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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With our poem about Leaving Japan, we had quite a few comments from readers who previously lived - or currently live - in Japan, and what they love or hated about the place. In fact, some of the comments were longer than the article as many people expressed reasons for their deep attachments with [...]

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The final part of Stippy.com’s “Prison in Japan” series. We have had a lot of feedback about this ten part journal of one gaijin who spent 22 nights in the lockup, for one bad night out. Probably it served him right, yes, but he shared the experience for the rest of us to think about.

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Part 9 of Stippy.com’s Prison in Japan series

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