The Things I Love About Japan are the Reasons Tiger Needs to Leave

I ran into an elderly neighbour at the bus stop the other day. He was on his way to a junior high school reunion. "We're in our seventies now though," he said, "so there might only be twelve or fifteen of us." My first though was how wonderful that was. Can you imagine in your seventies still being in touch with that many people from when you were thirteen?! And for most of you to still be living in the same town? I imagined them all, the 74 year olds calling the 76 year olds "sempai". The class clown will still be the one cracking jokes, the smart kid will still be the one everyone asks for advice... and there my second thought hit. These things, the things I love about Japan, are the reasons we have to get Tiger out of here. Because he was the weird kid, and so he will forever be the weird kid.
When he first came to live with us he had never been to a friend's house to play, or had a friend over. Play dates are too hard to organise if you are running an orphanage with a hundred kids, I guess. We worked on social skills intensively for a while and he's fine now, but after a few bumpy visits word got around that he was weird and kids stopped coming over to play. He'd never ridden in a car (the orphanage had a bus, of course) and raved to the other kids about these amazing buttons that made the widows open. The other kids laughed; it was like he came from another planet. First exclusion, then bullying. You wouldn't pick him from a group of "regular" kids these days, but it doesn't matter. His role has been determined. We've sent him to Scouts and he's in a sports club not affiliated with school, but neither has been the source of socialisation we'd hoped for. Everything here is centered on school life, and the scouts never hang out once the meetings are over.
School. I love love love Japanese preschools and elementary schools (junior high I feel is 80% focused on crushing kids' souls, on the other hand). I'm still learning a lot about the system, however, and one thing I am learning is that the system has no safety net for kids who are too far outside 'normal'. Our local school has been accommodating and creative, but we're at the end of the options available within the system and at this point it would be hard to describe our situation as anything other than "the system has given up on our child". It turns out not to be an uncommon situation:

Sayoko and her husband, both Japanese, are the parents of an eighth-grader with autism. The family recently returned to Japan after spending five years in the U.S. During his time abroad, their son was able to transition from special education to a mainstream classroom, where he was a straight-A student in his last year and had teachers enthusiastically recommending college in the future.
Despite this stellar record, his autism and its attendant issues with communication mean that Sayako’s son would land squarely back in the “special education” track in the Japanese system. He is currently attending international school, where is he in a mainstream classroom but receives little tangible support for his autism.
“In the Japanese system we are told that even many highly educated, ‘high-functioning’ persons with disabilities can’t get jobs, so it is better for them to attend a vocational high school and gain employment under the ‘disabled persons’ scheme,” Sayoko says, referring to the quota system that exists at big companies. “This idea is instilled into parents of children with disabilities right from elementary school. The path ahead for our son is far from clear.”

The irony of leaving Japan before we're ready because that's what the only Japanese member of our family needs is not lost on us, but that's where we are right now.

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Reunion

At the swimming pool the other day a woman approached us and asked if we remembered her. We meet so many people, I put on my fake "ohh, you..." smile and was racking my brains for what school I may have worked with her when a little girl poked her head around the woman's legs and I realised who they were. The girl was just a baby last time we saw her, one of the residents of a baby orphanage we volunteered at. Her mother visited her every weekend, usually while we were there, so we met her often. There were a few parents like that, ones who visited regularly and planned to take the kids home when they could. I didn't really understand it at the time, but having tried to figure out childcare arrangements in Japan it now makes complete, miserable sense to me. If you are a single parent you have to work. There aren't enough childcare places, even fewer will accept infants, and the cost of out of hours care makes it prohibitive for parents who may work odd hours like night shifts or split shifts. Even if you have a "9 to 5" job, the working culture here usually requires more like "8 to 8", with the overtime unpaid, of course. The orphanage, on the other hand, may cost nothing (depending on the circumstances) and allows visits that may be almost as much time as a working parent would be spending with their child anyway.
We can pause for a moment here to shudder at how deeply wrong everything about what I just said is.
It was so lovely to see that in this case, this time, it had worked out. She'd been able to maintain a bond with her daughter and bring her home. Sometimes there really are happy endings.

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Breastfeeding in Japan (the Bad)

Have boobs, have baby... NOW WHAT?!

"Are you breast feeding?" is one of the first questions I am always asked, following "how old" and either before or immediately after "boy or girl". What depresses me is been the number of women who have then continued on to say "it's best, but sadly I couldn't make enough milk." Being actually unable to produce enough milk is incredibly rare and usually linked to a medical condition, but after my experiences with medical authority figures it makes depressing sense that so many women think they couldn't. I'm actually surprised that anyone manages to successfully feed given the awful advice and out-right sabotage.

Having established breast feeding, everything has been great. Getting established, however, was a nightmare. I had very poor support during the hospital stay, and having spoken to a number of other women I think my experience was pretty normal. Here's what the nurse-midwives instructed the new mothers in the clinic where I gave birth:

1. At first, feed for only 5 minutes per breast then supplement with formula until the baby has consumed a set amount (about 60 ml per feed). Feeding longer will cause cracked nipples, and if that happens you will have to stop feeding completely until they heal.
2. Weight baby before and after each feed and supplement with formula to make up the proscribed weight.
3. Feed when the baby cries.

This is exactly the advice I would give if I wanted someone to fail to establish a breast feeding relationship and to ensure they did not produce enough milk. Seriously, I can't think of anything else to add if your objective was to ruin all chances of someone breast feeding.Not a single bit of advice on that list is correct, NOT ONE THING. Furthermore, the most important thing that new mums really do need help with, getting a good latch and position, there was no help offered for. I struggled for a month with latching problems that any nurse-midwife worth her salt should have spotted immediately, then when Cricket hadn't gained "enough" weight at his one month check the pediatrician told me to start giving formula with no attempt to help me breastfeed better, and followed this recommendation up by sending a representative from the formula company who sponsor both the pediatrician and maternity clinic to lecture me while we were trapped waiting for the checkup to finish. Yes, sponsor. Did I forget to mention that? When I was very clear that I wasn't going to give him formula she then tried to tell me I should give him barley tea! A one month old baby who is gaining weight slowly. Tea. I kid you not. Thankfully I got help from a lactation consultant who does skype appointments (thank you Blue Sky!), and she spotted the latch problem right away and within three days Cricket was gaining weight at such a rate that the pediatrician (who insisted I go back the following week to make sure I wasn't killing the baby with my crazy tea-refusing ways) said with a big smile "so, you started using formula then?"

It all ended happily here, but I'm furious everytime I think about all the women who want to breast feed, and carefully follow the advice of the people they trust to tell them how they should do it, and then feel that they have failed because they aren't producing enough milk.

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Breastfeeding in Japan (the Good)

Sakura and Breastfeeding

 This disclaimer applies to everything I ever write, really, but I'm going to make a special point of restating it here~ these are my experiences, and do not necessarily reflect the situation for others or in other parts of Japan. With breastfeeding in particular, I think my experiences in a rural area with a relatively high birthrate may be very different to the situation a tourist may encounter in Tokyo, for example.

Cricket is fast approaching three months old. In that time I have nursed him on a train, in several parks, in an onsen, in a PTA meeting and during a Buddhist service in a 450 year old temple. Not only have I had no problems whatsoever, if he gets the least bit restless when I am out with him I can guarantee that within a few seconds an old lady will appear with one hand squeezing my breast and telling me to hurry up and get it into the baby quick-snap! Everyone I have encountered has had a very positive attitude towards breastfeeding, and the facilities available just about everywhere are fantastic:

One of several small "private" feeding rooms in a department store. The pillow is provided.

A nursing lounge in the same department store. This one has room for a pram and picture books for older children to read while waiting for their younger sibling to finish nursing. There are twice-weekly lactation classes offered here for free.

Although the best baby care facilities seem to be on the kids' stuff floor of department stores, all major shops or government offices have them. Even the garage where we had our brakes done recently had a big comfy nursing lounge. The other thing I am really loving about the baby care facilities in Japan is that they are offered to men, as well. Men's toilets come with changing tables, there is always a gender free toilet with a changing table too, and some large department stores have "daddy care" and "mummy care" rooms. In the mummy rooms you can breastfeed freely, while I guess the advantage of the daddy care rooms is that guys don't need to feel as self-conscious (on one occasion when I met a dad by himself in a baby care room he was quickly mobbed by curious mums who wanted to check out his diaper changing technique and tell him how great he was, which I am guessing would get old very quickly).

Lovely clean changing tables and nappy vending machines

Feeding chairs for toddlers, hot water and microwave, and pamphlets on various services for young families

In terms of social acceptance, facilities and general ease, I think Japan is awesome for breastfeeding. Getting established in the first week after birth was another story though, and I'll write about that in part 2.

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Murderers Just Don't Say Good Morning

A man in Osaka murdered his neighbor this morning, killing her in front of her one year old son. The media pack which assembled immediately began interviewing the other residents of the apartment building about the nature of the murderer~ "I hear he didn't give set greetings (aisatsu)," a reporter asked, "is that so?" "Yes!" The neighbor replied. "He never returned greetings."

In 2005 I was having dinner with a professor of law who taught at a prestigious university. He was telling me about a case with a particularly violent offender. During interviews with the man's family it turned out that his mother had never said "welcome home" (okaeri). "No wonder he became a criminal" my acquaintance exclaimed vehemently, "he never learned the most basic thing about living in society!"

In 2011 I was teaching at a junior high school in a low socio-economic status area with a number of pretty troubled students. There was violence, teen pregnancy, kids cracking open beers on the front steps of the school, that sort of thing. The principal made a speech to the assembled student body about how if they just worked on their greetings, their lives would change for the better.

These experiences are why, when I started watching the TV drama "あいしてる” and a kid came home from school without saying "I'm home" (tadaima) I knew he was going to get into serious trouble. Sure enough, episode two and he'd smashed another kid's head in.

Aisatsu, guys. Don't mess with the greetings.

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