on the edge of ordinary

I've got a story about this cleaning product. Two of our boys went to a local kindergarten in our early days in Tokyo, over a per...

Our eldest son started eighth grade today. There are a couple of similarities, but numerous differences between the situation our son is in ...

The view from our house. Note the flags – essential decorations! Today it is hard to escape the annual Japanese Sports Day tradition . Thoug...

We visited our 7 y.o.'s classroom today. His class have been talking about different jobs that people did. We were parent volunteers tal...

Today I found myself unexpectedly teary. It took me a while to figure out why. I was sitting on short, plastic chairs listening to our young...

Our family is complete again. David flew home this morning. I found it a little disconcerting that when I went to be after 10 last night, h...

I just realised that it is a week since our middle son graduated from Japanese kindergarten. Here are some photos to prove that it is no ord...

I put the question, "Why Japanese mothers cry at the end of year class meetings?" to a bilingual Japanese friend of mine. Here is ...

12. Then of course you have the events. Sports Day, Summer Festival, Mochi Festival (Japanese pounded rice), Art Show. All of these have v...

If you were already exhausted, you haven't stayed the course. There's more to being a mum in a Japanese kindergarten. 7. Class mee...

I am speaking from my experience of two kindergartens here, but I know from talking to friends that each in kindergarten is different. We ...