Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Puro Land

Today was our first preschool field trip, and we went to Sanrio Puro Land, possibly the cutest place on earth :)
Of course preparation began yesterday with none other than laundry!  Yosei's uniform was so muddy it needed and actual washing with the washing machine (I don't know how he managed that in a day).  The blazed had to be put into a delicates net; good thing too, turns out Yosei had filled his pockets with sand so when I pulled it out of the net sand was falling out all over the place (><)
Anyhow this morning began with a 30 min walk to the train station,  I wish they had chartered a bus like most schools do, but sadly not.  So Keia in the stroller and Yosei walking next to me (he's pretty used to that though it's how we got around up until a month ago when I put some new child seats on my mom-cycle.
Yosei was pretty excited though because he absolutely loves trains, we even got to ride the monorail :)
After about a two hour ride we finally made it.  They had us take a photo all together outside Puro Land.  I haven't gotten a copy yet,  I'm kind of wondering if we'll have to buy them or not :P
So anyhow we headed inside and first thing I was told is I need to check the stroller at the info desk and put any baggage I didn't want to carry around in a coin locker.  So I put all our coats and such in a locker,  but with a 1 year old the heavy clunky diaper bag is a necessary evil (-_-)
After stashing all our stuff we met up with Yosei's best friend, Haruki, and took a picture by this Sugarbunnies Christmas Tree thing  (see photo below)
Right after taking this photo is when probably my most favorite part of the day took place.  Two Korean girls (erly 20's ish) walked up and asked if they could take their pictures with Yosei right in front of the tree too.  I keep getting told my kids should be models.  Haha maybe I should have told them $5 a shot.
In any case after that was potty break and then lunch time.  Since it was a special preschool trip they had bento prepared for all of us.   
This was the children's bento.  Adorable right?  There was fried chicken, star shaped hashbrowns, a meatball, a mini hotdog with kello kitty printed on it, and some veggies (which of course Yosei didn't eat),  along with the rice with ground chicken and veggies you see here.  Oh and there were little mini jellos (we call them jellies here) for desert.
My bento was not that cute so I didn't bother,  but check out my adorable bottle of tea ^^  After lunch we wandered around the various attractions to see what they had on offer.  I was a little disappointed, seems that in Puro Land their main thing is musical shows, but really how long can you keep a couple of 3 year old boys and a one year old girl interested in Hello Kitty song and dance numbers.  They did have a boat ride that was like the Sanrio equivalent of 'It's a Small World' at Disneyland.  They thing I really wasn't a fan of though is after every single attraction they try to sell you ridiculously priced photos of your fun time.  Considering the price of admission it would be nice if one or two of these was a free gift :P
Also I'm kicking myself  as I walked off and forgot the camera, so all photos were taken on either my phone or on Haruki's mother's phone hence the not so awesome quality.  Enjoy the rest of my Puro land photo gallery!  Also all photos with Haruki are posted with permission ;)
 Haruki, Yosei, and Keia on a sofa in Hello Kitty's house
 Also inside Hello Kitty's house
 Hello Kitty has a ton of sofas in her house
 Keia having a blast in Kitty's bathtub; Yosei, standing next to her, is also having a blast. 
 Yosei pulling a weird face cuz I couldn't get him to sit still :P
 Photo with HK,  green screen because I'm too cheap/poor to buy the ¥1000 ($10) fancy one with a digital background

 Yosei and Haruki in the Kitty Mobile
And of course the Jewel Pets who came out to warmup the crowd in preparation for the big Hello Kitty Christmas Parade. This was the only (and last) show we acually hung out for before heading home.  Keia fell asleep and Yosei was so not into sitting and watching singing and dancing for 30 min ;)

Monday, November 28, 2011

Laundry

I've never liked doing laundry, even before I moved to Japan I hated it.  However, living the last 6 years in Japan has given me a new dislike for laundry, it's really one of the few things I think we do better in the US. 
There are a couple reasons for this:
  1. Cold Water >< -  No hot or even lukewarm water washes here, its ice cold.  So of course no matter how awesome your detergent is if you've got something that's absolutely filthy your best bet is to fill your bathroom sink with hot water and wash it by hand. 
  2. No Dryers - Yes it seems completely bizarre in a place thatseems to be so technologically advanced but unless you head to a laundromat you probably won't find a dryer (and even those, I've been told, don't work very well).  Some of the new fancy washing machines have built in dryers but most people don't use them.  Why?  To save electricty of course.  We have one of those washers with a dry function, but I have never used it so I don't know if it works or not :P   This means that we hang our laundry out to dry (underpants and all).  This then brings out all the disadvantages of hanging laundry out to dry : Rainy day?  Either don't do laundry or find a place inside to hang it all up.  It probably won't dry until you're able to hang it outside, but at least hanging it will keep it from molding.  Cold and or damp day?  Yeah.... forget about wearing any of those clothes for the next 2 or 3 days.
  3. Mold - Being from Colorado where the air is dry this was something entirely new to me and I unfortunately learned the hard way, on a few occasions,  that everything here gets moldy unless you're incredibly careful.  I ruined Yosei's sunhat after a trip to the beach because I put it in a plastic bag when it as wet and forgot about it over night.  I had no idea it would happen so fast.
The first few year I lived here,before I got married  I was able to get away with a once a week (sometimes every two weeks) laundry day.  After getting married it became twice a week. Even after Yosei was born twice a week was ok (his clothes were little)  After Keia was born it became 3-4 times a week, depending on how messy the kids got.  But now with Yosei in yochien I'm washing every single day.  If it's not an entire load then I know for sure I'll be washing peices of his uniform by hand.  Usually is the short pants and button up shirt, I'm usually able to get away with just wiping down his jacket with a damp cloth (but some days not :P)  And I have to say I dread seeing his play smock every single morning when I drop him off at yochien because I can see the cleaning job gradually building up waiting for me to finally clean it at the end of the week .

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Preparation for Yochien pt 2

The Uniform
As I mentioned in my last post, uniforms vary greatly depending on the yochien you use.  The one we ended up choosing has a very  elaborate uniform with both summer and winter uniforms as well as a P.E. uniform with both hot and cold weather versions.
 All the pieces of the uniform
 P.E. wear
 Winter Uniform - With jacket, button up shirt, neck ribbon, sweater (optional depending on the weather), pink play smock (customized with iron on patches), short pants, hat, indoor shoes, yellow bag (for carrying bento, letter case, and attendance book)
Summer Uniform- short sleeve button up shirt, neck ribbon, sleeveless play smock, short pants, straw hat, indoor shoes, and yellow bag.
 Ready for the first day of school

Modeling the summer uniform

Like I said pretty elaborate uniform for a preschooler, but you can see why it cost around ¥40,000 :P   Anyway its got me doing laundry a lot more often (its amazing how dirty his shirt gets even though he's got a play smock on over it all day long).  The smock, as well as hand towel, indoor shoes, and PE wear gets sent home on Friday (or in the case of a day off or Saturday preschool, the last day of the week) for washing.

Lunch Time
This is another area in which all yochien differ.  Ours has a school lunch on Mondays, I have to make a bento on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday; and on Wednesday schools gets out at 11:30 so we have lunch at home.  Nearly every Yochien gives the kids milk with their lunch (unless  your kid is allergic of course).  Most yochien ask a flat monthly fee for the milk.  Ours however has us purchase milk tickets that we have to send with the kids to school.  The reasoning behind this is that it's more cost effective for the parents. Less school days in a month, miss a few days cuz you're sick? Well don't worry about losing out one the money you payed for milk  because the tickets have no expiration date,  you just buy more when you use them up.  I actually really like this system.  
Now on to the bento aspect.  Most of the moms I talk to really hate having to make bento and they would rather the school switch to all school lunches.  They must think I'm out of my mind because I actually really enjoy trying to create cute lunches (I'm beginning to think this was actually my calling in life, making art with food rather than with animation or manga like I had wanted to for so long :B)
Starting in December they're going to be putting the kids' bentos into warmers so I had to purchase an aluminum bento box this past week.  It's a Cars bento box, Yosei got to pick it out all by himself.

 First day of school - Shinkansen bento. He didn't eat the lettuce or the broccoli (but made sure to eat the cheese stars and mayo off of it :P) 

Events
There are a ton of events throughout the year and moms are put on committees to help with the preparation of events.  I've been put on the 'Owakare Kare Party' committe (English translation : The Goodbye Curry Party)  It's to say bye to the kids that are 'graduating' and moving on up to elementary school.
The week before Yosei started the kids went sweet potato digging and we got to tag along,  lots of fun digging in the dirt with your bare hands ;)  Two weeks ago the kids got to eat all those potatoes they dug up at their sweet potato party.
Coming in December we'll be doing 'Mochi Tsuki' - smashing sticky rice into sticky chewy rice  cakes with a giant mortar and pestle,  and at the end of the month the kids will have a performance day in which each class will put on a play.  I hear  there will be some work involved for me there too in the form of sewing decorations (ribbons and such) to Yosei's costume.
Twice a year they do a parent child field trip; the last one this year is taking place this Wednesday and we're going to (drumroll please)..... Sanrio Puro Land, the Hello Kitty theme park and possibly cutest place on earth.  I'll make sure to do a write up on that trip.

  

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Preparation for Yochien pt 1

I've decided to to go back to what was going on a month ago and detail what went into preparing to enter Yosei into yochien. The main reason being that at this point in time I was completely clueless about what to do but in googling the subject I found very little information (I guess there aren't alot of foreign moms in Japan blogging about yochien :P)

Anyhow, beginning from where I left off on my very first post,  after deciding on which school to enter and also making the decision to go ahead and start halfway into the year came the filling out of application and paying of fees (insert horror movie type screams here).

Fees
You can expect to pay an application fee, entrance fee, uniform fee, monthly tuition fee, monthly book fee (the kids bring home a picture book every month), school bus fee (should you choose to use the school bus), as well as various other fees that they decide to come up with(PTA, etc.)  Some schools also have a school lunch and you will have to pay that as well, others have the kids bring their own lunch, and still others do a combination of the two.

Every yochien differs on what they decide to charge. Public yochien are apparently quite reasonable; unfortunately for us, as I've mentioned before, there are no public yochien in our area.  The fees for private yochien are scary.  The schools in our area all charge ¥5,000  (roughlyUS$50) for the application fee (non refundable).  Now next is where it really gets scary the entrance fees for yochien in our area all range from ¥80,000 - ¥100,000 (or round about US $800-$1,000).  Uniform fees, these vary pretty greatly depending on the school and just how elaborate a uniform they have.  Around here I've seen anywhere from ¥10,000 - ¥40,000 (US$100 - $400-ish), and the uniforms vary from anywhere between a school issued hat and backpack and P.E. uniform all the way to a full on button up shirt, pants, jacket, neck ribbon, etc. uniform.  Monthly tuition around here runs from about ¥20,000 - ¥30,000 (US$200-$300).  The books fee for our school is ¥700 ($7) a month,  I don't know about other schools.

So the school we went with had the ¥80,000 entrance fee and the super expensive full on ¥40,000 uniform (but its oh so adorable).  So right up front with the application fee we had to fork out ¥125,000 ($1,250)
。・°°・(((p(≧□≦)q)))・°°・。
The week we started we were asked to pay the ¥21,000 tuition fee, ¥700 book fee, and (to my surprise) roughly ¥5,000 in school supplies (scissors, glue, crayons, clay (and storage box and tools), sketch book, craft book,  pianica hose (all yochien kids learn to play pianica at some point), letter case, attendance book, there was probably some other stuff in there too that I can't recall at the moment.

Stuff to prepare
This is something else every school differs on but not by much. First off are the bags.  We were asked to prepare a tote bag and a drawstring bag for the  P.E. uniform.  These bags are usually made of a quilted type of material printed with different characters and moms that can sew are encourage to make them.  I can't sew and wasn't about to start but thats ok because I found Yosei a matching set of bags with bullet train pattern fabric (he was pretty excited, I don't call him my 'train butt' for nothing).   Then there are the indoor shoes (uwabaki) and a storage bag for them ;  we had some from before when I had him in a weekly mommy-child P.E. class.  These however were a little bit fancier than the usual uwabaki and ended up being a little too difficult for him to put on and take off by himself, so about a week ago I picked up someofthe more standard variety uwabaki, also printed with bullet trains (I've never seen him so excited about shoes before 'Oh wow!!! Shinkansen!!!').  After that is a toothbrushing set. This consists of a toothbrush, plastic mug, toothpaste, and a little storage bag for when they have to bring it home.  Next on the list is a towel to dry little hands on, these have to have a loop at the top to hang on the class towel rack.  We also needed a hanger for Yosei to hang his uniform jacket on. And last but not least the lunch time set  consisting of a bento box, spoon, fork, and chopstick set, and of course a storage bag.  Oh and every single thing has to be labeled with his full name written in hiragana (the school issue supplies included, which means name written on each individual crayon as well).

End part 1.  Next time uniform, bento, and some other things too.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Day off

Today is a national holiday here, Labor Thanksgiving Day if the English in my planner is to believed, and so today was a day off from preschool. Unfortunately my husband, Kiyo, still had to work. 

Yosei was actually pretty upset when he found out we weren't going to school today.  He floppedhimself down on the floor and started whinging about how he wanted to see Chisato Sensei (his teacher) and eat his bento (boxed lunch).  It was pretty cute and I'm really glad he's taken to this whole school thing so well.

Anyhow I did make him a bento (a Kitty-chan bento!), a small one for Keia (she's only 1 so she doesn't eat so much) and a riceball for myself. (I'd rather go buy something tasty at the conbini but we're broke thanks to preschool fees :P)  I packed up our bento and thermoses of tea and we headed out on the bicycle to meet up with Yosei's friend Toa, whom we unfortunately haven't seen for a while since we've been so busy with preschool.  We spent the entire day at the park, had a picnic, let the kids play some more after lunch.  At 3 years old Yosei is pretty self sufficient when it comes to playing at the park; Keia, however was running me ragged standing behind her while she climbed up stairs, running back over to the slide to catch her at the bottom (she likes to go down on her tummy head first so catching is a must). 

All in all a pretty good day, especially considering most of my days are filled with errands and grocery shopping.  Definitely gonna have to have days like this more often :)  And now that both the kids are down for naps it's time to get the rice on and get dinner going.
  Not THE Kitty-chan bento but an example of a Kitty-chan bento I've made before (actually today's was much cuter, I should have taken a picture of it :P)

Choosing a Yochien

Recently (as in the beginning of this month recently)  I became a Yochien (Japanese preschool/kindergarten) Mom.  Typically kids don't start in November, and I had not planned on starting Yosei into yochien until April.  In Japan yochien goes for 3 years at the very longest, but some schools also allow you to do a 2 year program.   There were a lot of things working against Yosei that made me initially think 2 years would be the best for him;  most of these reasons centered around the preemie factor though. 

The cutoff date for all Japanese schools is April 1st meaning that beause Yosei was born in March rather than June like he should have been, he got pushed ahead one year school wise.  So obviously this being sent to school one year earlier than he should have been also means he's pretty immature,  couple that with the expressive speech delays and... well you get the paranoid overprotective mom that I became.

So  anyhow generally you start searching for a preschool in the fall, get applications in and enter in the Spring of the following year.  Yochien release their relevent info and applications of October 15th and being accepting the completed applications on November 1st; as far as I know this  is standard across the entire country.

Usually there are public and private yochien, however in our town, as well as the neighboring one,  there are no public yochien. Which means the option of super expensive private yochien for us.  Yochien is not mandatory but nearly every child goes to either yochien or hoikuen (i.e. daycare).  But since both parents have to be working to attend hoikuen (and I'm not willing to put Keia in daycare at this point) its the yochien route for us. 

So around the end of September I began to look at exactly what yochien were available,  I was quite shocked to find out that out of 7 yochien in our twon 4 of them were religious (2 Christian, 1 Catholic, and 1 Buddhist one though affiliated with some temple and totally different from what we practice)  The others were just ridiculously huge (think 300 kids) and to me with a kiddo that's delayed a large school probably wouldn't have been ideal.  Being a little transportaionally challenged ( I don't drive, and at that point I walked everywhere) I decided to start by looking at the closest and supposedly smallest school  in the area, which also happened to be one of the Christian ones.  We went and took a tour and watched part of the lesson, but I really didn't get a good feeling about the place and really the religious atmosphere made me uncomfortable. 

So after that failure feeling totally lost and defeated about how I'd probably have to suck it up and send him there despite ont really liking the school, I started researching the yochiens  in our neighboring town.  And I found one!  A little farther away but still walkable it looked to be a little bigger  but not too much so.  So I called and took the kids to go tour the place and it was then that the principal told me that she felt it would be better for him to start sooner rather than later with his delays.  I wasn't too sure  but I really liked the school, and even the school itself was bigger (as well as the playground) there were actually less students than at the other 'small' school. 

So after lots of talking and trying to convince the husband (and after quite a few no's) he finally relented and we began the whole enrollment process so we could start in November.