across Japan,” claims one article (where is “across Japan”? There’s no shortage here). “Japan’s collective fear and suffering has yet to ebb” trumpets another article, which has a URL about Emperor Akihito’s exhortion to remain calm and work together, but has a title of “Anxiety deepens” (the anxiety is deepening primarily in the Western media and foreigners who pay too much attention to it). “Government breakdown causes frustration” toots another (what breakdown? The response has been timely, ordered, and about as organized as any in the modern world. Compared to Katrina, the response has been nothing short of outstanding).

Stellar “reporting” in one article would have us believe that Tokyo is empty (when in reality only the most panicked of foreigners are leaving) and that there is no food anywhere in the entire country (when restaurants seem to still have food and local bakeries and food vendors seem to have no shortage). Media have resorted to interviewing handfuls of people who give the most panicked reports possible. By the time help comes to the afflicted areas and live returns to normal, the sensationalist media will have milked their cash cows and flown off to cover the next human tragedy-cum-melodrama. I often wonder if these reporters actually help those they report on, or if they simply interview the most desperate or panicked person they can find, before catching the next helicopter back to the bar, far away from where they could do some good.

It also looks like governments are buying into the media-induced panic and adding more of their own. The French and British Embassies urged their citizens living in Tokyo to “consider leaving the country,” and France even sent two airplanes to evacuate its citizens (although I don’t think too many left, unless they were hapless tourists who had just arrived). (UPDATE: The US government provided a handful of seats on planes leaving from Haneda and Narita Airports to the “safe havens” of  Seoul and Taipei. So, basically the US government is willing to give US citizens in Tokyo a free vacation to East Asia. But once you get there, you’re on your own…oh, and you’ll also have to sign a promissory note stating that you’ll reimburse the government for the flight…Happy St. Patty’s…).

Many countries have advised against “non-essential” travel to Tokyo, adding to the sense of panic among non-Japanese. The opposite is also happening. Singapore and Hong Kong have already banned all produce from Japan because they are afraid it may be “radioactive” (first of all, produce already outside Japan was sent well before any of the recent events, and second of all, broccoli from Kagoshima and oysters from Hiroshima have nothing to do with a nuclear power plant in Fukushima. Get a map!) In the US, Californians have exhausted the nation’s supply of iodine 131 pills out of an unjustified fear that radioactive plumes would spread across thousands of miles…which they eventually will, but at levels so tiny that nothing will happen.

The multinats are getting their uninformed two cents in as well by urging their employees to flee the country. Most of the firms reportedly leaving are financial investment banks and other tools of the market…which were probably already considering packing up and moving to China anyway. (The above “story” repeats many of the same reporting flaws as other BBC and CNN “reports,” which are based on fly-by-night interviews with panicky individuals who do not represent the vast majority of Japanese or even non-Japanese living here.)

Of course, messages about spreading radioactivity are not just limited to the Western press. Someone in Asia started spreading false information that radioactive clouds were going to rain radioactivity on Manila. But by and large the hysteria emanates from Western media, Western governments, and their respective citizens. I’ve seen little to none of the hysteria here in Japan, and neither have my friends in the Tokyo area.

Yes, we are all concerned. “Concern” is not the same as “anxiety” or “fear.” Claims that the nuclear power plant affect the “entire nation” and that “panic is gripping Japan” are nothing more than media hyperbole without factual basis. “Japan” is quite large, and an incident confined to a radius of 30 kilometers, while certainly cause for concern, does not affect “Japan.” It doesn’t even affect the power supply of nearly half the country, since the power grids for West and East Japan are totally separate. We are not panicking here in western Japan, and nobody in eastern or northern Japan is panicking, either. The only panic is in the media.

In addition to the fear and panic perpetuated by the Western media, Ill-advised humor about the earthquake and tsunami already made waves last week. An American comedian whose voice is used for the AFLAC duck in the US tweeted jokes about the value of Japanese real estate…despite the fact that three-quarters of AFLAC’s business comes from Japan. A Japanese comedian…who poses as the governor of Tokyo…openly stated that the disaster was “divine punishment” for Japan’s “bad politics.” Both apologized, saying they basically didn’t mean to say what they did (then, why did they say it?).

Disasters bring out the worst in people. They also bring out the best in people, but we don’t often hear about the best, because there’s more money in covering the worst.

My blog is about raising my daughter, but it’s also about me spending the rest of my life in Japan. I became a permanent resident of Japan two years ago, and I see no reason to leave now. I’m certainly not going to leave friends and family here because of erroneous beliefs and ill-informed fears, and I’m not going to run when times get difficult. The term “surrender monkey” doesn’t translate well into Japanese, because when times get tough, the Japanese get tougher.

I’m not Japanese, but my wife and my daughter are, and this is now my country, too. I’m staying. We are staying.

My daughter starts nursery school on April 1st. There are many other children in northern Japan who may not. There is little I can do directly to aid the effort in Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate. Indirectly, I have already donated repeatedly to cash boxes that have appeared all around our area. Once I start having income again in April, I intend to donate online as well. I hope that a conference I am helping to organize for this July in Tokyo will also set up a system for conference attendees to donate to the ongoing relief efforts.

There is no reason to panic. There is no need to panic. Japan is not sinking. It’s just about to rise.

St. Peter’s at the Pearly Gates, and he’s checking his list of the recently departed when a new soul suddenly arrives without warning. St. Peter glances down at the list, doesn’t see any new names, then glares at the newcomer.

“How’d you get here so quickly?” he demands.

“Flu.”

Not that anybody in my family has been that sick lately, but we did experience a little merry-go-round of early spring colds the last couple weeks of February. Fortunately none of us got the flu, though, maybe because of the flu shots we all got.

Inside a local hospital, waiting after my "new type" flu shot.

In January and February, we had scheduled our daughter for the last batch of her immunizations (yobou sesshu 予防接種, or also wakuchin ワクチン  from the German word for “vaccine.”). The most important is called “san-kon” (三混), which literally means “three mixed” and includes diptheria, pertussis (“whooping cough”), and tetanus. We also wanted her to get an influenza shot, particularly since there were fears that H1N1 (called “shingata” or “new type” in Japanese) would start up again among elementary school age children. I got the shot last year, and this year I got it again as a combination of seasonal flu and “new type” flu. My wife also got it, for the first time.

Being under the age of 12, our daughter had to get the flu shot twice, about three to four weeks apart. Each shot also had to be at least a week before or after any other kind of shot, and she was not allowed to have a fever of over 37.5 C for several days prior to the shot. Since a slight fever is a typical side-effect of a regular immunization shot, the timing was a little complicated. Each time she got the shot, we additionally had to wait for half an hour in the hospital to make sure there were no severe side effects (such as a temporary seizure or muscle spasms, which did happen to the child of a friend of mine).

Each time we went to the hospital, I had to fill out a questionnaire with the same family history questions. The first time I had some difficulty with the Chinese characters in the questionnaire and asked the nurse attendant whether they were necessary or not. She huffily snatched the clipboard from me (had no one asked such a thing before?) and brought it to the doctor, so when I took my daughter in to see him, he asked the questions and rephrased them so I could understand them more easily. The content was fairly straightforward; Does anybody in your family have a history of allergic reactions to immunizations? Has the patient ever had a reaction? When is the last time the patient had an immunization? Etc. I had to do the same questions again and again each time she got a shot.

I found the questions about family history and my daughter’s immunizations a bit odd. Not only did I have to hand in the “boshi-techo,” which had a written record of my daughter’s immunization, but the doctor was the same person who had treated my daughter for dehydration last April. Wasn’t all this recorded on computer already?

The answer, naturally, is that first of all medical facilities in Japan do not share patient records. Evidently they think sharing patient histories constitutes some sort of violation of privacy…even if the patients say it’s okay to share. Second, the medical insurance and family history records are automatically deleted from the computer system at the beginning of each month, so that all insurance information and family history records have to be manually input each time there is a visit to the doctor.

The cash register counter, complete with notices (many of them handwritten in pen or marker).

I suppose I should have guessed as much. Every hospital I have ever visited in Japan has walls literally covered in handscrawled notices and warnings about washing hands, gargling, dietary restrictions, insurance updates, various illnesses running rampant, taking the proper dosage of medicine, not forgetting to take your umbrella/hat/bag/wallet/spouse home with you once the visit to the doctor is concluded…

For an advanced country with the longest lifespan of any population on earth, Japan sure seems fairly unadvanced as far as medical practice is concerned. Well, maybe not the practice of medicine so much as the system by which medicine is practiced. Inefficiency is not particularly helpful in a society in which almost 30% are over the age of 65.

And did I mention that the pediatrics department at the local private hospital will cease to exist in two weeks? The only pediatrician is retiring. Perfect timing…

We quickly learned the sagacity of covering most of the living room floor with old newspapers as the little artist created her various masterpieces on the back of discarded printer paper (urakami). Unfortunately, newspaper doesn’t stick quite as well to the walls, or to the chairs, or the table, or the bookcases, or…

The Artist and the Chair

Our daughter soon decided that she preferred to sit in her “eating chair” while drawing…on the chair itself, of course. When she graduated to a high chair for dinner time, we turned the “eating chair” into an “artist’s chair,” and it was decorated by many a work of creative inspiration before being retired a few weeks ago (since our daughter has gotten too big to sit in it).

Now, our daughter uses an old coffee/card table as her art studio space, usually drawing while standing and chanting, “Usagi, usagi [bunny, bunny]” or “Daddy, daddy” to herself. She’s gotten pretty good at the letter O. Just this past week she repeatedly asked us to draw balloons (specifying which colors she wanted us to use), within which she drew three Os…for eyes and a mouth.

Before scarring them all with incredible purple and black zigzags. Picasso, watch out.

But it has also driven home to me how fortunate I have been this past year to have taken Parental Leave from my school. I have been able to spend a great deal of time with my daughter at a very formative stage of her personal development, before schooling and societal mores shape her personality in ways I can’t even fathom.

So much has happened since I started writing this blog about my experiences on paternal leave. I meant to write at least one post per week, but that plan quickly fell apart as the necessities of daily life began to pile up. I will say this about my experiences so far: Taking care of a child is a full-time job.

It seems a straight-forward, almost nonsensical statement to me now, but I don’t think a lot of my male colleagues seem to understand this truth about child-raising. This past year hasn’t been an “unpaid sabbatical” or a “vacation” (both of these phrases were said to me…by male teachers).

I’m tired. Really tired. I have all the respect in the world for those who have been doing this for day after day, week after week, year after year. Contemplating the reality of single-parent families, with a parent raising a child full-time and also working a full-time job (or several part-time jobs, or both) is simply mind-boggling. These people deserve a Nobel Prize for hard work. Seriously.

There are still plenty of topics I want to write about, maybe not all of them directly related to paternal or parental leave, but certainly related to childcare and child-raising. I’ve been taking notes, mental as well as written, and amassed a number of photos (mostly taken by cell-phone on the go). I’ll try to post them as regularly as I can for the next few weeks (my Christmas and New Year’s posts were several weeks after the fact…mostly due to needing several weeks to recover after the fact).

But I should spend most of my remaining two months of parental leave spending as much time as possible with my daughter. She’s not getting younger, and neither am I. “I perceive I have no time to lose.” (Walt Whitman)

Mt. Sakurajima with a New Year's crown of snow.

I’ve spent the past five New Year’s at my in-laws’ house in Kagoshima, in the southern island of Kyushu. “Family” consists of my wife’s parents, my brother-in-law (who works at a hospital and is usually on call and/or working throughout the three-day New Year’s holiday), my sister-in-law and her three children. Nenmatsu-nenshi (“year end, year beginning”) is always a bit hectic. This year with four children in the house, things were even noisier than they have been in previous years.Luckily it snowed on New Year’s Eve and Day. I say luckily, because it gave us all something to do outside the house with the kids. Between 25 and 30 centimeters (about 10 to 12 inches) fell, resulting in snowmen (yuki-daruma, or “snow-Bodhidharma”) in people’s front yards and driveways up and down the streets.  It was the biggest snowfall in the area in over two decades, and almost brought the city to a standstill. No snowplows in this part of the country.

Most residents do have shovels, though — for volcanic ash that periodically rains down from nearby Mt. Sakurajima, the world’s most active volcano (over 1,000 eruptions last year, a new record). Dealing with the occasional downpour of gray soot no doubt helped Kagoshima residents deal with snarled traffic and unplowed city streets without complaint.

Playing in the snow with my wife’s niece and nephews, with my daughter occasionally running back and forth in the snowy front garden area between my wife, my mother-in-law, and me, served to remind me not only how much my daughter was still not quite capable of doing at the age of 20 months, but also how much she had grown and was actually capable of since thew previous holiday season. Whereas last January she had just figured out how to sit upright, this year she was careening about in the outside yard, picking up chunks of snow in her bare hands and chucking it at people.

My niece and nephews were also thrilled that my daughter was talking…although they had a hard time figuring out exactly what she was saying (a mixture of Japanese, English, and her own language — “isshi ya-chi” is a good example, meaning, near as we can figure, “I want this.”).

Eight months old (last year) and 20 months old (this year) are very different. I’m sure next year (2 1/2 years old) will be even more so.

On the second day of New Year’s the we visited the family gravestone and paid our respects, followed by hatsumode (first visit of the new year to a shrine or temple). My wife and I threw in 55 yen each, and my daugher threw in (with Daddy’s help) 15 yen (five yen is pronounced “go-en” in Japanese, which is the same as the phrase ご縁, go-en, which symbolizes connections, harmony, and luck. Fifteen yen is “ju-go-en,” or “lots of en,” and fifty-five yen, “go-ju-go-en,” is “honorable lots of en.” Words have power when they sound the same as what you wish for.)

On the third day, we went to the Hirakawa Zoo, ranked 7th in the country. It was bone-chilling cold, and more than half the zoo enclosures were under construction. But we were pleasantly surprised by the difference between a zoo in the countryside and one in a big city such as Osaka or Nagoya. The animals actually behaved normally, for example. My daughter is obsessed with giraffes and elephants, but upon seeing them up close seemed a bit intimated. Who wouldn’t? The giraffes in particular were simply gigantic.

My wife and I actually got a chance to see another giraffe on January 5th, when we went to the Kinoshita Circus during its first appearance in Kagoshima for over 40 years. My wife’s parents watched our daughter to give us a few hours at the circus. Strangely enough, it was my first time, ever, to go to a circus, anywhere. At the start of the 11 a.m. show, I half-regretted not bringing our daughter, but halfway through the “lion-taming” sketch (with 8 lions staring balefully at an audience they no doubt wished to play with as a house cat plays with mice), I realized that my daughter still was too young for some things.

All things in time. She’ll be two years old soon. In a way, this New Years was probably a helpful preview of the ones to come, in which she’ll play a more and more active role.

Santa comes to Japan (along with Elmo).

We put up the Christmas tree just before the beginning of Advent [November 28th]. It wasn’t technically the first time my daughter had seen it, although I doubt she remembered it from last year (since she was not quite 8 months old at the time). She may not even remember it this time next year, who knows.

The big difference of course is that this year the tree posed a potential danger to her — or maybe vice versa. My wife and I deliberately turned the “needles” on the lower branches so that our daughter wouldn’t accidentally spike herself in the eye while crawling/stooping under the tree to grab whatever toy she had chucked underneath. Of course we also avoided ornaments, lights, and garland on the bottom layer of branches as well.

All for nought. We underestimated our daughter’s ability to balance herself on tiptoe (first time I’ve seen her do it, in fact) in order to pull ornaments down. Thankfully, all the ornaments were plastic, although a few had that cheap-o sparkle stuff on them, a few even with the words “Merry Christmas” in tiny cursive silvery sparkle script.

But no metal hooks. No hooks at all, just string-loops. My daughter even figured out how to put the loops back on the branches, within a matter of minutes (from taking the ornaments off and flinging them about the living room).

Leaving Santa. What to do about Santa?

"Advent" with Santa and chocolate?

We actually bought what was advertised (in English) as an “Advent Calender.” It was a thin package, about the size of a US legal pad, with a giant picture of Santa, covered in numbered boxes just like an Advent calendar is supposed to look. But when I opened the number 1 window on December 1st, I found nothing but a tiny piece of chocolate in the shape of a stocking. Number 2 was a piece of chocolate shaped like a tree. Number 3, a sleigh.

Not only was the “calendar” not about Advent, it wasn’t even a calendar. And even had nothing to do with Santa. I heard from a fellow graduate school classmate that all “Advent calendars” in his family in Michigan had pieces of chocolate and no biblical passages behind the windows. Begs the purpose behind an “Advent calendar” in the first place, you ask me.

At any rate, even though I don’t consider myself all that religious, I wanted somehow to preserve the special feeling that Christmas had for me as a kid. At the very least I wanted to make sure that my family spend the whole day together. The problem is that in Japan, Christmas is just another day. It’s not an official holiday, and people have to go to work or school if it’s a weekday. (Actually, I had to ask my wife to postpone her tennis lesson, scheduled Christmas morning at 9 a.m., or else she would have gone out the door just like any other Saturday.)

In the end, I got presents for my wife and daughter, wrapped them, and put them under the tree on Christmas Eve (after my daughter went to bed so that she wouldn’t be tempted to rip into them). We also got a present for my daughter from mutual Japanese friends on December 23rd (the Emperor’s Birthday, a national holiday), but I couldn’t convince my friends and wife not to open the present immediately, despite being told it was a “Christmas present.” We wound up putting the present (an Elmo doll) back into its package, to be opened again by my daughter on Christmas morning.

And from others? Nothing. No Christmas presents from relatives in Japan. I wasn’t too surprised, given that Japan is not a Christian country and therefore Christmas is just not a big deal here. It was a little depressing, though, to have a Christmas tree with so few presents under it.

On the other hand, relatives in Japan have sent my daughter gifts at random times throughout the previous year. Basically, the sense is that they saw something appropriate, thought, “Gee, I bet so-and-so might like this,” and then sent it with no wrapping.

I suppose I can see the point. Why wait until one, specific day each year to send gifts to the people you love?

Still, Santa somehow found his way to our apartment Christmas Eve, making my daughter happy to see her new Disney “car” Christmas morning. All that was missing was a present for me. (Which I got later that afternoon. My wife had simply forgotten to get gifts. Oh, well. Talk about different holiday expectations!)