Kids, Cars and Kindergarten

Recently my wife and I have been very stressed about our daughter's nursery. My wife had taken maternity leave, but soon she must return to work. We applied for the public nursery for our daughter and this situation caused us a lot of stress. The problem is that there are not enough nurseries for all the children who need to go to one. When you apply, you have to fill in a form giving all sorts of information about yourselves - income, working hours, office location, daily travel time etc. Based on this information, the city government decides who can get in to the nurseries. They assign points for different things - for example, if both parents work, we get points for that; if your office is far away, you also get points for that. The people with the highest points can get their children into the nurseries. I was told that if both parents do not work full time, it is almost impossible to get into a public nursery.

My wife and I will both be working full time, so we had reasonably high points but these points were not enough for us to get in to the nursery that we wanted. There is a new nursery very close to our house - about 3 minutes walk away. We went to see it a while ago and it looked like a lovely place. My daughter seemed to like the atmosphere. Unfortunately, this place is really popular because it is new, and also because it is close to the train station. It was so difficult to get in. In the end, we managed to get in to another nice nursery about fifteen minutes walk away. We were lucky.

We have a friend who has a baby around the same age as our daughter who lives in a different town and she could not get in to any public nursery. The whole thing was a terrible situation, it left me feeling exhausted and kind of sad for all those kids. We went to see a private nursery and while it wasn't bad, the kids looked so bored and some of them were kind of sad. It made me feel sad myself to see them. I was relieved when we could get in to this public nursery but I feel a little frustrated that we could not send her to the nursery near our house. It seems kind of strange that we have to travel to another one when there is a nursery so close to our house.

When we went to the city government office to submit our form, the staff members looked like they were under a lot of stress. I can imagine so many parents put a lot of pressure on them. I would have put pressure on them if I thought it would do any good! Anyway, the situation is resolved now. The nursery she will go to is very nice. The staff were all very friendly and the kids seemed happy in there. I also saw another "half chan" in one of the classes with the older kids. I just feel bad for the parents who could not get in to a nursery. It really is a terrible situation. I hear a lot of people talking about how the decreasing birth rate is a problem for Japan. I think if there were more options for childcare, the birth rate would increase.

The nursery we will go to now is 15 minutes walk away but we will buy a car because the road that we would walk down is very narrow and there are a lot of people on bikes. Also, we have to carry a futon there and back on Mondays and Fridays. We went to buy a car recently. We bought a WagonR, a K type car, it is silver. So, people of Japan, this is your official warning - if you see a silver WagonR driving down your street WATCH OUT! Only joking, daijoubu, daijoubu.

▼▽▼▼【講師】Eddie先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【Christmas in Australia】2010.01.22 (Fri)

ブログランキングに参加しています。
下記の3つをクリックして、応援していただけると嬉しいです。
▼Please help us increase our blog ranking by clicking below!▼

We thank you for your continued support!

Posted By: Eddie Palmer on February 19, 2010