Hoikuen

Now that Sam has started up school, I have had a little bit of time to work harder on finding some daycare for Maia. Chris can watch her a lot, but he is supposed to be doing some research this year too. He's doing all the cooking and most of the cleaning so we'd like to find some help with the increasingly mobile and mischievous Maia.

The good news is that daycare in Japan falls under the department of welfare and has regulated pricing. The cost is based on income, but even in the highest income bracket it is considerably cheaper than Boston. And many facilities have options of extended hours when needed for work reasons (not for going out to dinner and a movie though). In Kyoto the officer in your ward is supposed to consider the severity of the parents' need for help and find a spot for those most needy, putting those with, for example, a sick parent ahead of someone who might have happened to sign up earlier. It's open to any resident of the city where both parents are working or otherwise unable to care for their child full time. All in all, this seems great.

But how to get in---

Since this is well regulated you have to fill out a lot of forms. I spent several evenings working on this and then submitting forms to my ward office. Staff at my program tried to inquire about this before we came. They had luck with the yochien and found Sam's. But with daycare officially you have to be here and fill out these forms yourselves before you can arrange anything. Since the centers have to report their spaces to the City, I had hoped that once I submitted materials the Kyoto could tell me where there were spaces, and we could find one for Maia somewhere. But it turns out that it is not that simple. First, there are almost no spaces at this time of year. The school year is from April and most spaces open then when daycare students move into yochien or elementary school. August and September are lousy times, especially if you haven't been here to arrange it earlier. Also, although you are allowed to used centers anywhere in the city, information about them is held only at the ward office where that center is located. I registered in my own ward office, but they don't think they even will have information about where there are spaces until October. They suggested I ask at the other wards, so today I went to three ward offices, making a sort of non-scenic bus tour of Kyoto (it was a little scenic, but not very!). Chris mapped out the locations and a bus route for me, so that after dropping off Sam at Youchien I could make a loop through the central wards of Kyoto (any places where we could actually commute to a daycare). Mostly what I learned is 1.) they are pretty full everywhere 2.) the ward offices don't really have as much information or control over the centers as it would seem. In fact what people seem to do is to call every daycare center they might be interested in and convince the center to help them out -- and THEN ask the ward office to enter that one. So as much as convincing the ward office of need, I have to convince the few daycare centers that have any spaces that they would like to have Maia there -- based on the questions asked on the phone, I need to convince them that 1.) I am actually willing to do the commute to that place 2.) not being Japanese won't be a problem - i.e. that my Japanese is good enough for them to deal with me 3.) that I really need help. Anyway, a system that is potentially very fair is not quite working that way. They all think the commute is too inconvenient for me, but since I've only found two places that admit to having any spaces, that hardly seems a concern. There is also an occasional care system, but any given center only has three or so days a month. Maia has gone for one day to a center under that system and is signed up for three more days there next month. Tomorrow I'm going to try to convince one center that they want to take her, but they usually only take students longer term, keeping them right up to elementary school.

Kyoto University has just set up a facility that is designed to help women students and researchers waiting for public daycare slots, so hopefully that will work out.
They have at that center something I've always thought we needed at my own university - a space on campus where graduate students and professors can have a babysitter watching their child. Especially on a college campus where there a large number of willing and well-qualified caregivers, it's too bad not to be able to use them (unless you want your baby crawling around a college dorm room and getting premature intro to college life. Since Maia already seems to have an uncanny ability to find empty beer bottles in any space she visits, this would be pretty frightening).

Anyway, for now Maia is always with us exploring our home and flirting with people on the street. With baby in tow, her father is quickly picking such Japanese phrases as "ningyo-san mitai" (she looks like a doll) "tenshi ya na: (she's an angel - in Kyoto speech), matsuge ga nagai (what long eyelashes), and so on. We hear these all day, along with the usual "kawaii" (cute).
She has just learned to clap and wave -- kawaii indeed!