Hello. I'm a chronically sleep-deprived father of two, living in Kita-ku, on the north side of Nagoya.
This blog collects the small huh, really? facts that make parenting a little more interesting. I try to break the difficult parts down far enough that they still land on a brain running on four hours of sleep, because that's the brain I write them with.
What's here
1. Research, explained without the jargon
I'm a chemical engineer by trade. It's an occupational hazard: when parenting throws a "but why does that work?" at me, I go and find the paper.
Why does a baby stop crying when you walk with them? What room temperature actually helps them sleep? I look for studies that answer questions like those, lead with the conclusion, and keep it to about three minutes of reading.
2. Raising kids in two languages
I grew up in the United States and am fully Japanese–English bilingual (990 on the TOEIC, twice). I write from experience about what it's actually like to grow up between two languages — the useful parts and the strange parts.
And now I'm on the other side of it, trying to hand a second language to my own children inside a Japanese-speaking house. I write up what I try, including the things that didn't work. That series is the one most likely to be useful if you're raising a child in Japan in a language that isn't Japanese.
3. Getting out of the house
Parenting is a game of stamina, and on the days it stops working, the answer is usually to leave the house. I write up parks and places around northern Nagoya that are genuinely doable with small children — with notes on nursing rooms, changing tables, and whether a stroller fits.
A note on the English here
Every English post on this site is a full English version of a Japanese one, written by me rather than run through a machine. Where the two versions differ, it's usually because a paragraph that matters in Japanese doesn't matter in English, or the other way around. The JA/EN switch at the top of any post takes you to its twin.
Three tools on this site are Japanese-only: the post-birth paperwork timeline, the child-allowance calculator and the vaccination date planner. All three run on dates and numbers, so a translate button gets you most of the way there.
The person writing
I was born and raised in the United States, and studied engineering through graduate school at UCLA — a BS and an MS. These days I work as a chemical engineer in Nagoya while raising two kids.
Finding papers, reading them, and stress-testing what they claim is what I do at work all day; this blog just points that habit at parenting. Growing up in English also means I can go straight to the primary sources, which is where most of the research lives — so a lot of what you'll find here hasn't made it into Japanese parenting media yet, and vice versa.
- Chemical engineer (BS & MS in Engineering, UCLA)
- Japanese–English bilingual, raised in the US
- Father of two in Kita-ku, Nagoya (chronically sleepy)
Get in touch: [email protected]
(Replies happen after the children are asleep.)
This blog participates in affiliate programs and may earn a commission through product links. I only write up things I've actually used.