Now that we’ve been back and all settled in again I have to start thinking about going back to work and finding daycare for the kids. I’ve somewhat been avoiding this whole process because I dread going to the city hall and trying to communicate with my broken Japanese. Private daycare costs 45,000 yen+ (roughly equivalent to US$450) per month per child, which is twice as high compared to public daycare. We are trying for the public daycare because it costs substantially less than private ones and I’m all about saving money when I can. There is no set price for the public daycare since it is based on the parents income from the previous year. But it is very difficult to enter because there are limited facilities with long waiting lists so of course they give first priority to families most in need such as single mothers and full-time working parents. Which is fair enough, but a mother who needs to go back to work is in a tight spot because they give priority to mothers who already have a job. When you’ve never held a job here before how do you begin to go to job interviews when you have two young children who are not in a daycare? It’s really one of those obviously stupid problems here which I constantly hear mothers complain about. I would think that a government that is desperately trying to encourage child birth would be more quick about acknowledging and solving it. They’ve not done a thing to improve it because apparently this has been the same problem since my mother-in-law’s time.