My Daughter, Election Day, and the LDP 2005-09-11

Someone asked for more kid pictures, so here you go. This is Mari. The twins will turn three in November.

Reia returned to yochien (preschool) a week ago. She was happy to return and, very proudly, drew a picture of a tent her first day back. A couple of days later, all the kids lined up and shared (one at a time) their favorite memory from the summer. Reia said, "Going to Disneyland!" Only we didn't go to Disneyland. Someone at the beginning of the line said Disneyland, and more than 90 percent of the kids after that gave the same answer. That's normal. The same thing happened this Spring, when all the kids shared their favorite fruit. Reia was going to say Strawberry, but she switched to Apple to stick with the majority. The same thing happened, my wife says, when she was in yochien. You wonder why they have these sharing times...

On a somewhat related note, they're having a national election today. Most people are expected to line up and vote for the LDP -- as most people have for the past 30 years or so.

My wife just went out to vote, and I wonder who she'll choose. I don't know who I would choose. I can't vote, by the way. Just to help out, you have the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP (like the Republicans in the USA). Then you have the Democratic Party (sort of like "the other Republicans"). It's much more complicated than that, but not really. Finally, there are the Communists, along with a host of smaller parties that few people bother to sort out. I mention the Communists separately because: a) they're recognizably different from the others, and b) I still can't believe they haven't gone for a name change considering.

But seriously, staying with the group (call it what you will) is a very strong part of the culture here. Another example. Two days ago our daughter came home from school and refused to eat dinner. She didn't eat breakfast or lunch the next day. For three days in a row she asked for the thermometer to check her temperature (because she wanted to be sick and miss preschool). After much time trying to understand what happened (she was doing great before that), we learned that the teacher said (or seemed to say), "If you eat lunch too slowly, you'll throw up." One of the girls in the class really does throw up from time to time. She gags on food she doesn't like, but eats it anyway and pukes. My daughter has a fear of throwing up, so she took what the teacher said to heart. Even tonight she asked if she could come home before lunch tomorrow, but we think she's starting to get over it (and my wife will follow up with the teacher).

Many expats send their kids to Japanese preschools so that they'll learn Japanese. Most (if they can afford it) pull the kids out after preschool and send them to international schools. Usually it's because they want their kids to be socialized in a way that matches the culture of the parents (if possible).

As for us, we intend to send our kids to Japanese school through elementary school at least. My wife is Japanese, so we want our kids to learn the language, including writing, and the culture to an extent. We'll have to decide when and if to put them in an international school. In an ideal world, maybe you'd let the kids decide for themselves what culture they'll be. But, in reality, the parents have to make key decisions while the kids are still quite young that will impact their future cultural identities.

My wife has a bi-cultural perspective. Like me, there are things she likes and doesn't like about Japanese culture. She can work with the teacher in appropriate ways, and that includes gently making the teacher aware of the impact of that remark. But choosing a Japanese school means accepting that we DON'T have the same input that parents would have at a similar school in the USA. Nor is it appropriate for us to barge in and defend our child's right to be herself. (Japanese teachers want kids to be themselves, by the way, but in practice the group oriented culture kicks in.) As our kids pick up the culture, they'll get the good and bad. As for us, we'll try to raise them to be healthy and equipped to sort it out their identity (some things now and others later).

UPDATE - We discovered that the teacher DIDN'T tell our daughter she would throw up if she at too slow. She probably told the girl with the puking problem not to eat so fast. We think our daughter misunderstood the grammar (literally: Don't eat slow, you'll puke). Once again, we're glad we didn't leap into confrontational mode, because we would have been wrong.

If you are someone who reads my full posts, I want to point something out. If you go into the gallery, there is a drop menu for "categories." If you check that menu, you'll find 3 categories that start with "Text." Whenever I write a longer text entry with a story, cultural notes, or other information (like this) I assign it to one of those text categories. So if you're looking for something I wrote, that's the place to start.