Weekends with otosan


My husband and I have found a place to stay just in front of a small park that is so very ideal playground for kids. I have actually owned it as our own garden, and I intend to hold my parties and host my guests in it. It is very convenient and spacious enough to accommodate my hordes of Filipino friends who always chat and laugh endlessly, which is not so safe and wise in typical quiet Japanese neighborhood.

On weekends, we do our readings in the park. Mindless of the falling of small leaves or rather petals from the sakura tree. The park is so small, hardly five hundred square meters, but it has swings, slides, benches and trees of various colors. Most beautiful of them is the sakura tree. It’s not very pink or lilac, but more of white in color. I am not even so sure if it is the sakura tree that the Japanese refer to.

I love the park because of the many kids I get to watch. I find Japanese kids very cute, I usually just feast my eyes on them from afar. But I have noticed that there aren’t very many of them. I guess, it really is true that this country is having some population problem.

On a regular basis, I usually see these kids with their mothers or probably their nannies. But on weekends, they are with their daddies. I find it so adorable that these gentlemen, free from their dark suits which they always wear, whether they are NTT executives, or simply giving tissues away in the streets, donning casual clothes and playing around with their little tots. I could see that these daddies do enjoy giving their kids a company, as much as the mommies whom I usually see on weekdays.

One time I joined a homestay program, and I learned from my foster family, a young couple with an energetic two-year old son, that on weekends, dads usually take over of taking care for their kids. This is somehow to unburden the overworked housewife (this amazes me no end that a first world country like Japan do not overlook the difficulties of housekeeping and taking care of the children for five straight days from Mondays to Fridays), and to develop the bonding between the father and children.

I am not really sure if this is standard to Japanese families, especially the young ones, but I have made my husband swear that he too will share a great deal of domestic responsibilities, especially on looking after our future children, and send them to parks on weekends.