It really frustrates me the number of heart-ache stories that I hear from friends who’ve been totally convinced by the Japanese mass media that their breasts aren’t good enough for their babies. Just as depressing are the number of stories that I’ve heard where mothers in Japan who had previously believed that breast is best, have been convinced by their doctors (after only a few weeks of trying) that they’re not making enough milk and switched to formula or a mix of formula and breast milk. Come and take a look at the marketing scandal that inhibits breastfeeding in Japan.

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Are you a new dad in Japan? This is the first installment of a new series of articles from stippy.com on the quirks and perks of bringing up your bi-cultural child in Japan. Why is that something as common as pregnancy could be so unscientific? Furthermore, why is that the “rules” surrounding pregnancy for human beings could be so different across our two countries?

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Has your wife chosen her Obstetrics & Gynecology (Ob/Gy) Doctor in Japan already? Have you met him? Did you go along to help scrutinize him? It’s astounding how different one Doc’s perspective can be to the next.

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Everyone knows that pregnant women should avoid fish and definitely shouldn’t eat raw fish… right? Or at least I thought that was “a given” until I started discussing what my wife and I might eat on our next date in the big smoke. While every English book has numerous warnings peppered across at least 2-3 different chapters of the book telling you that you must reduce your intake of oily fish (example), Japanese books as a rule actively encourage pregnant Mum’s to eat as much fish as they can.

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Thus far, we have two articles about HIV and AIDS in Japan on stippy.com (the first and the second). Another year has passed since we last touched on this issue, but a recent episode in my own life drove home that things still are really not changing fast enough with regard to the blurry awareness of HIV/AIDS in Japan, and the studied nonchalance of the Japanese people whenever the topic arises.

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This is the third installment in a series about my personal experience of being pregnant in Japan (or perhaps I should say, of my wife being pregnant). There is no topic better than pregnancy for old wives tales to prevail and it seems that the topic of food – what you can, can’t or shouldn’t eat – really takes the cake when it comes to misconceptions in not only Japan but every country in the world.

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This is the third installment in a series about my personal experience of being pregnant in Japan (or perhaps I should say, of my wife being pregnant). Although I hope that some of the observations have value for gaijin of both sexes, I’m intentionally writing this series from my own perspective – a Gaijin Father in Japan.

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This is the second installment (find the first here) in a series about my personal experience of being pregnant in Japan (or perhaps I should say, of my wife being pregnant). Although I hope that some of the observations have value for gaijin of both sexes, I’m intentionally writing this series from my own [...]

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Getting pregnant in Japan – I’ve found the entire experience of to be an eye-opening one in terms of Japanese culture. Who would have thought that best practices about pregnancy could be so different from one country to another.

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Why doesn’t Japan have daylight saving time (DST), or “summer time”? Japan has never embraced daylight saving time, and the Government had introduced a farcical experiment which is likely to convince themselves to shelf the ideal for another political cycle.

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