Help! My Children are Japanese! Episode I

Typical Japanese children

The Salaryman family live in our little housing community in the outskirts of Tokyo in an area populated almost exclusively by Japanese. I have seen one white British guy on a few occasions who lives somewhere in the area and our neighbor with a Chinese wife, but that's basically it.

The environment that little Ms. Sunshine and Salaryman Jnr. are growing up in a typical modern Japanese one, but I was anyway hoping that they might grow up with a little broader view of the world than most Japanese kids. However, it seems like my hopes were futile and in this fantastic brand new series I will document the key moments where I have come to realized that my offspring are Japanese...

A few months back I was sent back to the old country for business and since my visit was for a few weeks and the home office very accommodating and helpful, I decided to bring the whole Salaryman family over as a team-building exercise. Some of Mrs. Sunshine's main concerns were the lack of proper Japanese rice in Sweden and the lack of a bath tub in the apartment we were going to stay. I swiftly ignored her concerns with a casual "they're kids, they'll eat whatever cheap rice we put in their feeding through and won't even notice!" and "they'll be fine without a bath, they have strong Swedish genes in them!".

I think it goes without saying that I was wrong... Terribly wrong...

We first tried with regular non-sticky long corned rice but that was met with a frowned nose and refusal to eat by little Ms. Sunshine and Jnr. Salaryman throwing the rice all over the room except in his mouth. Next, we tried with jasmine rice which I sheepishly thought might be received a little more favorably, but again frowning faces and rice ending up all over the room. Finally relenting, we resorted to buying expensive "sushi rice" which was the only thing we could find in the area where we stayed. Annoyingly for me the kids launched into that as hungry wolves while Mrs. Sunshine gave me a "told you so" stare.

That's not to mention the struggle to get the kids in the shower after the dinner. The screams of terror, fear and desperation that we had to endure every day during shower time we have not experienced since that time. After a few days of going through this I was starting to despair and went to a local toy store and luckily found (despite it being off summer season) a small inflatable pool that would fit into the shower room. 

Again... With the inflatable pool inserted as a poor bathtub substitute, the kids turned from miserable hellions to smiling angels, happily giggling away and again cooperating all of a sudden. Of course, while I got the "told you so" stare again from Mrs. Sunshine...

I should just have the bathtub physically removed from our house, after a few years they should been weaned off it!