In which we eat, drink, and be merry

So the Japanese school year starts in April, and that means the kids are back to school. So, of course, that means more filling out forms. For example...

No.

That's enough about filling out forms for now. If you read my past blog posts you might get the impression that all we do here is fill out forms and angst about the Japanese school system. In fact, although it's hard to completely get rid of that underlying feeling of being out of place that comes with living in a foreign country, for the most part we've had a lot of fun and have really enjoyed ourselves. There have been many times when we've had great outings as a family and I came back promising to blog about it, but ironically those are the times I least feel the need to blog. I guess the satisfaction of having a good day is enough without me having to reflect on it. But now that we're about halfway through the trip, I think giving a little blog space to what's been fun is long overdue. And who knows, if this  entry goes long enough maybe I'll divide it up and give two or three entries to the topic instead.

We've done plenty of touristy stuff, seeing the sights and that kind of thing, but I think I'll save talking about those until later. Some of the things that have been the most fun have been just doing regular "Japan stuff" ... like karaoke. Now, for the record, I don't particularly like the way karaoke is done in the US, up on a stage in a bar or restaurant. I think it plays to both the narcissism of the performer and the desire to mock others of the audience. There can be a good vibe when the crowd is supportive and everybody is just there to have a good time, but even at its best I think it's much more about playacting, living out the fantasy of being on American Idol, than it is about singing. And I really like singing.

In Japan, the most common way to sing karaoke is at a "karaoke box," which really means karaoke room. You sing in a room with your friends and family rather than in front of a group of strangers. Basically you are assigned a room based on your group size and pay an hourly per-person rate. You can order food and drinks to the room if you like, but even if you don't order anything the soft drink/coffee bar is included in the base price and you can get away with spending less than an outing to the movies. In the room, everybody takes turns selecting songs to sing on a little computerized remote control. Usually when it's your turn you pick up the mike to sing by yourself, but we tend to do a lot more communal singing. We're just lucky our kids have good taste in music. Not everything we might want to sing is available, but the place we usually go has a pretty nice selection including Katy Perry's "Roar" and "Let it Go" from Frozen for Mikki, Bastille's "Pompeii" and Imagine Dragons for Eli, and enough... er... "classics" to keep me and Jocelyn happy. And the kids are great singers! The first time we went there was a bit of nervousness, but they got over that quickly and just went for it. They even learned a few Japanese songs at school and surprised us by how well they could pull it off learning just by rote, without a full understanding of what they were singing. The kids love it, to the point where Eli requested we go to karaoke for part of his birthday celebration, and the kids insisting on going to karaoke with their grandmother when she visited.

We've also gone to the "game center," or arcade a couple of times. In some ways they resemble the kind of arcades they have at Craig's Cruisers or Chuck E Cheese, but they have a lot more variety, for all different ages and interest levels. Jocelyn can't stand the noise, so she doesn't usually join us for these outings, but there was definitely enough to hold the kids' interest.
One of the kids' favorite games is "Drum Master," in which you have to pound on a Japanese "taiko" drum along with the rhythm of various songs. You follow the on-screen prompt that shows you whether to pound the drum in the middle or tap on the side, as well as the rhythm to follow. At the easy level it's pretty basic, but as the level goes up it can get pretty intense. I've seen people playing a fast song on expert mode and it looks like they should be charging admission. In fact, there is a whole genre of "rhythm games" in Japan, appealing to a wide range of players. The only examples you usually see in the US seem to be Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero, both of which they also have here, but there are also a wide variety of other games which rely on matching your hands or body to various motions onscreen, in a way that's as much fun to watch as it is to play. In fact, for me it's a lot more fun to watch than it is to play, since the humiliation of the way I would look doing this in front of a bunch of strangers would probably be too much for my fragile ego... particularly when many of the strangers are the kind of people who are so good at these games that they bring their own special gloves to wear while playing them. These games are made as much for adults as for kids. In fact, there are huge areas of many arcades that aren't for kids at all. There are horse racing simulators and mah jongg games, battle simulations in which you bring in your own cards with all your armies and stats stored on them, "medal" games that use tokens but look a lot like the slot machine section of a casino, and crane games with...  um... somewhat inappropriately dressed figurines as the prizes.
But while most of these are targeted at adults, there are also plenty of kid-friendly versions as well. While the crane games on the upper floors offer more mature fare, the lower level is filled with stuffed animals and little snacks to appeal to the kids. And while many of the "medal" games are closer to gambling than just gaming, the kids also enjoyed playing one where they shot the medals into a coin pusher device in order to advance Mario on-screen, win a chance to grab little balls and add them to the mix with an internal crane game and win a jackpot of little medals when you sink a big ball of the edge. Clearly the Japanese have surpassed us when it comes to enjoyment technology.

Well, I think I'll end the post here, but I see that I've managed to talk all about being merry with very little about eating or drinking. I'll save that, as well as the promised "touristy-stuff" for a later post.

In which Mikki is held back a year… or advanced a year… or something

 The Japanese public school year is quite a bit different than that in the US, with three terms (of unequal length) beginning in April and running through March of the following year. They don’t have a long break like our summer vacation, but only a couple of weeks in between semesters. So for us, this means we entered school near the end of their school year, which will be ending on March 24th, and then the kids will advance to the next grade starting on April 6th. When we were planning the trip, this seemed like a really good thing. They could have the end of the previous school year to get used to things, and then enter the second and fifth grade already having a sense of what to expect. And, of course, they were both really excited about the prospect of advancing to the next grade before all their friends back home. And although there have been ups and downs getting used to the system, it seemed that everything was going about as well as we could have hoped.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I received an official letter in the mail last week letting me know that I should be sure to fill out the necessary forms to let Mikki start as a brand new first grader in April. Probably just a silly mistake, since she's been getting a long just fine in her first grade class since we arrived. When I called in to correct their error, though, it turns out the mistake was ours. Eli was fine (albeit a bit younger than most) entering the fourth grade due to his March birthday but because Mikki’s birthday falls at the end of April, by the Japanese count she was not yet old enough to be in first grade. I assume that the fact that we entered the school year partway through the final term threw everybody off and when I reported that my kids were to enter the first and fourth grade, nobody did the math. But now that they realized that Mikki was an IMPOSTER, things needed to be corrected. And this was NOT the sort of rule to which exceptions could be made. So what were we supposed to do? Mikki was already established in her first grade and had made some friends. It would be a shame not to let her continue on to second grade with the rest of her class. Not to mention that she would definitely bristle at the idea of going back to the beginning of the first grade year. The official I was talking to said he would contact the principal of her school and they would figure out what to do with her and call me back later.

As it turns out, this was one of those times when the rules were extremely strict, but the reality could be bent to meet them. Given her birth date, there was absolutely NO WAY she could be allowed to enter the second grade as planned. But, if we didn’t mind, they could accept her into the classroom as a “guest experience.” This is a status generally reserved for students who transfer to a new school very late in the term or for a very limited time, but since we’re only here until June they decided they could stretch the meaning to allow Mikki to be in the second grade for those two and a half months. Both the official at the city office and the principal of the school gave me separate phone calls that evening to make sure I was okay with the situation, and I was a bit thrown off by the fact that they seemed to expect that I might not be:

   “So she gets to move on to the second grade with her class?”

   “Yes, but she won’t be officially enrolled.”

   “But she gets to do everything her class does?”

   “Yes, of course. Now, officially textbooks are only supplied for free to enrolled students.”

   “Oh, that’s okay. We’re willing to pay for…”

   “Oh no, we discussed it and we can provide textbooks for her.”

   “Okay, great. So what exactly would change?

   “Well, she wouldn’t be officially enrolled. Are you… alright with that?”

   “Sign me up!”

They actually seemed to be genuinely relieved that I was willing to accept this plan they’d cooked up… which got us everything we wanted and cost us nothing. In fact, this was the way I’d originally imagined the kids would have to enter the school system: as guests. I didn’t care whether the kids had official status or whether they got much out of the curriculum. I just wanted them to experience the Japanese school system as a “guest experience.”

It makes me wonder, though, what things would have been like if we’d caught the birth date thing when we first signed them up. It was really easy getting the kids into the school system, which also helped get them integrated into the neighborhood. If we’d had to sign Mikki up for preschool instead… well, aside from having to pay for it and her almost certain indignation at having to go back to preschool I think it also would have been much harder for her to make friends in the neighborhood. At the same time, it might have been easier for her to pick up the language, especially the written language, if it had been something she was working on with fellow students rather than something that was assumed everyone already knew. Also, although both academically and socially she seems to be at the same level as the rest of her class, she doesn’t seem to have the same respect for classroom space that the other students do, and I’m sure that attitude was instilled in them during the first part of their first grade year. Despite the difficulties integrating into the system, though, I’m glad it happened this way. Trying to make your way through systems with which everyone else is familiar but that you have to learn through observation and trial-and-error is a big part of the study abroad experience. It’s inherently difficult, but I’m glad she went through it in the way she did. I don’t know if she is as happy about it as I am, but that’s something we probably won’t know until well after we come back.

In which we learn there's no such thing as a free lunch

Before we came to Japan, we expected to have quite a big initial investment getting things for the kids school. All the things that most parents bought at the beginning of the school year – or had available from previous years – we would have to buy all at once. But we were happily surprised when things weren’t as expensive as we’d imagined. As I’ve already reported, we had to buy them gym clothes, lunch-serving clothes, shoes for various purposes, and general school supplies, but it seemed like we got off easy. The kids were heading off to school every day and coming back without any problems. Textbooks are free, supplied by the ministry of education, and we didn’t even have to send them with lunch. This place rocks!

And every day the kids bring home their renrakuchô, or “communication notebook” with the day’s homework assignments written in them. At the end of the day, the teachers write on the board what needs to be done and all the kids copy the instructions into their renrakuchô. And I was really impressed that our kids seemed to be doing it just fine. Despite not knowing much hiragana yet, they were able to copy what they saw well enough for me to read it and figure out what their homework was supposed to be. As it turns out, the hard part wasn’t figuring out what they had written, but figuring out the code the teachers were using to communicate with us. Each item the kids had to copy down was headed with a hiragana in a circle, and it took us a while to figure out what they meant. The “shi” was fairly clear from the beginning: shukudai, homework the kids had to do for the next day. The “mo” was less obvious, but turned out to be motte kuru, things the kids had to be sure to bring to school the next day. But the “re” was hard to figure out until I actually went and asked the teachers. That wasn’t directed at the kids at all, but at us. “Re” was for renraku, and it was the teachers way of getting the kids to tell their parents what they should do. Of course, our kids didn’t understand what their teachers were saying so they couldn’t tell us the details that would enable us to make sense of the abbreviations they were using, so we were generally clueless about most of what we were supposed to be doing.

I’m not sure how much this is done (if at all) with other parents, but the kids’ teachers also use the renrakuchô to communicate with me, aking me to explain certain things to the kids that they might not have understood, alerting me to important upcoming important events, letting me know about additional items the kids needed, etc. And little by little, the number of things the kids needed started to add up. Every child needs to have the exact same set of things, or else the whole system starts to fall apart, and our kids had none of it. At first it was just small things: a pencil case for Mikki filled with both regular and red pencils (who knew?), rulers (not for measuring things, but for making sure the lines under a math problem are completely straight), a few extra bags for shoes (which it turned out Eli had been carrying back and forth to school in his backpack for a week but never bothered to pull out)… general stuff. Then we got a list of things that they would need to buy for us: sets of crayons, watercolors, and acrylic paints for Mikki, a calligraphy set and craft knife for Eli, musical instruments (harmonica for Mikki and recorder for Eli) inscribed with their names… lots of little stuff, but it added up to around $200. But we realized it was probably as important for the kids to have what everyone else did in order to feel like a part of the class as it was for the teachers to maintain consistency. I'm sure it's all worth it. Then we got the bills for lunch and other expenses…

In retrospect, we really shouldn’t have imagined that we were actually getting away with receiving free lunch and general school supplies. And all in all it really wasn’t that expensive, given what we were getting. But the fact that we exist in a sort of information limbo, clueless about what to expect until it actually happens, means that every bill is an unanticipated one… and it was starting to feel like we’d never be able to know when one was going to show up. The lack of ability to anticipate bills made every bill feel unfair, as though we had no control over what this trip was actually going to cost us. And this is all happening despite the fact that I speak a very high level of Japanese. The problem isn't the language barrier so much as the "information barrier." Japan has been referred to as an extremely “high-context” society. It’s true of the language, which every statement relies for meaning on the context in which it is made far more than does English, in which every nuance is spelled out in the words themselves. And it’s true of society, in which there are lots of rules clearly spelled out, but it can be hard to know which ones you really need to follow. As an example, when I went in to register at the city office, I had to submit forms showing that I was neither responsible to pay nor eligible to receive the national pension. No problem. But I was told at the desk that I would still receive bills requesting payment in the mail, and I should just ignore them. Okay, I guess I’m okay with that. I sure wish I knew what other bills I’m allowed to ignore. There’s actually a sign near the front door of our building telling us never to open the door for the NHK guys who come around to collect money... despite the fact that every Japan resident is required to pay for public television. Okay, I guess that’s also one of those bills people just know they’re “allowed” to ignore. It happened again when I received a packet of information from the local PTA. I was able to get most of the meaning of the documents without a problem, but I still had no clue what I was supposed to do. Do all Japanese parents with their kids in school join the PTA? Were we supposed to be going to PTA meetings and taking our turn walking the kids to school? Was the RSVP form for the next PTA meeting really as urgent as the attached letter made it sound? I had no clue. I later talked to Mikki’s teacher and found out that most parents don’t attend meetings and some parents (gasp) don’t even send in the form letting them know that they won’t be attending. Okay. Got it. One more thing I don’t really need to attend to.

At any rate, the bill for lunches and other expenses was a bill that I DID actually have to pay. The school handbook mentions that parents play a flat fee for school supplies at the beginning of the year, but it turns out that it is far more common for them to divide that up into payments and pay it in three month blocks at the beginning of each of the three three-month semesters instead. We weren’t here at the beginning of the semester, so our bill was for three months of textbooks and school supplies (not the ones we bought for our kids or paid for above but additional ones) at ¥1200 per month, three months of PTA dues at ¥300 per month (no problem, as long as we don’t have to go to any meetings), and three months of meals at ¥3700 per month. Individually, these things are all quite reasonable, but not knowing they were coming and suddenly receiving a bill for $300 worth of supplies barely a week past paying $200 for supplies felt unfair. Oh well, at least now I know the kind of expenses that the “child rearing” subsidy we’ll be receiving is supposed to cover.

All that said, I do feel like we are getting some value for our money. The kids have received a TON of textbooks, only a few that they are actually able to make use of effectively due to the language barrier, but a ton nonetheless. And I can’t think of a better souvenir from their time here than the hats embroidered with the school logo and musical instruments with their own names in Japanese. And, as Jocelyn has blogged about before, the lunches are very impressive… as is the amount of information they give us about the lunches. The picture on the right is the handout giving the lunch menu for the first two and a half weeks of February, and the one below is a close up of the 17th and 18th. 

 Like the lunch menu back home it shows each day’s lunch, as well as what the kids will be using to eat it. So on the 17th they will be having raisin bread, milk, a cream based vegetable stew, and a broccoli and corn salad, and they will be using a spoon to eat it. And on the 18th they will be eating rice, milk, noodles flavored with miso, and sautéed pork and daikon, which they will be eating with chopsticks. But it also gives extremely complete nutritional information. The remaining columns on the 17th show that the meal will contain 10 grams of chicken, 10 grams of scallops, 50 grams of potato, 30 grams of onion, 15 grams of carrots, 0.7 grams of parsley, etc. Each ingredient is also identified according to the red-yellow-green scale as to whether it is a protein (chicken and scallop), starch (potato), or vegetable (onions, carrots, parsley, etc.). Along the bottom of each day you can see the total calories (627), protein (22.8 g), fat (20 g), sodium, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, various vitamins, and fiber. I hate the idea of the kids trying to choke down foods they don’t like, or being peer-shamed into eating their whole meal, but you can see why the teachers put so much emphasis on every child eating their entire meal. This whole system loses meaning if you don’t know how much of the meal the kids are eating. I also like the way this pushes both kids and parents to be aware of the meal as a whole without individualizing it for every child. I have no doubt that the teachers are aware of kids who have severe food allergies, but there isn’t the expectation that every child will avoid a specific item because of the one child who has an allergy, as it is in the US. Every child will eat the same thing that day, and if one kid can’t eat scallops or doesn’t like onions, that’s for them to deal with.

By the way, along with the lunch menu for February, we also received three newsletters about what’s going on at the school in February, one for Eli’s class, one for Mikki’s, and one for the entire school. Once again, there’s a wealth of information there but a lack of context makes it really hard for us to get anything useful out of it. Even reading the schedule dutifully, Eli will occasionally come home an hour earlier than expected, or we’ll alert the kids to something on the schedule that will be happening, and then nothing does. The whole school will be having a “gratitude meeting” at 1:30pm on the 4th? Okay, whatever that is that’s cool I guess. Each class is working on a big craft project this month? Awesome! The times start from 8:45am to 5pm on the 24th? Okay kids, be sure to bring in the aluminum foil and empty boxes the renrakuchô said you’d need. In fact, bring three different empty boxes since the only information we have is “empty box.” The 24th comes and goes without any word about craft projects from either kid. Oh. Uh… maybe it was optional? Both kids had “class observations” for which we need to come in to watch their class this month, and it was nice to see them in the classroom context. But they are followed by an “advising session” which I had no idea how to interpret. I didn’t stay for that part and, based on the “minutes” we received afterwards, it seems to have been a brainstorming session about how the year went and how to prepare for the transition to the new school year next month. Actual line item from Mikki’s class: “They’re already going to be in second grade! But don’t forget that they’re still only going to be second grade.” I think I made the right choice skipping it; maybe I’m finally learning.

Episode three, in which our heroes face many hardships

So we filed the paperwork for national health insurance on Tuesday and our insurance cards, including the supplemental children’s insurance cards, arrived like clockwork two days later. It’s good to be covered, but we hoped we wouldn’t have to use them anytime soon…

In retrospect, we should have guessed that someone would get sick fairly early into the trip. The trip itself was exhausting and we were of course all jet-lagged. And although everything was new and exciting, a break in familiar habits and diet can always have an impact on health. On my study abroad trips, I inevitably have a student or two get sick early on in the trip, though it’s rarely bad enough that we need to sick medical attention. So let’s just say my skills at navigating the Japanese health care system are a bit rusty. And it really does take a good bit of familiarity with the system in order to make things work the way they are supposed to.

First, because of the national health insurance, people go to the hospital for almost everything, including the common cold. You can buy some drugs at the drug store without a prescription, but they are pretty minimal and they cost a lot more since they aren’t supplemented by insurance. So of course people go get checked out at the hospital for even small illnesses and if by some chance it’s something more serious, well, it’s a good thing they got checked out. This is a feature, not a bug, of the system. Of course, we self-medicating Americans aren’t used to this, so when Jocelyn had a fever on Friday morning, she just took some of the ibuprofen we had brought with us and went back to bad. When the ibuprofen wore off and the next dose didn’t have any effect, I visited the drug store to see if I could buy some Tylenol, where the pharmacist on duty said they had some, but we should really go visit the hospital instead, just in case it was the flu or something. Silly pharmacist, thinking he knew best what kind of medical care we self-reliant Americans needed. Visit the hospital for a little fever? Ha! So instead we tried some of the acetaminophen-based cold medicine we’d brought with us, and that brought the fever down so that Jocelyn could sleep. Surely that’s all she needs…

That wasn’t all she needed. The fever kept coming back, along with a splitting headache, aches all over her body, some nausea during the night… finally we decided that going to the hospital might not be such a bad idea around midday on Saturday. Because we were without a car, we called our landlord and the son gave us a ride to the hospital. Of course by now it was outside regular consultation hours, so we had to go the emergency room, something we medical-bill-fearing Americans would usually avoid like the plague… unless we actually had the plague. It turns out Jocelyn did have the plague, or at least its modern equivalent: the flu. Influenza is pretty widespread in Japan right now, we learned, so it would really be a good idea to come in and get checked out as soon as possible when symptoms arise. And why the hell weren’t we all wearing masks?

On the streets and in the trains, you see a lot of people wearing surgical masks as a matter of course. Some of them are sick and don’t want to infect others. Some of them don’t want you to infect them. And some of them just find them terribly comfortable and think everyone will be wearing them in the future.

So the doctor gave us all masks (which Mikki flatly refused to wear, resulting in a protracted argument in the hospital parking lot) and prescribed Jocelyn drugs: five days of flu medicine and separate drugs to treat her fever, pain, and nausea. Total cost of visit and medication: around $35. Jocelyn would still be contagious for a few days, though, so we just hoped that none of us would catch it from her…

No such luck. Eli had a minor cough in the morning but no other symptoms, so we sent them off to school as usual. Then around midday I received a call from Eli’s teacher saying he was achy and running a fever. Damn! I told the teacher I’d be there in ten minutes to pick him up, grabbed the kid’s insurance cards, and hopped on the bicycle to go pick him up. At least the hospital where we had taken Jocelyn wasn’t far from the kids’ school, and I had just been there two days earlier so I knew the ropes. Finally something would be easy…

Once again, it seems that I had forgotten everything I once knew about navigating the Japanese health care system. Hospitals have set, rather limited hours for open consultation and the rest is set aside for appointments. By the time I picked Eli up and walked him on the bike to the hospital, those hours were over. Instead, they could recommend a nearby clinic. Japan has a lot of small clinics, each dedicated to a specific kind of medicine. So if you have an eye problem you head to the eye clinic, and if you have an illness you head to internal medicine. And, of course, they all take the national health insurance, so no worries. Except that each of them has different consultation hours that you need to know before you go or you could end up just missing them or waiting hours for them to open. I was happy to have a recommendation from the hospital…

It turned out to be a terrible recommendation. I described Eli’s problem and they decided an internal medicine clinic would be best for him. They even did a search on the computer for which ones in the area would be open at that time and made a copy of the directions and hours for me. How considerate! Except it turned out to be a surgical clinic. Luckily I noticed this and gave them a call first. It turns out they do have one internal medicine consultant on staff, but he doesn’t come in until 5pm. Okay. I went back to the consultants at the hospital and described the problem and they found another clinic for me though it was, they said apologetically, “a bit far away.” Still, better a far away clinic that was open than a nearby one that was closed, right? So we grabbed a cab and went there… where we were told that they didn’t treat children. I would need to go to a pediatric clinic. Of course I would! I’m sure I would have figured that out myself if I’d tried. But instead I just took the hospital’s recommendation, figuring they knew best. I was so frustrated, and Eli was completely exhausted and feverish and just wanted to rest while I kept dragging him around to different places. This was definitely the low point. The clinic gave me a list of other clinics in the area, including two pediatric clinics, but they warned me that most pediatric clinics don’t have consultation hours until late in the afternoon, after kids are out of school. Plus, since this clinic was “a bit far away” from where we lived so were all the other clinics they recommended. So instead we just grabbed another cab and went home, where I could let Eli rest and where I had the resources to look for another pediatric clinic closer to home.

Eli went to bed and I hopped on the computer to look for a pediatric clinic, finding one just a ten-minute walk away that also started seeing children at 3pm rather than 5pm like most of the others. Eli was asleep by this point and I would normally have just wanted to let him rest, but since Jocelyn had the flu I felt more urgency at getting him to be seen. Jocelyn had brought Mikki home from school by this point, so I went and got us a cab and all four of us headed to the clinic.

Finally THIS was the medical experience we’d been looking for. There was a separate section to sit for kids with fevers and we set Eli there while I checked him in and started taking his temperature. Since Jocelyn and Eli both had it, we decided to take Mikki’s temperature too, just in case… and we immediately moved her over to the “fever zone” as well. Both kids got tested for the flu and, although Mikki’s test was inconclusive, given the circumstances the doctor decided to prescribe her flu medication as well. The pharmacy was right across the street and we were able to pick up their medication in just a few minutes. And, as they had said at the city office, the kids’ visit was only $5 per child, including medicine! In the end the most expensive thing about the experience was the cab fare. And now we have a children’s clinic we trust just ten minutes away. The end of the day felt a lot better than the middle had.

It’s now five days later and the kids took the last dose of their medicine this morning. They are now officially flu-free and can head back to school on Monday, which is a good thing since we’re all going a bit stir crazy. I think we’re all tired of our lives being on hold, and we are eager to get on to a schedule. But for now it’s the weekend and we’re going to head out to do something fun. More later.

Episode two, in which the children become educated

So our plan was to give the kids a week to acclimate to Japan and get over jet lag and then start sending them to school on Monday of our second week. That was the plan…

After getting the paperwork all filled out on Tuesday, I gave their school a call mid-morning on Wednesday, figuring I’d try to come in and talk to the principal, get a list of things we need, etc. Well, the principal had other plans. He had apparently been informed that our paperwork was complete the previous day and had actually expected them to show up that morning. Since the school day had already started, he recommended that we come in the next day instead. No need to plan ahead, he said, just show up fifteen minutes early to discuss a few things and they can start the day. Wha? That’s it? I travelled 6,500 miles to get here and you want me to just throw my kids into Japanese school with no planning? Well, okay I guess.

So that’s pretty much what we did. The principal seemed to be taking this whole “weird foreign kids coming to our school” thing in stride, so I decided to do the same. We did take them in to buy the basics, which in this case meant the school gym clothes and yellow hats for walking to school, but other than that we decided to put things off until the next day.

What every fashion-forward Japanese elementary school student wears for gym class
Note the 東 symbol? That means “East” as in Suita East Elementary School. Yes, our kids once again attend school in East.

The next morning the four of us set out for their elementary school. Near the beginning of our walk, we saw a lot of kids wearing suspiciously familiar yellow hats gathering not far from our house, and figured that the kids in the neighborhood must gather there to walk to school as a group every morning. The walk took about twenty minutes and although it was near a fairly busy area it seemed very safe, with a pedestrian bridge at a strategic point to cross over both train tracks and a busy road. Once the kids get used to the route, I don’t see any problem with having them walk it with the group. When we arrived at the elementary school, we were escorted into the principal’s office, which looks like every other principal’s office in Japan and, according to J, in Taiwan as well. But the principal was very friendly, very welcoming, and very eager to help the kids start almost immediately. We met the kids’ teachers, learned about the systems for communicating with them via notebooks sent home with the kids, talked about a few things the kids would need… and off they went to class. Just like that. They just walked off and joined their classes. It felt very surreal, but I liked the fact that the school staff were treating it so matter-of-factly. It helped me put aside my doubts and just accept that this was just a part of the experience. Of course they just went off and joined the class. That’s what they were supposed to do.

Jocelyn has a good breakdown of their first day on her site, so I’ll just link to that here and move on to the rest of the week.

Long story short, the kids walked to school with the rest of the kids rather than with us the next day. Eli also wanted to walk home with the other kids instead of us, so we let him, but we went to pick Mikki up. Both of them were also taking the whole thing in stride, and we didn’t get much from them about what went on all day except the same old brief responses we get back in the US. Eli made friends almost immediately and even went out to play with a kid from the neighborhood after school the second day. Mikki was a bit less outgoing than we are used to her being in a more familiar environment, but I think she’ll open up soon too. The exposure to a completely foreign environment has also spurred the kids to a renewed interest in learning Japanese, and we have them both working on hiragana practice in lieu of the actual homework. All in all, the first three days went extremely well, and I’m sure the next few days would have gone well too if not for, well… that’s a story for another blog post.

Coming soon: Episode three, in which our heroes face many hardships

In Japan - Episode one, in which many forms are filled out

It’s been over a week since we arrived in Japan, and it has been extremely eventful. So eventful, in fact, that I have had no time to blog about any of it. But rather than a giant all-encompassing “getting used to Japan” entry, I think I’m going to try to keep each entry focused on a single topic, even if that means writing several in a row. If nothing else, that might help me keep my thoughts straight as I try to explain what we’re going through.

As the title of this post suggests, I’ve had to fill out a lot of forms. I suppose it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that there is a lot of paperwork involved in getting a family of four settled in Japan for six months but, as I’ve said before, I’m not doing this Japan trip in the way I’m normally accustomed. When I bring students here on six-week study abroad trips, our stay is short enough that we don’t even need to apply for a visa in advance. For stays of less than ninety days, US citizens just show up in the airport to get their passports stamped. We have travelers insurance in case of any serious injuries, but for minor issues we would simply go to a clinic and pay out of pocket (much cheaper than going without insurance in the US, of course). In fact, we’re completely independent, not even affiliated with a Japanese university, which is what gives us the freedom to move from Tokyo to Osaka halfway through the trip… and to avoid a lot of paperwork. Not so this time, of course. We will be here a full six months, the kids will be in school, we will need to be insured, and I will be paid to teach a class, all of which requires lots and lots of forms to be filled out.

It may come as a surprise given the external image of Japan as a futuristic high tech society, but there is quite a bit that is still done in a very primitive way. It’s still largely a cash-based society, with many stores not accepting credit cards. It’s hard to get a handle on what’s going on without circulated flyers and word-of-mouth. And there is a lot of filling out paperwork by hand. This goes beyond just being unable to download forms or register for things online. It extends to actually requiring people to fill out a form three times the exact same way rather than simply doing it once and photocopying it. There was a moment at the airport when all our visa information was in their system and they were able to print out our foreign resident cards with all the information right at the immigration window. This process used to require several weeks after arrival, and I was very impressed at just how far Japan had come! But, of course, that card did not include our address in Japan so I still had to go to the city office to register... and find that they are still following the practice of writing the address in by hand on the back of the card. So much for high-tech efficiency.

High-tech efficiency	Not so much

At the city office, I was fortunate to have a native Japanese speaker, our landlord’s son, with me. I could probably have gotten by on my own but it would have been a lot more difficult, not just because of the language but because he was used to the process. Their family regularly houses foreign exchange students coming to study in Japan, so they know what paperwork has to be filled out, where it has to be filed, etc. and that advance information was priceless. On our arrival, they already had quite a few forms ready for me, highlighted where I needed to fill things out. These included several forms I had anticipated but also quite a few I wouldn’t have had any idea I needed until I got to the city office, including three separate forms to show that I am neither required nor eligible to participate in the national pension plan. One thing that my landlord’s son is not used to dealing with is paperwork for children, and there were a few things that he was learning at the same time I was. All you can really do in these situations is just go to where they tell you and fill in the forms they tell you without fully understanding what the point is until you’re done. At one point, we were sent to a window to fill out some forms for the kids, and I was handed an information sheet listing various ages and monthly amounts: ¥10,000 (about $100) per child per month. I decided I would just pay the fee and move on, but resolved to read the paperwork a bit more carefully afterwards to see just exactly what I was paying for. But in the course of the explanation, I realized I wasn’t going to be paying that amount, but receiving it! Apparently during the three-year window from 2009-2012 when the DPJ was in control of the Japanese government, they were able to institute a number of progressive policies, including the “kodomo teate” law that provides subsidies for “child rearing.” The subsidy is assessed monthly, but paid out every four months, which means that just before we return to the US in June, we’ll get a $800 present from the Japanese government for the support we provided our two kids for the previous four months.

Also at that window, I filled out paperwork for an extra insurance card for the kids, which confused me because I had already filled out the forms to get the whole family on the national health insurance. It turns out that kids get an extra insurance card, and if you show it at a hospital visit, the kids’ care costs only ¥500 (about $5) per visit. National health insurance is already pretty good, with the patient paying only 20% of the costs, but like the “kodomo teate” subsidy, this is another way that the Japanese government is encouraging proper care of children. I swear if everyone in the US got to actually experience the “socialism” they’re so afraid of they’d realize just how broken the US system is.

So lots of paperwork but an extremely successful day. Only two days into our trip and I’d registered us all at our current address, got us health insurance, exempted me from the national pension, got the kids registered for both subsidies and insurance, and filed the paperwork to allow the kids to attend public school. The plan was to give the kids a week off to recover from jet lag and then start sending the kids to school the following Monday… but that’s a story for another blog post.

Coming soon: Episode two, in which the children become educated