Bill Belew has raised 2 bi-cultural kids, now 34 and 30. And he and his wife are now parenting a 3rd, Mia, who is 8.

Blogging in Japan

We had three words for shoveling snow in Japan.

The first was yukikaki, the second was yukioroshi and the third was yukihori. You might guess that yuki is the word for snow. I know, I know, the Eskimos have like 103 words but they don’t do business in Japan.

Yukikaki means to shovel the snow and toss it aside, into a trench or a nearby stream or even out into the street.

Where I lived, Niigata, on the west coast of Japan…America is not the only country with a west coast, mind you, we had so much snow we had to do yukioroshi, that is to throw the snow off the roof.

Sometimes we got so much snow, we had to climb up on the roof and throw the snow off to keep the snow from crushing the house. Yes, some doors are made out of wood and paper.

The third word, yukihori, was what they did in the eastern part of our prefecture/state. It snowed so much, the houses were buried and you had to dig a hole in the snow to find your house.

Yep! Been there, done that!

Are you thinking to do business in Japan? Want to do it on the west coast? Take your snowshoes.

Oh, and Far East Russia is less than 2 hours away.

Talk to Bill and others about their experiences raising bi-cultural Japanese-American kids.