(Music)

So i'm back with another video, this one a little bit different than what we usually do on this channel

But as a lot of you know, I recently had a baby boy

So I wanted to share this

Experience with you because it totally had me surprised about all the different things that I do here in Japan

Especially me coming from a western country the U.S., but in order for me to do that, I need to bring in some special guests.

Hey

Say hello to everyone

Konnichiwa

What's that? it's mic, oh, he's really into the mic right now

If you guys actually want to see what we're doing on the daily, if you guys want to see you know

What's happening in our regular lives either check out our Instagram account Tokyo Zebra or check out our YouTube channel. Right Wolfie?

Yeah, yeah, give me a hug before you go.

He's a lip syrup today

All right

How is he good? Yeah

Oh also before we start if you guys want to see what we're doing on the daily check out our Instagram accounts

And if you want to help support the channel check out the Japan merch finally if you guys have any questions

Check out the discord community right there. So the first thing uh, that was really surprising about Japan

Is painless birth and the fact is like in the U.S. they actually don't even call it painless part. They call it epidurals

Oh, okay. Yeah, but in Japan they call it painless painless birth. We call it: Mutsu Bunben

in Japan. I was surprised that it's not very common here in Japan. I think from like statistics

It's about 5.3 % of all women giving birth in Japan use it

So it's very very low. I can count the girls who had a Mutsu Bun Ben, Yeah.

Most the girls use regular natural work a lot of the the doctors in the community say that childbirth and like

experiencing the pain is kind of like a natural part of becoming a mother so that they

want to like have the woman experience that also a lot of like doctors think that childbirth is not actually a

Like medical operation and they don't think that you should use medicine in order to give birth. It should be something natural

So that's why they don't have this painless birth. People in Japan,

Basically believe that having a pain will make you a mother and it's interesting because like since it's not really practiced here in Japan

There's not a lot of like a lot of the hospitals you go to won't even offer it so I think in Tokyo alone

There's only about 56 hospitals or clinics that offer painless childbirth, right?

So it's like very very difficult and for us living like in the center of Tokyo. There was only about like five places

That we could go to like that. It was like in commuting distance. Yeah, like even like though all those five they don't all offer

24-hour service. Yeah for the Mutsu Bun Ben because there's like a limited number of doctor who does the "Masui"

Anesthesiologist. Yeah

Yes, they have a limited number of them

So they don't offer that at night or on weekend. If you have contractions

Yeah on either of those times. You're pretty much, you know screwed so

I had to choose the one that over 24 hours, which was just two for me. Oh, okay. Yeah since the hospital so those

Mutsu Bun Ben that are limited. Um, the beds are limited, right so you have to book it right when you find out that you're pregnant

So when we were like when was that like five weeks like right when you found out that you were pregnant?

Yeah, I was pregnant and I had this like letter that says I'm pregnant. I had to make a phone call. I'm only five weeks

To book the bed. I felt like it was like you applying to college or something where you're like

Well, I give are we gonna get in? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

Yeah, and then like I actually get rejected it's really really really competitive. Yeah

Okay, so that's the first thing that was surprising another thing

That's surprising. I think a lot of people were surprised also that are watching our vlog

You know on our Tokyo Zebra channel is that the stay is actually quite long

It's actually like about five to seven days on average here in Japan

Yeah, in my case. It was four days after giving birth one day before because it was the plan delivery

So you said six days five nights six days five nights

Yeah, so I was actually quite surprised with like the total length

But then I was actually also kind of surprised at how much it really cost here in Japan. In the States,

It's actually quite expensive in some other western countries, but from what I hear like in other european countries, it's actually free.

Yeah, I think Canada is also free here in Japan

You actually end up paying about 500 000 to about a little over a million yen

Yep, but you also do get some government assistance, but that really depends on which wards you live in right?

Well, some wards offers like additional support like Shibuyaku and Minatoko as far as I know. Yeah, they offered

Jumanonijuman, so that's like a little bit extra

But like that's a rare case. I think in our case we ended up spending about childbirth itself... It was about

1.1 million yen, and then we had about

520 000 yen, from the government

So roughly paid around 600 000 yen, which is like roughly around 5000 dollars to give childbirth

So for the six days, that's actually pretty good like they took care of you

and some of the things that were kind of interesting is like it's not actually your regular stay which also kind of

Blew me away. Um, you also actually had a welcome pack, right? Oh, yeah

Yeah

When you book the stay or the bed, I got this little piece of paper

Basically tells you like so this is what we offer you like a gift bag and this is what you need to bring

So the things they offered are fast bassett hair dryer

breastfeeding pillow bath towels baby clothes diapers and wipes

basically what you need to take care of the baby and just like live normally. It almost sounds like you're checking into a Hotel

yeah, yeah, basically, yeah. Yeah, you actually don't really need to bring anything. In my case

Yeah, but our hospital was like kind of like a smaller like personal clinic and if you go to a bigger like giant hospitals

Yeah, they offer less stuff. So you actually have to bring a lot of stuff before I continue

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Or slash Paolo from Tokyo and get 10 off your first domain or website and something that's pretty comforting when

going and like staying there is they actually

Give the mothers, classes or they provide or offer these classes to them

So you go in not only just to give birth, but you actually learn like how to take care of your baby

I think that hospital's stay actually is the time to learn like that's what hospital like, you know prepares for the mothers

Yeah, so they have really good classes with other mothers like breastfeeding

how to put the baby in the bath and what you should be worrying about after the hospital's stay

It's like all of the mothers that are having babies at the same time will get together

You know at certain times during the day with the nurses and then they'll like teach you

All the different things that you need to do and if you have any questions, for example, you know

What color should the poop be? How much are you supposed to be breastfeeding?

How do I change diapers like how to cut nails like all the questions like mothers would have?

They have all of them in one group so that they can ask the questions together and you know learn all at the same time

Unfortunately because of the quarantine, um the classes

Yeah, she couldn't it's cancelled. They she couldn't yeah, it got cancelled

Yeah, unfortunately, but they did give you like at least one class, right? It wasn't much of a class, but it was like a lecture

Yeah, just for the um the bath, baby

Yeah, um the nurse just showed me how to bathe the baby, but I also got this little booklet

This was the um material for the um classes that I was supposed to take. It actually has this like how to bath a baby

And what you should prepare for the bath and also..

All about babies health so you have like an instruction manual

For how to raise your baby. Since I couldn't get the class

Uh, the nurse actually came to my room and like she actually went over everything. Yeah. Yeah, so that was actually nice

Yeah, so it's like instead of having, you know, like a group class. You got like a private class

And then there was some stuff that was kind of specific to our clinic that were also pretty surprising

I've heard some stories about like how hard it is right after pregnancy here in Japan and like also in the States

How hard it is but like this specific hospital like really focused on recovery

Right. Um, they really wanted to make sure that the mother was properly taken care of. So for example,

If she got tired like at night or wanted to get some sleep

They would actually take our baby and take care of him. And so that she can get some sleep

Yeah, right after giving birth you are

Exhausted if you have experience, you probably know your butt hurts your like body hurts and everything hurts and you're sleepy

Yeah, so it actually helped a lot. So in any hospitals in japan, they're either

Focused on like mother's body recovery like my hospital or focus on breastfeeding

So if your hospital is focused on the breastfeeding they're going to be focusing on like getting your breast milk work

Working or working before your mother's body recovery. So basically it's hard to get asleep

That's why I chose the one that's focused on mother's body recovery

Yeah, but like unfortunately since you know, they don't really teach you much about breastfeeding

Yeah, my breasts wasn't working until like when I was leaving the hospital

There are merits and the merits of these ones so pretty much in. Japan

You get to choose whether you want to focus on breastfeeding and like getting your breasts to work

Right away and like you want to focus on that or if you want to have some time to recover

which is that's pretty nice you get to actually choose and then another thing that just completely

blew me away and

I wish I was actually there because the food looked amazing

I really wanted you to be there. Yeah, because I wanted to share with you. Yeah

But I mean, first of all look at some of this food that she got this was right after she gave birth

This is "Iwaizen" which means like celebration meal. Uh, you get like a really nice meal after the delivery

It's like, uh, we did it

This is what I got. Yeah, I got a steak and some kind of fish meal fried scallop. Wait. No, is that a blueberry?

It's a blueberry cheesecake

And some kind of soup. Oh and look at that. You even got some wine. Yes

That's like your first wine and you know, what like a year. I wasn't even sure if I was able to drink wine

yeah, I mean I was supposed to be breastfeeding but I guess it's like a little bit like I can drink it in like a

Second but still they gave you still yes. That was yeah. That was great

Like let me know if that happens in your country or in fact

Let us know that if there's anything that you guys do that's different or that just shocked you as well

Like let us know in the comments

This is the lunch. I got the next day the second day. I got the chicken steak. Lots of veggies. Oh

I love chicken steaks. It was really good. And then I got fish, you know, like this place is really focused on meal very nutritious

Meal and it always comes with two main dish

It's really hard to finish everything

Yeah, but it's nice that you get to you know

You always have options all the more reason why I should have been there. I know right?

A lot of Japanese like hospitals. If you don't go to this one. They do also have pretty good food like pretty decent food

It's not like terrible. I hear some horrible stories from other countries

But you know in general Japan has pretty good food

I think this place especially was shocking like I mean look at that food. This is the second dinner

Oh, the scallop was so good. I got the giant scallop this really garlicky lemony sauce

Full of salad pork cutlet I think yeah pork and vegetable soup. That's the dessert

Oh, this steak was so good. That's stuff. Wow. We got some fish roasted beef roast beef steak

And then you got a baked cake, yeah, yeah and this is the breakfast the next day oh those are the thick bacon

Those are large pieces of bacon really

Wow, what else? Okay. So there's a there's a lot more. Oh and this is the

Japanese style dinner that I really liked. Oh you got tempura as well. It's a lot too. It's like a vegetable tempura. I got fish

And Miso soup. Wow, that's super Japanese. Yeah also Japanese stuff breakfast. Oh so you got like porridge

We've got some fish got some cuts of fruit in there. Got some tofu. Got some miso soup

Oh, sorry

It looks like tofu and I got mozuku

And lots of veggies she got a lot of meals. I wish I was there

Yeah, so that's another thing that is super super shocking that you know, your meals were that good?