moving to japan with baby

[new expat]

My husband's job is moving to Yokohama in the spring and i am coming as well with our 9 month old baby. Does anyone have any advice? - things to prepare in advance, what to buy in the UK beforehand (we will have our belongings shipped over) etc.

Many thanks

[synthia]

First, I should say that the Japanese people really are almost invariably polite and helpful and friendly. I enjoyed living there, met a lot of people I liked a lot, and found the culture fascinating.

I don't really know much about babies in Japan, and I haven't lived there for a long time, but this is what I observed. Japanese babies are completely toilet trained very young, at about 18 months. The babies are smaller, too. Combining those two means that you may have difficulty finding diapers as your child ages.

Unless things have changed, baby sitters are non-existent, as mothers are expected to spend every moment with their child until it reaches age two and starts nursery school. Until they graduate, a mother's only free time is while their children are in school. As a result of this, many women choose not to marry, the birth rate is negative, and there are many more young men than there are women who want to marry.

The children are also very quiet and well-behaved, partly because until they are three or four, their every wish is granted immediately. School is going to be hard work and a long slog, and so children are indulged. Boys especially can do no wrong.

Western children are seen as being much cuter than Asian children, expecially if they are blond. People will feel free to pinch their cheeks and fuss over them.

You should also know that 'gai-jin' is an insult, a sort of ethnic slur. However, most of the westerners that I knew used it anyway. It has a sort of a 'not good enough to be Japanese' thing to it (barbarian).

I was told to my face on more than one occasion that Japanese are genetically superior to all other races. I laughed always, and sometimes pointed out that no one else thinks that, and why didn't their superiority allow them to win that big war? It helps to remember that they are taught these things as scientific fact in schools.

Children are not taught tolerance of other views. To be different is to be bad, though this probably affects mixed race or mildly handicapped children more. A woman I worked with told me that she had to wear a brace on her leg when she was a child, and she remembers the teachers encouraging the children to tease her because she was different.

I doubt you will encounter much of this, but it's best, I think, to know something might happen.