Tokyo Medical University Scandal and a Broken Social Contract

Image from https://twitter.com/BFJNews/status/1026697347856838656

Even if you don’t usually follow Japanese news, you’ll have no doubt read about the Tokyo Medical University scandal by now. In summary, women were outperforming men on the entrance examination, so the university began docking the scores of all female applicants in order to maintain a male majority in both the program and in the profession. The sexism of all this has quite rightly attracted indignation from around the world. However, I haven’t yet seen anything insightful written about the further ramifications of entrance exam tampering. Not only were all women’s scores reduced, but the scores of some male candidates were inflated in exchange for (or the anticipation of) monetary donations from their parents. Men who had failed the test and returned to try again the following year had their scores decreased.

Sexism is par for the course in Japan, sadly. I think if the case only involved women facing higher hurdles to enter medicine the outrage would blow over fairly quickly. What will not blow over is the knowledge that entrance examinations are not the objective measure the social contract requires them to be. That is earth shattering.

In order to pass entrance examinations, children and young people attend cram schools (juku) or other forms of tutoring. It’s a sector worth tens of billions of US dollars. Families make enormous sacrifices to pay for it. A teacher I worked with estimated that it cost her about US$400,000 to get her son through the exams for a mid-level university (starting from elementary school). When I went to register my pregnancy at city hall I was given an information booklet about creating a savings plan for the foetus’s juku. Family life (and size) is organised around juku. Most middle-class Japanese kids don’t do chores. Their job is to study, and the family does what it has to do in order to support that. It’s kind of the foundation of the later stages of childhood.

Because if you pass the exam to get into a good school and then a good university, you’re set for life.

That’s the deal. That’s the social contract.

Now we know that has been broken.

In some ways, it was the last really strong contract that was left. It used to be, you got a job with a company and you’d be employed for life. You spent all your time working, and moved all over the country away from you family at a week’s notice, but you endured that because you were safe for life. That deal is gone. The top end of the contract was broken and we’ve had decades of upheaval and national soul searching about it.

The bottom end of the same ladder was still strong though, we thought. You might not be employed for life, but if you study hard you can pass the exam. Pass the exam and your status as a graduate from a good school means you will get the best of the jobs that are out there.

The whole ladder is gone now.

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Shower Slugs

2015 was the worst year for mould yet. Dealing with a little baby and the mould during rainy season was a nightmare, and I was desperate for anything to help. I commented to my sister that it would be great if there were something like aquarium snails that would just hand out in the bathroom eating the mould for me, and she said "maybe there is" and immediately googled this. It sounded good, so we went out to the garden and collected some slugs.

I had bought this mini flower pot as a hide for Tiger's pet snails.

There was plenty of mould for them to feast on :/

They only really took to the grouting, but that's OK, it's the hardest part to clean anyway.

The difference between the slugged side and the not slugged side is pretty amazing. Also amazing: a "gluten free" label on BUBBLE BATH. For all the people with Celiac disease who like to drink soap, I presume.

Sadly the experiment had to be cut short because we had so many textiles go mouldy that the bath had to be used to soak them in very unfriendly solutions for a few weeks so the slugs were evacuated back to the garden. One eventually found its own way back though. It made a little home under a shampoo bottle and sneaks out to help with the cleaning at a leisurely pace.

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I didn't fight the law, and the law won.

Chikako Kobayashi shared this image to facebook
Left, from top: Asahi, Mainichi, and Tokyo newspapers Right, from top: Yomiuri, Sankei, and Nikkei newspapers

You probably saw images from the August 1st protests in Tokyo (unless, of course, you read Japan’s more pro-government papers, which had strikingly different front pages the next day). It was actually a national day of action, and Tiger had wanted to attend our local protest. After a very upsetting “peace education” experience last year (he came home having learned that Japan was just sitting around peacefully minding its own business when America suddenly dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, and therefore Japan should kill all Americans. None of which was specifically said by his teacher, but she didn’t interject when children made these statements in presentations to the class) we talked a lot about war. We talked about what happened in Okinawa, in particular, and about how the people who decide to start wars are rarely the ones who actually suffer and die in them. He got very excited about signing a petition against constitutional revision, and then wanted to attend the rally as well. I was very happy to take him, until…

Until I heard about the intimidation and harassment of protesters at previous rallies. I work at a university, and I hear things that aren’t getting reported on the nightly news or discussed in the newspapers. Students talk about police photographing them at rallies, then calling their parents: “Did you know your child was creating a public nuisance? Who is paying for their education? Is this the lifestyle you planned to fund?” Others had their landlord called by police as part of “routine inquiries”: “Do many radicals gather at the building you own? Do you rent to any foreigners? Do you know if political meetings are being held on your premises?”

My visa was up for renewal two days after the protest. As a foreigner, attending a political rally is a valid reason for my visa renewal to be refused. I thought about the consequences if it was declined before we had a valid visa to take Tiger to Australia. In fact, I was even cautious about publishing this post, which is why it is appearing so late. I told him that we couldn’t go to the protest. This is, of course, the exact response the intimidation aims to elicit. Every person who attended was risking something. A promotion, their living allowance, getting into the university of their choice, something important. That might be hard to grasp for readers for whom political engagement is a natural part of democracy, but it’s just the reality in “democratic” Japan. Yet, tens of thousands took the risk.

Meanwhile:

http://www.japan-press.co.jp/modules/news/index.php?id=8616

The Education Ministry on October 5 announced its plan to issue a notice putting restrictions on high school students’ political activities as a measure to respond to the implementation of the 18-year-old suffrage.

The planned notice will impose a ban or restrictions on political activities which senior high school students are engaged in outside of school. Students will be prohibited or constrained from demonstrating in political movements within school-bounds even on holidays and after school. In addition, any such action will not also be allowed in student councils and school club activities.

This notice will not only cause students to hesitate to take part in political activities, but also restrain students from even thinking about and discussing political matters.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-20/japan-dumbs-down-its-universities-at-the-wrong-time

Essentially, Japan’s government just ordered all of the country’s public universities to end education in the social sciences, the humanities and law.

https://www.rt.com/news/317653-japan-number-law-privacy/

A controversial new Japanese personal identification system came into effect on Monday. My Number IDs will unite personal tax information, social security and disaster relief benefits, but critics worry about possible leaks and invasions of privacy.
...
Protester Hitoshi Ogawa said he is concerned My Number might be abused by the government to collect the most sensitive details of citizens’ lives, from health records to political ideology.

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Creepers and Life Lessons Learned at the Pokemon Store

A Pokemon store opened a couple of months ago in our little backwater, and Tiger has been dying to visit. First I put him off until the summer holidays, then until payday, then just a few more days, then eventually yesterday I promised we'd go after some running around we had to do in town. It was 33 degrees, the chores took forever, we ran out of time to go before his gymnastics lesson but I promised ABSOLUTELY after gymnastics. He was incredibly patient and good about it, and when we finally made our way towards the shopping center he was literally jumping with excitement. As we searched around in the maze of new shops for the Pokemon store I noticed a British guy trying to engage passing school girls in conversation using loud, aggressive-sounding English. "What a creep" I thought, but having the kids in tow I didn't want to start anything so I just ignored him. He noticed us, however, and followed after us yelling "HELLOOOO" at the top of his lungs. I tried to ignore him, but he ran ahead and then blocked our path and began a rambling and largely incoherent conversation about how we didn't know each other but our friends had probably met each other so we should be friends. He reeked of booze. He was being friendly enough but he was swaying and touching me and the baby and kept poking his finger into the baby's face saying "beautiful eyes, beautiful blue eyes" and I was terrified he was actually going to stick a finger in those eyes. I tried to extract us from the situation in the usual ways, but he continued to follow us, block our path an get in our personal space. I took the kids to the toilet and we hid there. Poor Tiger, after his long wait he was close enough to smell Pikachu and some jerk was ruining it for him. We checked a couple of times but the creeper was lurking, waiting for us. I spent thirty minutes in the toilets with an increasingly upset Tiger before eventually calling the husband to come and get us. He came in a hurry and parked in a spot we couldn't use for long, so in the end our poor little boy got a five minute run around the store and a frustrated promise that we'd come back another day. For us, it was a scary situation with a stalker. For the creeper, he probably saw it as a friendly encounter.
As we hid in the toilet Tiger ran through our options.
"Get angry and tell him to leave us alone?"
"He'll say 'why are you being like that, I'm just being friendly' and then he'll still follow us around but he'll be angry and yell at us a lot."
"Ignore him and tell him we're in a hurry?"
"He'll just follow us into the shop."
"Ask the staff for help?"
"It'll turn into a big scene and we'll be dragged into it."*
As we ran through each scenario I realised that what I was relating to Tiger were not hypothetical outcomes but rather the results of years of my own experimentation with dealing with street harassment. I've tried every variation imaginable to extricate myself from drunks, creepers and perverts and I am well aware of the dangers inherent in each one. The safest course, in my experience, has always been to avoid confrontation. In the end though, this leaves the creepers blissfully unaware of the havoc they cause.

Clementine Ford wrote recently about an experience at a restaurant in which the owner stuck his fingers into her friend's meal:

He acted like I was being incredible tedious and said that I didn't understand that this was a "fun" place and that it wasn't a big deal. (Yeah, because it's always so "fun" when someone puts their fingers where they're not wanted.) I pushed the point and he grudgingly said that he would get a new meal for my friend (who also said to him explicitly, "I need you to know that I wasn't okay with that.")
He then returned to the table and further tried to press his point. That I didn't "get it", that no one else ever has a problem with that kind of behaviour, that I was being difficult and "fucking unreasonable". At that point, we stood up to get our money refunded and he followed us to the bar and actually tried to stop the bar staff from refunding our money....
We got our refund and then as I turned to leave, the owner said "fuck off, you cunt". 

This is what happens when you tell creepers they are being creepy. They get aggressive, insist you are misunderstanding them and in my (extensive~ I was barely eleven the first time an adult man on the street commented on my breasts) experience they often follow it up with physical intimidation and violence to drive home the point that they are a nice guy and you are just a fucking ungrateful lesbian bitch. Much as I would have loved Tiger to see me standing my ground, when you have a four month old baby strapped to your chest facing into danger just isn't the right thing to do. It wasn't the right thing to do when I was trying to get the bus home after work when I was sixteen and alone either. The more I think about it the angrier I feel that I'm sitting here feeling guilty for letting the guy get away with it as though his behaviour is my responsibility to stop... but then, that's always how we treat these things, isn't it? Jill should have worn sensible shoes. I say "creepers" because that's how I think of them, but even my dad does the same thing. My parents had a high school student do a home stay and my father made a joke about her electric toothbrush doing double duty as a vibrator. She asked me to help her deal with it. When I told my parents it had made the girl uncomfortable the usual happened. He wasn't a creep, it was just a joke, she was over-reacting. I patiently tried to explain that maybe her feeling uncomfortable was a good enough reason to avoid such conversations whether or not HE thought they were creepy but no, it just didn't compute. Then my mother, who as so many women do staunchly supports a patriarchal social order, jumped in with "well she clearly provokes such comments and young girls all secretly love attention from older men." In frustration I ended up snapping at them both: "she's a CHILD and she is in YOUR CARE, get over yourselves!" They sulked with me for quite some time.
Anyway, to look on the bright side, when I need to talk to Tiger about these issues we now have a convenient short-hand: "Don't be the guy at the Pokemon store."

*This being Japan, we would have been implicated by our shared foreignness. I doubt the guy spoke Japanese so I would probably have been dragging in to interpret. The staff would have freaked out and the whole situation then called the police. The police require ID and statements from anyone "involved" in an incident... a friend was fingerprinted and had her mug shot taken when she reported being the victim of a mugging. I doubt they would have accepted that I didn't know the guy and I felt it would have made the situation worse for us.

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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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"Volunteering"

One of many weekend events I worked without pay as an ALT

 I've been volunteering since I was twelve. It's something that is important to me and that I enjoy. I was eager to continue volunteering when we moved to Japan and had my first opportunity just a month after we arrived, at a residential school/treatment center for troubled kids. Next came the orphanages, and they became something closer to an obsession than a volunteering opportunity. When I mentioned my volunteer work at my paid work (I was an ALT at the time) I was taken aback at some of the responses. Teachers commented that they also did a lot of volunteering... maintaining the school grounds or coaching school sports teams. Neither of those activities was actually voluntary, it was required of all teachers. They were simply expected to do it as unpaid overtime, and this was called volunteering. That goes against everything that makes volunteering meaningful to me, and I was frustrated at the comparison. Being exploited by your boss is not the same thing! Yet, I began to participate in more and more of these weird exactly-like-your-day-job-but-unpaid "volunteer" activities. I did weekend workshops, day-camps, over night camps, after work speech contest practice, texting lesson plans to teachers on Sundays... I was always happy to help out because I adored my students and I genuinely enjoyed the extra time outside of the classroom, but the extra time away from home became a real strain, especially once we had two puppies to care for. The kids were always happy to see me, but there was little acknowledgment from the adults that I was sacrificing my family time to be there. It was always treated as though I were merely complying with expectations, because that is what all the teachers were doing. In one particularly outrageous case I was told I should take paid leave on a day when I had been asked to help run a workshop because it didn't fall within my job description and therefore should be done on my own time. I stopped working as an ALT a year ago, but just yesterday I was asked if I could return to some of my duties on a volunteer basis. It used to really blow my mind, but having crossed over to the other side and looking now as a parent, I can see that it isn't only schools. Enforced "volunteering" is everywhere.

I was told I had to "volunteer" for one PTA activity a year, and hold a year long PTA committee position once per child I have in school. Cub Scouts require parents to "volunteer" at least four times a year. When I signed Tiger up to join the fire festival I didn't realise that every single parent was required to "volunteer" at the festival. Being childless doesn't get you out of it, either. The neighborhood associate requires regular "volunteering" for things like street cleaning and hedge trimming. This year it is our turn to act as the 班長 (hancho), meaning we are the representatives for our "block" of 19 houses. I have to attend meetings, distribute junk mail from the city council twice a month, collect fees, dance in the neighbourhood Bon Odori, run in the neighbourhood sports festival, turn up to the meeting hall at 6 am to clean it, weed the nature strips and more. I'm going to write more about this because I think there are some really good points to having an active community, but my experience so far has made me really wonder what my city taxes pay for. As far as I can see, everything is delegated to "volunteers" from the neighbourhood association. There's no real point to this post other than me complaining and sharing an aspect of Japanese culture that short term visitors may not encounter, so I'm going to close with a Japan Times article on the neighbourhood association system.


On the origins of the system:

“Chōnaikai actually started with Hideyoshi Toyotomi (1537-98), and they were originally called gonin-gumi (five-person associations). Their purpose was social control. If any member spoke a word against Hideyoshi, all five members were executed. This helps explain why, even today, Japanese are afraid to speak out (against authority).”
The Japanese Wikipedia page traces the origins of chōnaikai to 1937, whereas the English page pushes the start back a bit further to the Meiji Restoration of 1868. While omitting these apparently darker roots, these sources, along with what’s taught in many Japanese elementary schools, highlight the World War II variation, tonari-gumi, or “next-door groups.” Contrary to the pleasant-sounding name, tonari-gumi served as a highly effective spy network to root out war dissenters, who were likely to be subsequently tortured and imprisoned for their views. It was probably for those reasons that occupying U.S. forces outlawed chōnaikai until the Treaty of San Francisco was signed in 1951, returning sovereignty to the Japanese.
“The government still wants to keep chōnaikai for the same reason,” Ueda says. “If ever there’s a war, chōnaikai will prove invaluable.”

 Use by the local government:

The government supports chōnaikai in subtle ways. For example, they have members perform duties, like maintaining parks, that should be covered by tax money. The amount the government pays the chōnaikai is low: Ueda reports city hall paying only ¥120 per person per year for maintaining a park. The irony, he says, is that members in turn are expected to buy insurance for ¥165 in case they get injured while doing public works. “The government uses Japanese as a cheap labor force — almost slavery.”

Tiger's on summer holidays right now, so posts may be few and far between. Thank you for your patience :)

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Rainy Season 梅雨

The shades of green become vibrant to the point of seeming surreal during rainy season

My first and second rainy seasons were an experience of awe. Silly though it sounds, I had no idea so much water could fall from the sky. I know theoretically that Australia is the driest inhabited continent and that not raining for seven years at a time isn't exactly normal, but theory and experience are worlds apart. I took literally hours of video of rain falling (see a small sample below). It was all new and amazing.

Then, the magic wore off. I read a short sci fi story once (unfortunately I don't remember the title or the author) about explorers on a planet where it rains constantly. They go gradually insane, unable to ever get completely dry or avoid the sound of dripping. That's basically what rainy season is like, but add in everything growing mold and mushrooms. Wear a pair of shoes, put them away, take them out two days later and they are green and furry. Forget your sandwich on the counter for an hour? Don't even think about eating that bad boy. I mean it. Food poisoning spikes nation wide in June.

I seriously thought about quitting my job and leaving Japan during rainy season two years ago. My hatred of the season progressed to irrational levels of anger: why doesn't someone DO SOMETHING about this STUPID WEATHER?! It didn't help that I was being forced to cycle to work because of a very stupid policy. No matter how many layers of rain suiting I wore, I'd arrive soaked every day and developed a perpetual smell of damp dog from my steaming, damp, dog hair speckled clothing. I feared for my life every time a truck drove by spraying me with water and leaving me blinded and shaky. I started to go mad. Then one of my co-workers started cycling to work in his swim suit, his work clothes in a waterproof back pack. "I get soaked no matter what" he explained, I may as well keep cool and not have to carry wet things around. Somehow, that made everything better.

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Eating Rice Weevils 米食べる虫を食べること

Image by Swamysk

Periodically we get weevil infestations. We have a lot of grains in the house, and despite allegedly "airtight" containers, zip lock bags, dried chilis, bay leaves and every other idea we have heard of, they still manage to get through. The past few months have been busy so we've been eating a lot of fast easy foods like pasta instead of putting more time into cooking. I pulled out some quinoa flakes the other day to mix into my porridge (I think that's oatmeal in American?) and noticed the tell-tale cobwebbing. Sure enough, the rice, cornmeal, quinoa, instant mashed potato, cous cous, flour and even some of our spices are all infected. At the moment they are larvae, not full-fledged weevils:

Image by Kyopia

 Since we absolutely do not have the money to just throw away that much food, most of it imported, I suggested microwaving or freezing it to kill the larvae then eating it all anyway. This completely freaked out my darling husband, which I found quite interesting... I am (otherwise) a vegetarian while he eats meat. It seems hilarious that he would get squeamish about eating these tiny insects while I, a fourth-generation vegetarian, thought it was the obvious way to go. Don't get me wrong, I think it is gross, but they are going to die either way (if we threw everything away they'd end up incinerated) and after all, insect larvae are an environmentally friendly source of dense protein. Unswayed by my logic, the man has sworn off all grains until the infected batches are safely out of the house.
In the meantime, he refuses to watch me eating my porridge. 

Tastes better with berries.

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Working Mothers, Childcare and Limited Choices

Image by Magdalena Roeseler

Two events this weekend prompted these thoughts. On Saturday I attended a manga research symposium and the post-function dinner and spoke to several women who are career academics about gender issues in Japan. Sunday was my first mothers’ day. 

  

I recently shared Ken’s post on ‘who wears the pants in Japan’, and the content of some of my conversations reflected this perspective. We talked about female friends who had quit their jobs after marriage and how easy their lives were compared to our male friends’ situations. The guys work until late at night every day, while their wives enjoy hobbies and leisurely lunches at fashionable cafés with their friends. This is, of course, a highly classed perspective. Many women in lower income families are simultaneously responsible for 100% of house work and child care but also have to work because their partners’ income is not enough to live on. But among university educated women, this apparently spoiled existence seems common. The novelty probably wears off… at a cub-scout meeting recently a mother told me that after she finishes the housework she just sits alone and wonders what to do with herself. “What do you DO all day?” She asked me, looking a little desperate. Amid all sorts of moral panics about “herbivoremen” and NEETs, freeters and other apparently abhorrent versions of masculinity, few commentators ever mention that perhaps the whole system is just deeply unappealing to many young men. Sure, they may get a nice home they don’t have to take care of, but I’d feel pretty upset if I worked myself to death supporting a partner whose life seemed so much more fulfilling than mine. At a different dinner with a group of women in their sixties I was  saddened to hear them discussing encouraging their husbands to take up golf so that they could get them out of the house all day on Sundays (many Japanese people work six day weeks). “If he’s home I can’t relax” one said, as her friends nodded in agreement, “and I have to cook a full lunch for him. If it’s just me I snack on toast or go to a café.” Retired husbands are sometimes referred to as sodaigomi, over-sized garbage. There is even a name for the psychological distress wives experience when their husbands retire.

Before this starts sounding like some kind of praise for how great a gender segregated work culture is for women, let me elaborate on how this really is not a choice for women. One of the academics I was talking to had completed her PhD in Australia and we were talking about how abnormal it would be for a women in Australia to quit her job because she got married. “In Japan we can choose” she proudly said. She is single, so I can see why it seems that way to her, but when I began explaining the barriers to mothers working in Japan her jaw dropped. Even though I work just three days a week and my son is in school, I have found it extraordinarily frustrating.  If I had a pre-school aged child, I just wouldn’t work unless I had to. The majority of Japanese women I know who take their careers seriously are single and childless.

Maternity leave and day care are out of reach for many women.

According to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, 24,825 children across Japan were on waiting lists for authorized nurseries in 2012.
Yet a survey by Hoikuen wo Kangaeru Oyano kai (roughly translated as parents looking into day care group) led by Aki Fukoin, who has been dealing with this issue since the 1980s, found that 55,222 children in 70 municipalities were waiting to be placed in authorized day care centers last year.
The gap reflects how the government defines “children on the waiting list.” The government figure does not count children whose parents declined admission from day care centers that were not of their choosing, or children who were accepted by unauthorized day care facilities that receive government subsidies.

The article continues

Experts cite several reasons behind the shortage of facilities. First, municipalities are generally reluctant to spend money on setting up more nurseries when the increase in senior citizens outpaces that of newborns.
In addition, despite deregulation in 2000 that allowed private companies and nonprofit groups to offer day care services, entering the market has actually been difficult because established facilities want to protect their turf.
“The Social Welfare Corporation (the main provider of authorized day care centers) opposed private operators from entering the market and colluded with local politicians to ensure their applications were rejected,” said Hiromi Yamaguchi, CEO of JP Holdings, the largest private operator of day care facilities.
Thus out of 23,711 government-authorized day care facilities, only 1 percent are currently run by private companies, welfare ministry figures show. But with Abe encouraging municipalities to authorize more company-run day care centers, things may change, Yamaguchi said.

Entering school doesn't aliviate the problems, either. Although either I or my partner are home by the end of the school day most days, we have still gone through a huge amount of hassle in the past month because the school keeps randomly sending our son home early, with sometimes only one day's notice. First we had two weeks of him coming home after lunch because of "home visits" by teachers (all of which were completed in three days, incidentally). Then there were some staff meeting and workshops that couldn't possibly have been held after 3, so again, all the kids were sent home after lunch. On Friday we get a notice listing the next week's return times, so if Monday is a short day I don't even have a single business day's notice to try and organise some kind of care. After burning through leave at a rate of knots, we looked into our school's after school care program. LOL. It's expensive, very few adults are supervising a huge number of kids many of whom have special needs, and there is a waiting list so long we didn't bother registering (thereby contributing to unreliable statistics on waiting lists...)

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/03/17/reference/after-school-clubs-falling-short-as-more-moms-work/#.U3AduVdIoxE

Many working mothers have had to give up their jobs just because they can’t secure spots for their children at such facilities. The problem has become so acute that there is now a term describing difficulties confronting working mothers with first-graders: “shoichi no kabe” (the hurdle of the first grade).
Even students who are fortunate enough to gain admittance to an after-school club benefit for only a limited time. Many clubs — particularly the traditional, publicly funded ones — accept students only through the third grade, meaning that older children often have nowhere to go after school. Many end up staying home alone, often with a TV or computer games as their only companions.
Concern for such kids has recently given rise to another term: “shoyon no kabe,” or the hurdle of the fourth grade.

The article continues:

A survey by the liaison council suggests that the actual number of children on waiting lists might be between 400,000 and 500,000, many more than are officially recognized.
“Of all the working mothers with first- to third-grade children, almost 70 percent of them work over six hours a day, which is considered full time. There are 1.32 million children whose mothers work full time,” said Yutaka Sanada, deputy secretary-general of the council.
“Only 880,000 of those students belong to gakudo clubs, which means that the rest — about 400,000 students — don’t have anyone to look after them after school.”

So what about women who, despite all the hurdles, persist in getting back to work? They face continued discrimination at work and may be labeled devil wives with no shame by wider society:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-01/japan-s-devil-wife-leads-motherhood-work-balance-tussle

“It was like a weekend marriage,” Suzuki, 45, who works at a Japanese telecommunications company, said of the arrangement started 14 years ago. “I had a satisfying job and really wanted to go back to it. In Japanese society, when a woman chooses work instead of staying at home to look after her husband, she’s called a devil wife.”

http://japandailypress.com/citizens-outraged-over-politicians-criticism-of-mothers-calling-for-more-day-care-0124271

Tanaka, 37, said in his post that while “woman power” is necessary to revitalize the economy, he thought that the mothers “had no touch of reserve nor shame.” “What I am saying is don’t force your child-rearing on society from the start. . . . (The mothers) should have the manners enough to say ‘Please help us raise our children,’ ” Tanaka added on his blog, adding that he was not married and had no kids.
A multitude of angry comments flooded the blog, with people expressing sentiments like not wanting to raise their children in a district with a representative like Tanaka and that it is because of people like him that Japan has a low birthrate. Tanaka was not available for comment.

More on the protests by Tokyo mothers at Japan Probe:

The reporters visit the house of a woman who lives in Itabashi ward of Tokyo. She gave birth to a baby a year and one month ago, and was planning to return to full-time work. Unfortunately, she was unable to find a nursery for her child. She applied for five places, and they all turned her down because they were full. Because her maternity leave only lasts until April, she will be forced to abandon her job.
Government-run nursery schools have pretty strict entry requirements. Because of a shortage of such facilities, they give preference to people in the worst financial circumstances. The woman they interview says she has heard about some couples getting divorced so they could have a better chance at passing the entry screening.

For some reason I can't embed it, but this is an interesting clip from a documentary titled "Mothers' Way, Daughters' Choice".


Despite constant talk from politicians and media about the need to both increase women's participation in the workforce and to get the birth rate up to try and do something about the aging population, nothing really changes. On the surface I have a certain amount of envy for women who seem to enjoy such carefree, unburdened lives without ever having to go to work, but it is delusional to see this as a choice. Choice only exists when the odds are not heavily stacked in favour of one option to the exclusion of others.

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Mountain Sakura and Shedding Shiba

I've written before about the horrors of the DREADED SHIBA SHED. Something new I noticed after we moved out to the 'burbs is how similar Hayate's blowing coat looks to the mountinas in spring when the mountain sakura (山桜) are in bloom. Although Hayate is black, his winter undercoat is white.

As he begins to shed, the wooly under-layer it pokes through in clumps that look weirdly similar to the pink and white blossoms poking out between the green leaves of the other mountain trees. In case you don't see what I mean immediately, here is an unnecessarily large number of photos...

Fancy paws.

 

It isn't only the sakura, either. Our area is fameous for wisteria and it blooms wild in the mountains surrounding the farming area to the south of the mountains. It's too early now, but late April and early May, purple and pink blooms poke out between the green. 

Since Kuri is "brown" (she's red, really) she doesn't look quite as much like a mountain but I feel bad leaving her out... and her shedding is just as plentiful as Hayate's. This came out just from a quick pat.

At least at this time of year it is easy to see where they dogs have been spending their time!

 If you blog about, or from, Japan, don't forget to join up with the up-coming J-Bloggers' Carnival!

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A New Perspective on Gaijinhood

I accidentally joined a cult the other day. I'll write about that some other time... anyway, the reason I mention it is that during the cult meeting, I had one of those all-too-familiar "talk through the gaijin" experiences. If you've lived in Japan for any amount of time you will no doubt know what I mean. Here's an example from a Cub Scout parents and leaders drinking party a few months ago.

I chatted to one of the other mums for a while, then we grabbed our beer bottles and proceeded around the room to pour drinks for other people (that's how socialising happens at these things). Each person we approached did exactly the same thing: Ask the Japanese lady questions about me. As in, "where is she from?" "Can she speak Japanese?" "How long has she been here?" When I was new to life here I used to try to answer these questions and the conversations just went like this:

"Where is she from?"
"I'm from Australia."
[Ignoring me and continuing to ask the Japanese person next to me:] "Can she speak Japanese?"
"I'm talking to you in Japanese right now."
[Still ignoring me:] "How long has she been here?"

So, eventually I gave up and just smiled mutely while taking advantage of the free time to drink more. Japan has not been good for my liver. Anyhow, on this occasion it was kind of nice watching the other Cub Scout mum getting more and more irritated as the same conversation repeated over and over. A little sadistic, maybe, but I felt glad to see her frustration instead of having to explain mine to her.

So, back to the cult. The Japanese lady sitting beside me kept having questions directed to her instead of me, and I was sighing internally. Then the main culprit, an elegant old lady with immaculate silver hair, began talking about how hard dealing with school must be for me as a "gaijin". I wouldn't understand the system, or the requirements, or what to buy for my child. I must be having a really hard time. In fact, there have been quite a few things that have been hard. I am fortunate to have worked in the local elementary school system for four years, and that's got me through pretty well, but I still get completely flummoxed from time to time by things that the staff take so for granted that it just hasn't occurred to them to inform me of. So although what this lady was saying was to some extent true, it isn't necessarily true that just because I am a 外人 I'd struggle. I mean, there are lots of international parents in Japan who speak native level Japanese and never seem to find anything hard. I was sitting there raging in my heart and twitching to lash out when the lady continued:

"When I first moved here from Korea I had to enroll the children in school immediately, and I had no idea how to do anything. Every day I got something wrong and my children were teased at school because of my mistakes. Japanese people often don't understand how hard it can be for gaijin parents here."

And there it was. Her surname was Japanese and she spoke our local dialect, so I'd assumed that she was yet another Japanese person othering me and making assumptions about me. In fact, she was empathising and remembering her own difficulties as an outsider. It was me who had leaped to judge her, not the other way around. I was so wrapped up in memories of past frustrations that I hadn't seen the kindness she was offering me. When the meeting finished she squeezed my hand.
"It'll be alright," she said, "your child has a family and love. Everything else is just decorating."

A few days later, I was playing with Tiger in a park while a steady stream of school kids walked by on their way home. A little girl, about 10 or 11, saw us from the road and yelled "gaijin!" She came running over to us and collapsed in a smiling puffed out heap in front of me.
"You are a gaijin, right? You look like a gaijin."
"Yes", I said, "I'm from Australia."
"I'm a gaijin too! I'm from China, but I've lived here since I was in kindergarten. Bye!" And off she ran, back to her waiting friends.

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