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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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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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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