Adoption in Japan Part 3: How to and Experiences

If you have personal experiences you are comfortable sharing, or are affiliated with an agency not listed, please get in touch! Likewise, if you notice a mistake in anything I have said please let me know. I am not a social worker, lawyer or in any professional capacity connected to adoption and I urge you to do your own research before pursuing adoption in Japan. You are welcome to contact me with follow up questions or of course comments, but please don't email me to ask for information that is already in this post if you'd bothered to read it! I love to hear from readers and am very happy to answer genuine questions.

Sorry for the wonky scan. Chart from Adoption in Japan: Comparing Policies for Children in Need (Routledge Contemporary Japan Series) by Peter Hayes and Toshie Habu

This post is about how to adopt a child residing in Japan when you are also residing in Japan. If you are outside Japan there are some agencies that can help you, particularly Faith International and ATW Adoptions for North Americans. I link some blogs at the end by families who have adopted a Japanese child from outside Japan, but that is not what this post is about. If you are living in Japan and wish to adopt a child from another country that is also possible, particularly through ISSJ, but also is not what I am writing about in the body of this post.

If you are considering adoption in Japan, it would be helpful to read part one, about why so many children are in orphanages in Japan, and part two, about attitudes to adoption, before reading this post.

Japan’s adoption system is to all intents and purposes unregulated. As such, prospective adoptive parents need to be extremely pro-active in ensuring that if they chose to work with a private agency rather than the public system that they select an agency with ethical practices and published financial records. There is a long history of babies and children being sold into “adoption” in Japan, just as in most countries. I’m not saying this to be off-putting. There are plenty of ethical agencies, and the public system has worked well for many non-Japanese or international prospective parents. It’s important to be realistic however, and recognise that there are some organisations who use questionable practices to obtain and select placements for children.

The Public System 

In Theory

Adoption through the local child guidance centre (CGC) is the cheapest and most straight-forward method. Interested prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) register as a foster-to-adopt family (this is separated right from the start from foster-only families) and attend some basic training. A  CGC worker will conduct a home visit and basic interview (although one couple I spoke to just submitted a floor plan of their apartment) then approve the application. When a child becomes available the PAPs will be taken to the orphanage to visit the child, then asked to make a decision. If the PAPs want to go ahead the CGC will place the child and the PAPs can apply to the family court for an adoption. There is a six month trial period during which the PAPs are paid a foster family allowance. If there have been no major problems after six months, the court will approve the adoption. Some families “foster” for longer than the minimum period, holding off applying for the adoption for months or even years and continuing to receive government payments. CGCs place children under the age of six; after six the adoption law changes and as far as I understand the situation most CGCs no longer seek families for older children.

CGCs have their own individual guidelines for approving PAPs. Some require very large living spaces, leading to complaints in Tokyo particularly that the requirements are unrealistic. Some require PAPs to have a high income or to be certain ages. Some accept single applicants while some will only consider married couples. It seems to depend entirely on your location.  You can read some stories about successful adoptions here and here, but there are many more.

My Experience

Fortified with a number of stories about wonderful CGC adoption experiences in Nagasaki, Yokohama and Osaka, we contacted ours. It didn’t go too well. At first they said they needed time to “research” how to deal with foreigners. We told them that they didn’t need to do anything differently (for Australia, expatriate adoptions have to be finalised in the country of residence before one can start anything on the Australian end anyway). They were unconvinced. Three months passed. A friend who works in an orphanage called to ask them what the hold-up was on our behalf. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but in hindsight it probably wasn’t. They eventually got back to us and said basically that they would never place a child with foreigners. So that was that. I’ve spoken with adoptive parents all over Japan, and no one else was ever treated like that. I guess it’s the drawback of living in the countryside.
Update: Since Tiger was placed with us, our local CGC has actually been incredibly helpful and supportive. When we originally contacted them they said they had many waiting Japanese families, and since a child would not be placed with us ahead of a Japanese couple, we'd never get a placement. At the time, armed with all the statistics I'd been reading about Japan's low placement rates, I assumed they were just unwilling to deal with us. There definitely was an element of that, and if we speak to someone other than our caseworker they do freak out about having to engage with "gaijin". However, after getting better acquainted we discovered that they do actually have a long list of waiting families and they place every single child who has been freed legally for adoption. We agree that without a doubt, a Japanese family should be the first choice, so in the end it was us who misjudged the CGC and not the other way around. Our skepticism was not entirely unwarranted however, since the high placement rate here was equally surprising to social workers from other prefectures we spoke to.

Private Agencies, National

There are innumerable other ways to pursue adoption in Japan. Some are national agencies, some are local, and some are obstetricians and gynecologists who dabble in adoption on the side. I can’t list them all; I’m just giving some examples here.

Wa no Kai

Wa no Kai has a philosophical commitment to giving birth mothers all the support and options it can. Adoption is not promoted to birth families in preference to other options, and support is offered for whatever choice the mother makes including assistance if she decides to raise the child herself. After surrendering her child a birth mother has three months to change her mind and ask for the child back after it has been placed, or even longer if she requests that the child not be placed with PAPs immediately. All adoptions are partially open, with letters and pictures exchanged via Wa no Kai if the birth parent/s express a desire to do so. On the PAP side, Wa no Kai does not allow any kind of preference for age, sex, race or health/ability. The financial cost is quite high, but it is a registered NPO and financial reports are published every year.

To adopt through Wa no Kai you first have to attend an orientation meeting. The cost for this is about 5,000. If you decide to proceed the next stage is an interview in Tokyo with the directors. They make a final decision then. The fees for adoption are something in the order of AUS$30,000 but I can't remember exactly. The approval process is quite straightforward and arbitrary. There is no home visit, background check or anything… they just like you or dislike you.

My Experience

In our case, they disliked us. Their website requires that PAPs be under a certain age, have been married for a certain period of time and that one parent be home full-time. We could clear those requirements, but it turned out that there was another requirement I assume they didn’t specify because they hadn’t considered it necessary; infertility. The first question they asked us was what fertility treatments we had been trying and for how long. When we said we were adopting by preference not necessity that was pretty much the end of the interview. They also seemed quite upset that we were not Christians, which was unexpected. We were apparently the first foreign couple to apply with them, but they seemed open to the idea. They were concerned about maintaining the open adoption if we moved back to Australia and about our inability to contribute to future orientations (the organisation seems to rely quite heavily on successful applicants for a support network and volunteering, which is actually one of the things we really liked about the organisation). I have no reason to think that they would refuse to deal with an infertile foreign couple and I have no hard feelings about being rejected (although we did waste quite a lot of money traveling to the orientation and then interview).

Baby Pocket

Baby Pocket is also an NPO with a strong network of adoptive families supporting one-another.  You can read blogs by Japanese families who have adopted through Baby Pocket here, here, here and here (Japanese only).

My Experience

We decided not to apply with Baby-Pocket because they required a commitment not to have biological children after adopting and that isn't a decision we have made yet. Anyway, we are ineligible based on their age requirements (both husband and wife (only married couples are considered) must be over 30 (I'm not), the husband under 46 and the wife under 43). From memory they didn't say anything specifically about international parents but one of the bloggers mentioned a Canadian family who had adopted through the agency so I am assuming there wouldn't be any particular issues.

International Social Service Japan

ISSJ specialises in inter-country adoptions and have since the 1950s. They have English-speaking staff and "ISSJ’s caring methodology is based on the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children". They will consider singles and PAPs with biological children, unlike most other agencies I researched. ISSJ is very careful to ensure that PAPs understand that their priority is the child. Their website states:

In 2008, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced its key policy of shifting social custodial care from childcare institutions to more home-like facilities as part of its effort to improve the placement ratio from foster parents. In contrast to Europe and the United States, where the placement ratios are high as around 80%, the placement ratio is currently only about 10% in Japan.

Recognizing how important it is for children to be taken care of in a more family-oriented setting, ISSJ has been conducting an “international children and families counseling service”. This service supports children in the custody of childcare institutions and for infants resulting from unplanned pregnancies. ISSJ supports intercountry adoption as a means of protecting and raising these children with new families.

ISSJ, with its motto of “Children’s happiness first”, carefully and sensitively conducts interviews with birth parents in order for their children not to be put up for intercountry adoption without prior thoughtful consideration and to support birth parents to bring up their own children if at all possible. If, under certain conditions, intercountry adoption is determined to be the best option for the child as well as the birth parents,ISSJ will endeavor to choose the best adoptive family. In the process of choosing the best family, we will determine whether the adoptive parents can accept the child according to his/her age, racial and ethnic background, any handicaps, and whether they are ready to welcome that child into their home. After all this, ISSJ will arrange a match. Throughout the entire process, we will pour our efforts into providing thorough counseling support to the birth parents who have decided to give up their child for adoption.

ISSJ also assists PAPs in Japan (Japanese and non-Japanese) with inter-country adoptions from countries other than Japan. ISSJ is affiliated with the Intercountry Adoption Board (ICAB) in the Philippines. To read about the experiences of an American couple in Japan adopting a Thai child through ISSJ click here.

My Experience

Our experiences with ISSJ have been all good. Very helpful, transparent and communicative. I'm not going to say anything more than that because we are in the middle of adopting and I am going to need a bit more perspective of time to know how much of what I say about our experience infringes on our son's right to privacy about his experiences throughout this process.

Christian Agencies

For foreigners pursuing a Japanese adoption, some of the most welcoming and experienced agencies are Christian. There is a long history of faith-based agencies sending Japanese children abroad for families. I discuss some concerns below based on both my observations and reading I've done from authoritative sources. I am extremely concerned that these concerns not be seen as an attack on all Christian agencies in Japan. I have no doubt that there are many wonderful faith-based agencies. I am not sharing more contact details because it simply isn't an avenue we researched as we are not Christian.

My Concerns and Experiences

This agency appears to have an ethical approach and do not state that they require PAPs to be Christian, so we briefly considered them. However, they state that

Japanese Children may best be served by placing them within Japan with Japanese families.

Non-Japanese children or mixed race children's needs may best be served by placing them with international families or overseas if immigration is possible.

This sounds an awful lot like "pure Japanese babies should be placed with Japanese families, mixed race babies should be sent away from Japan". They probably don't mean it like that, but that’s the feeling I got reading their website and it made me very uncomfortable. There are some pretty glaring ethical issues with the way some Christian agencies approach adoption. I'm not trying to paint all Christian agencies in Japan with one brush, just raising a note of caution. For some agencies their preferences for placement are 1: Japanese Christians 2: Non-Japanese Christians followed at a distant 3^rd by Japanese non-Christians. In other words, they will refuse to place a baby with a local family who have the wrong theology, preferring to send them into a different language, culture and country. I don’t agree with that, but it isn’t the main issue that put us off. The treatment of birth mothers is deeply problematic. Again, I have not researched every Christian agency and I am sure that there are some with impeccably ethical behaviour; but don’t assume that an agency will do the right thing just because they say they are Christian, research first.

I wish I could word that in a way that sounds less like I am generalising but since I can’t think of better wording I’ll just say again: Some Christian agencies may have all or some of these practices. That is not to condemn each and every Christian adoption agency in Japan or to say that there aren’t non-Christian agencies that also have problematic policies and priorities. 

Regional Agencies

For obvious reasons I don't have information on a lot of small local organisations, but one example from Osaka is http://home.inet-osaka.or.jp/~fureai/. They have worked with foreign/Japanese mixed families in the past and are also looking for weekend foster parents. Your local CGC should be able to give you contact details for any agencies in your area.

Gynecologists/Obstetricians Associations

I have no direct experience to call on here but Adoption in Japan describes the process of adopting through various regional medical associations. PAPs indicate their desire to adopt with their OBGGYN and if a pregnant patient indicates that she is considering adoption the association will look over their list of PAPs. These arrangements are usually conducted by word of mouth not advertising and are seen by some physicians as a natural extension of their patient care. According to Adoption in Japan, there are often more babies that PAPs in these situations because the requirements for PAPs are onerous and the costs quite high.

I mentioned in a previous post the occasional instances of practices such as registering a baby's birth to the adoptive parents not the birth parents, thereby side-stepping any actual adoption. The fact that some underhand incidents have occurred should not taken to besmirch the work of all medical associations who assist in adoption placements, particularly when those associations register as NPOs.

Experiences Others Have Shared

This lovely story is about a couple's adoption through the public system.

We visit Yuto in the orphanage for hours, days, weeks, months. Finally we can bring him home for an overnight. Then, finally, we can bring him home forever, just after his second birthday.
We go to a playground where he can see the bullet trains passing overhead. At the playground, he comes up to the other kids and wants to play with their toys, or play ball, or play with them in general. He likes to hold hands. He wants contact, touch, closeness. Because he grew up in an orphanage where everything was communal, he misses it. He has no concept of personal ownership.
The first time we give him Ai-Ai, the stuffed monkey we’d brought to take with him in the car—he tries to leave it at the orphanage. We have to convince him that he can keep it. He’s never had a single thing of his own.
 He is the opposite of other kids, who have to learn how to share. He brings his own toys to share, but the other kids don’t take much interest in them. I don’t want to try to make sense of things like this, or explain everything to him. He’ll learn. I want to cut a path in this crazy forest of life with him.  Sitting Zen. Walking Zen. Playing Zen. Mothering Zen. It’s all practice, and we have a lifetime.
But my aunt doesn’t. I want him to meet her before she dies.
So we bring him to San Francisco. He loves his seven-year-old cousin Shaviv, but he cannot pronounce Sh, so he calls him Habib. My sister tells me Habib means “friend” in Hebrew.
We see a homeless man with a cat on the street in front of Macy’s on Union Square. The cat has been hit by a car and the man needs money for its hospital bills. Everyone rushes by the man and the cat, but Yuto pulls my arm, insists on petting the cat. Then he sits down on the pavement and tries to pick up the cat to hug it. I tell him the cat is hurt and he shouldn’t touch it. So he pets it instead. Now people stop to look at the little boy sitting on the sidewalk, blocking their path. Some mothers pull their children away. A photographer stops to take a picture. Others put money in the basket. More children come to sit by his side.
Somehow, he brings together the splintered worlds of strangers. He is a healer of cats and hearts, a small wonder in this world of so many wonders. If I ever felt any doubts, I do not now.

This touching account of collecting their son from his orphanage is also by a mother who adopted through the public system.

All of Sho’s “siblings” attended his farewell party, which was held only three days after our arrival. The 2-year-old guest of honor sat in a tiny chair at the front, facing the other toddler attendees.
They sang a song for Sho in their inimitable 1-year-old way, and then everyone ate cake. Each caregiver gave him a toy or an article of clothing; these, plus similar gifts they had given him on his first birthday, were the personal possessions Sho would be taking to his new home.
He was placed front and center between his new parents, with a bouquet of flowers, for the final group photo. Later, Sho spent his last night in the communal nursery, unaware that he would probably never see any of these children again.
The next morning, Cha-chan cried as she said goodbye to Sho. Confused by her sad demeanor, Sho burst into tears. He was soon smiling again, however, as we finally began walking to the station to catch the train home.
As we stood waiting on the platform, I heard tiny voices behind us: “Sho-chan, Sho-chan, bye-bye!” We hadn’t noticed, but the caregivers and children had followed us. Despite the sweltering August heat, they were going to give us a station sendoff.
Some were standing, others were seated in baby strollers — all were pressed up to the outside fence. As the train doors closed, I held my new son up to the window. I wanted him to see the waving hands until they were completely out of sight.

This story is about staff from the US embassy adopting in Japan.

Finally, for some stories about parents who have adopted Japanese children from outside Japan, check out

http://ourjapaneseadoption.blogspot.jp/
http://www.netsato.com/2006/09/14/a-japan-adoption/
http://mrsandreas.blogspot.jp/2013/03/japan-adoption-timeline.html
http://familycech.blogspot.jp/2008/05/adopting-from-japan.html

*It is possible to adopt a child over 6, but the special adoption law 特別養子縁組 is exclusively for children aged six and younger.

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Toddlers are not the Devil

Obviously Sinners
Image by joaquin uy from Seattle (Flickr), via Wikimedia Commons

I read a blog post by an adoptive mother that upset me deeply a while ago. I've been trying to let it go but I keep coming back to think about it. She talks about her six year old child coming to “understand his own sinfulness” in the context of his questions about how he came to be adopted and what his life might have been like had he grown up in Thailand. She responded to my incredulity with the following:

If you struggle to embrace the fact that all men are sinful from birth, consider children you may know. I’m not sure if you are a parent or not but I’d venture to say you’ve experienced this…children are not taught to be sinful. We never taught our children to be selfish, or to lie or to take something that didn’t belong to them or to be disrespectful, etc. They are born ready to do those things because they have a sin nature. A one year old manifests a sin nature, just spend time with one and you will see it firsthand. It’s innate.

In other words, sin does not require action or even intention in her eyes; it is humanity’s default state… which does beg the question why we’re supposed to ask forgiveness for it. Perhaps she also asks her children to apologise to her daily for their eye-colour. It also, snarkiness aside, makes me wonder what she believes Jesus died for, if it wasn’t our sins.

Since I happen to be rather fond of babies and toddlers, and have yet to meet one I didn’t believe to be of intrinsic worth, I thought I might outline what science has to say about babies and intrinsic morality. Spoiler alert! Babies are born full of awesome. Although these findings come from numeous individual studies, I read about all of them in one book: Alison Gopnik's fabulous The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life.I'm not referencing them each individually.

Gopnik describes an absolutely charming study in which fourteen to eighteen month olds were shown two bowls, one containing goldfish crackers and the other broccoli. An experimenter ate some crackers and acted disgusted, then ate some broccoli and acted delighted. This reaction startled the babies; I mean, obviously crackers are nicer than broccoli! However, when the researcher reached out her hand and asked "Can you give me some?" the eighteen month olds gave the researcher the broccoli. Although it seemed crazy to them, they did what they thought would make the other person happy. The fourteen month olds tried to encourage the researcher to try the crackers instead.

In an experiment to determine the extend of children's ability to analyse data children were asked which animal a toy bunny was afraid of. First a zebra was introduced, and the bunny shook with fear. Then an elephant visited, and the bunny welcomed him. Finally the elephant and zebra visited together, and again the bunny shook with fear. Four year olds were not only able to deduce that the zebra was frightening the bunny but wanted to remove the zebra from the bunny's basket: "the sympathetic preschoolers were quite anxious to do so- they practically rushed in to evict the scary animal".

Gopnik sums up the morality of babies thus:

Other studies also show that these young children are genuinely altruistic. In one striking recent series of studies Felix Warneken showed the even fourteen-month-olds will try hard to help someone else. If they see an experimenter straining for a pen that is out of reach, for example, they will obligingly help him get it. In fact, they will toddle all the way across the room and clamber over a couple of cushions to get there to help. They will not only get upset when they see someone in pain, they will also try to help, petting and kissing and trying to make it better.
...
Such children not only act in a genuinely moral way, they also make genuinely moral judgements. In a groundbreaking study, Judith Smetana presented children as young as two and a half with simple, everyday scenarios. In some of the stories children broke a preschool rule- they didn't put their clothes in the cubby or they talked at naptime. In others, they caused real physical or psychological harm to another child, by hitting, teasing or stealing a snack. Smetana asked the children how bad the transgressions were, and whether they deserved punishment. But, most important, she asked whether the actions would be OK if the rules were different or if they took place at a school with different rules. Would it be OK to talk at naptime if the teachers all said so? Would it be OK to hit another child if the teachers all said so?
Even the youngest children differentiated between rules and harm. Children thought that breaking rules and causing harm were both bad, but causing harm was a lot worse. They also said that the rules could be changed or might not apply at a different school, but they insisted that causing harm would always be wrong, no matter what the rules said or where you were.
...
Poignantly, even abused children thought that hurting someone was intrinsically wrong. These children had seen their own parents cause harm, but they knew how much it hurt, and thought it was wrong.

Pages 210 to 212

I see a lot of bad people in this world. I see a lot of bad parents. I don't see a single bad baby. I will not tell my son that losing his birth family was ordained by God before the foundation of the earth or was in answer to my prayers for a child. And I sure as hell will not tell my son that he was born stained and broken and cruel.

This post contains an Amazon affiliate link. That means if you click it then buy the book I get a small commission. It does not mean that I am being paid to promote a particular product or opinion. I will only include affiliate links that are directly related to the subject of a post. If you want to know why I have begun including affiliate links you can read about it here.

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Individualised Academic Standards and Bullying

Image from the film All About Lily Chou-Chou, a wrenching story about the fluidity of roles between bully and bullied

Something that really jumped out at me when I started working in Japanese schools was this scenario:

Student A shows the teacher a long and ambitious sentence with multiple clauses. The teacher finds a single misspelling and puts a huge red cross through it. “What are you thinking?!” The teacher growls. “Pay attention! Don’t bring this half-arsed rubbish to show me!”

Student B shows the teacher a sentence along the lines of “Me likes anamal doG.” “Great!” The teacher gushes. “You worked  so hard, you’re really starting to get good at English!”

From an Australian point of view this seems like clear cut favouritism; possibly even bullying. The thing is, in Japan, chances are student A is the favourite and the teacher cares very little about advancing student B academically. It takes a bit of getting used to, but the more critical a teacher is of you, the more potential they generally seem to think you have. It isn’t only a classroom thing, either. I noticed it in naginata too. An Australian friend of mine withdrew from a Masters program in translation and interpretation after a year of unrelenting criticism and negativity from his Japanese teacher wore down his self-esteem and enthusiasm for the course. When the teacher found out he was leaving she cried and said that he was her most promising students and she had had high hopes for him. When he incredulously responded that he thought she had hated him she was dumbfounded and seemed unable to understand why he would think such a thing.

As with most things in Japanese schools, my feelings are mixed. I think holding diverse children who are maturing at different speeds and have differing levels of support at home to a single absolute standard is a fundamentally flawed practice. As the saying goes, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it I stupid.” For some children, simply putting pen to paper in another language is a huge achievement. For others, writing long sentences comes easily. I absolutely see the value in acknowledging each achievement by weighing it against the child’s potential and not an abstract standard. But. It’s me, so of course there is a but! It can easily turn into simply dismissing and writing off some students. I’ve been told that two of my current junior high third graders (grade nines) don’t need to d anything in class. At one school, the JTE said that just getting out of bed and coming to school was a big achievement for a certain girl. At another school the JTE said that quietly reading comics during class was the highest goal for a specific boy (who had been disruptive in the past). I am not questioning my teachers’ judgement here; they have insights into the kids’ lives and understand them in a way that will forever be beyond me. However, as long as I don’t pressure the kids I have been allowed give them some individual attention and I know that with a bit of support and encouragement they have the capacity to keep up with their classmates. By not giving them that extra nudge and support we are jeopardising their high school entry prospects and therefore in some sense their entire futures.

The other ‘but’ is that the “I’m cruel because I care” approach can contribute to bullying. The positive use of harsh and persistent criticism can make the recipient unsure if they are being bullied or encouraged. This becomes a problem particularly between senior and junior students. When accused of being bullies, students often counter with “I was just teaching”. The controversy in recent years over corporal punishment in schools and sports reflects this ambivalence. Relationships become complicated. Some of the deepest and most heartfelt friendships I’ve seen as an ALT have been between children I initially identified as bully and victim. This dynamic is dramatically visible on graduation day, when the bad boys of the grade~ the ones who spent the most time being yelled at in the staffroom by tag-teaming teachers~ always cry the hardest and linger the longest after the ceremony. The teachers who did the yelling often cry too. My first term as an ALT I had one teacher who seemed to have no other job than following a certain boy around and whacking him on the head with various objects whenever he was bad (which was every five minutes). On graduation day the teacher and boy were locked in a hysterically sobbing mess of an embrace that lasted so long the other teachers eventually intervened to physically pry them apart, send the boy home and sit the teacher down in the staffroom for a hot cup of tea.

The danger is, how do you know when it’s abusive? In Geisha: A Life, Mineko Iwasaki writes about her boyfriend turning up with drunken friends in the middle of the night and demanding that she cook for them all. Was this really, as she seems to have interpreted it, part of a carefully weighed strategy to help her become a better hostess, or was he a thoughtless arsehole with a sense of entitlement who took her for granted and treated her like a servant? Obviously I have my own opinion on that one, but it isn’t always so clear cut. Eryk’s recent post on bullying contains this quote:

Akiko: We tried to talk to the person being isolated when our teacher told us to do so. But she didn’t really respond to us. If she could be a bit more cooperative, like try to join in or talk to us, then I think things can get better.
Tamaki: You mean, she won’t be bullied if she changes her attitude?
Akiko: Yes, because that’s why she is being rejected…. actually it’s like she is rejecting being with us. If she wants to be a part, she’s got to change herself.

In Australia my perception was that bullies and victims are distinct categories, but in Japan the roles are fluid. It’s entirely possible that these kids genuinely wanted to become friends and were trying to “teach” their classmate how to behave. If she had responded better to their “training”, perhaps they would have gone on to be kind to her. I’m not in any way trying to ascribe pure motives to bullies. I’m simply pointing out that the cultural prevalence of put-downs as “instruction” is a huge complication in getting to the bottom of bullying issues.

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. That means if you click it then buy the book I get a small commission. It does not mean that I am being paid to promote a particular product or opinion. I will only include affiliate links that are directly related to the subject of a post. If you want to know why I have begun including affiliate links you can read about it here.

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Dazzling Brightness and High Velocity

[Sponsored Post]

Ouch

The first sunny day I donned my hat and went out to the playground with my students, I had to beat a hasty retreat to the staffroom with tears streaming from my eyes. The intense glare reflecting off the pale packed dirt rendered my hat completely useless as far as eye protection goes. For the next few years I caused much amusement among my kids by religiously wearing sunglasses. They found it hilarious, for reasons you will understand if you’ve watched much anime; sunglasses seem to be either for fashionable purposes or as a disguise, not everyday sun protection.

Athrun Zala

Totally unrecognisable body-guard

Unfortunately years of dodgeballs to the face, being dropped or sat on and in one case falling overboard into the ocean (the glasses, not me) have taken their toll on the glasses I brought over from Australia. It’s not that I have anything against Japanese sunglasses, it’s just that they all say “UV cut” and nothing else, which tells me exactly nothing about how much protection my eyes are actually getting. It’s even worse when it comes to motorcycle glasses. Australia has safety standards to rate how shatter-proof riding glasses are. There’s no point in wearing a shatter-proof helmet if inside it your eyes are being cut to ribbons by a cheap pair of regular sunnies. While I am sure one can obtain safe sports eye-wear in Japan I just don’t have the language ability to figure out what ratings to look at or what brands to trust. I’ve been suffering recently with glare while riding (as well as in the playground) and frankly driving in Japan is scary enough when I can see for me to want to attempt it squinting. 

Luckily for me, an online discount eye-wear outlet site called Smartbuyglasses not only stocks high velocity rated sunglasses in amongst the Ray-Bans and Juicy Couture but also were kind enough to give me a pair in exchange for me introducing their site. I’m not personally interested in fashion or brand names; I always bought my sunglasses from the Cancer Council in Australia. If fashion is your thing, the 50 % off price tags will probably be appealing. For me the advantages of the site are two-fold. First, I can google the models in English to get an SPF for sunglasses, and second, they have motorcycle and other sports glasses (PAINTBALL GLASSES!!!) with durability and safety ratings I can trust and understand.

The fact of the matter is, I can be a bit of a dick on the road. I follow the rules as much as I can, no one else does, and there are never any police there to protect me. Australians who complain that traffic policing is all about revenue raising, please try riding two wheels in Japan and then see how you feel. I've had lit cigarettes and cans thrown at me for daring to drive only seven or eight kilometres over the speed limit instead of twenty like everyone else. So, I have been known to take my revenge on people who overtake me dangerously by waiting until they get stopped at the next set of traffic lights, coolly and calmly making my way up to the head of the queue (legal in Japan) and then taking off at exactly the speed limit. It drives them crazy, they do another insane over-take on a blind corner, burn off into the distance, get stuck at traffic lights, rinse, repeat. I know it is evil but sometimes I just need to make myself feel better (for the record, I started doing this after having things thrown at me, it has not been the cause of any projectiles yet). After confessing this naughty habit to my dear husband he mildly suggested that I should "ride safely now that we are starting a family..." XD So, long story short, I am happy to be adding some high velocity glasses to my collection of safety gear. Thanks Smartbuyglasses.

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