I wish I could say that I am in the final stretch of childcare, as M begins daycare on April 1. However, I am still three weeks away from complete freedom. M's new daycare held an orientation yesterday, and it was two hours long. Patience is not my strength. This is unfortunate, because many aspects of life here require patience.
The orientation was in Japanese, so I understood very little. I did understand that integration will take two weeks to complete. For example, on the first day, M will attend for an hour. The second day, also an hour. The third and fourth days, two hours. Then three hours the next two days, and so forth. This is ostensibly so the kiddos can better acclimate. As I heard this, I was screaming inside.
Each child is given a mother-child handbook. It literally translates into "mother-child," not "parent-child" and definitely not "father-child." This kind of thing is typical but irks me nonetheless. This handbook is how the teacher and parent communicate. The teacher will write about the child's day and send the handbook home with the child. The parent will read it, perhaps respond or note any concerns, and bring it back to school with the child the next day.
We were given another booklet for recording M's activities during the time she is at home. Each parent is to record the child's temperature, total hours of sleep overnight, time of waking, and food intake. Oh, and also number of bowel movements, time of BM, and texture.
During the orientation, there was a doctor onsite to examine each child and address health concerns. Compared to America, the childcare approach seems more holistic. There is a cook who prepares meals at the school for all the kids every day. They ask parents to wean babies off pre-cut food and have them learn to drink from a real cup shortly after age one. This seems optimistic, but we shall see.
Why was the orientation so long you might wonder. Well, there was a lot of paperwork involved. There is a lot of paper-pushing bureaucracy in Japan. It is not very digitized in this respect, and obviously not for lack of capacity. Japan is a pioneer in developing and using modern technology, yet it trails behind in the digitization of essential services: education, medicine, banking, etc.
One reason is the culture of hanko. People have hanko, a personal seal, that they must use to "sign" official documents. There are different makers of hanko and there may be differences in how they make them. This will cause you problems. For example, you open a bank account with your hanko, but the maker of that hanko goes out of business and you subsequently get another hanko. You try using the new hanko on a banking transaction and the bank stops you because the seals are not identical. You then have to engage in a pile of paperwork attesting to your authenticity. Or you have to track down a hanko that is identical to the first hanko.
Anyways, we had to complete a lot of paperwork and then register M as a student of that daycare with the municipal office. I read once that patience is like a muscle that you must exercise to strengthen. If that is true, I am really strengthening those muscles!
The daycare itself is small but new and very clean. Tuition is calculated on a sliding scale. The maximum is about $900 per month for each child. This includes diapers, wipes, and food. This is amazing to me. It is what happens when the government subsidizes essential services like childcare. Parents can afford to work.
More on M's first week of daycare when it arrives!
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