There are so many tiny aspects of life that we have had to research for our move to Japan; some things we have found the answer to and some we'll have to guess at. If it were just Dustin and I moving we would only have to think about little things: will shoes or bras fit, will pants (or any clothes) be long enough, will makeup shades work for me, or can you buy vegemite in Japan? O.K., maybe Dustin hasn't thought about some of these, especially the vegemite, but as long as we bring clothes and shoes with us, we can bypass most of our concerns. However, since we are moving with kids it is a different story.
We will most likely bring a small stock of baby tylenol, children's vitamins, and vitamin D drops because they are small and light to pack and fairly inexpensive in Canada. I just have this feeling that they will be much more expensive in Japan, but I could be pleasantly surprised.
One thing I know for sure is that diapers cost much more in Japan. They are pretty expensive as well in Canada, but more importantly I cringe every time I throw away a little bundle that I know is going to hang around in a landfill for hundreds of years. We had been planning on using cloth with Theo, but with his kidney problems we were advised to use disposable diapers.
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| William lovin' his green diapers |
With William however, we don't have to take any special precautions so we went ahead and invested in all the cloth diapering bits that we will need until he is potty trained. It is a pretty penny to get started, but fortunately there are very few other costs involved (other than washing them). We have been using them for about 3 weeks now and still really like them. I am pretty sure that he does too, if not crying every waking moment is any indication. I am very excited at the amount of money we will save when in Japan, where clothes can actually be hung out to dry for more than 4 months a year without turning into sheets of ice, and I am looking forward to working off the finely honed self loathing at having contributed to so much landfill waste since Theo's birth.
I am sure there will be a few things that I wish we would have thought to bring, but at least clothes and shoes will fit the boys in Japan!
