Half a year in Japan, half a year abroad?

3 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

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   **Half a year in Japan, half a year abroad?**

   Hello!

   Has anyone here lived this lifestyle? Namely, spending all winters in Japan and summers abroad.

   My husband is Japanese, I’m from Europe. We have two small kids.

   There is the classical problem of missing half of the family etc. I’m trying to think of a plan of having my cake and eating it 😀

   So I hope there is someone here who could share their experience.

   Of course there is a long list of problems to solve and everything depends on various circumstances but it doesn’t seem impossible with flexible jobs and options for educating kids.

   I just hope someone has lived this life and could share how they did it.

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2. American summers are June to August, so my japanese prof always went home to Japan and enrolled his daughters in the local elementary school. You can do this until high school, when they have to test to get in, and thats what he did. He also spent the two week winter break abroad and usually the spring break.

   It wasnt 50-50 split, but he really wanted his kids to “feel japanese” … the oldest daughter hated it. She wanted to play in the summer and not go to school. She has a real sense of lost identity (two full japanese parent who came to usa though, so a bit different than your situation)

   In elementary school, and maybe middle, i don’t think its a problem (unless your kids start speaking weird english because of japanese curriculum, or fall behind in math because their math lessons are pretty advanced in usa standards lol)

   If you want to try, id start with school breaks in their European country first and see how it goes. A solid 6 month split might be rough, imo. Im from the US and husband is japanese and we are starting the same talk of what we should do to get equal family time. Good luck!

3. We have a slightly more complicated setup: I’m American, wife is Japanese, we live in Switzerland. One elementary school age child (born and raised in Zurich). We have managed to do about 5 weeks per year in Japan and California every year for the last 10 years. We manage this mainly because a) I have a tech job which is 100% remote, and b) we stay with family on both sides. It was easy until elementary school started but we still manage to make it work with a bit more elbow grease and planning. From an experience perspective it’s unbeatable for the kids. If you can swing it it’s totally worth it.