Name: Day in the Life of a Japanese Working Mom
Uploaded: 2025-08-19T18:05:02.000Z
Duration: 17 min 56 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Gerund

This is a day in the life of a Japanese working mom with two kids.

Adverbs of frequency

This is Hifumi, 27 years old, a working mother of two in Tokyo, and her morning always starts earlier than everyone else in the family.

While her kids and husband are asleep, she quietly gets ready for the day ahead.

Once her kids are up, she has little time for herself, so she takes advantage of this time.

Hifumi and her family live in this two-story house, moving here three years ago.

Prior, they lived in Shibuya, one of the busiest cities in Tokyo, but her and her husband found it too crowded to raise their children, and found this quiet place only a few stations away, quite common as Japanese on average move three to four times in their lifetime.

Now she starts with her family's morning breakfast preparation.

Although she works, so does her husband, but with longer working hours, so they must share the house chores, with her taking a bit more responsibility, including breakfast.

Interestingly, in Japan, recent studies show that these days, 75.9% of mothers work, which 30 years ago was less than 50%.

So growing up, she was never really interested in cooking, but learned a lot by using recipes, so that she could make her kids happy.

The kids aren't up by seven, she wakes them up.

Apparently, they were up late last night, so it's probably going to be a slow morning for them.

That's Nana, Hifumi's six-year-old daughter.

And that's Hachi, her three-year-old son.

So the kids usually go to nursery on 8.30 on weekdays, so mornings are a bit more chaotic on top of her regular work schedule, which starts shortly after she drops them off, and continues until the afternoon.

But since today's a weekend, there's a slower pace to things.

Nonetheless, Hifumi still has to balance some of her work today, while also taking care of the kids.

Oh, it looks like the kids are watching TikTok.

In Japan, it's pretty common for kids these days to watch this or YouTube to pass the time, and pretty common for working parents to welcome the assistants.

Nice, I guess Hifumi's eating yogurt with a lot of toppings.

You must have had to change your entire wardrobe.

So Hifumi owns and runs a churro business and recently opened her second shop, so she's been a bit more under pressure to manage both her home and work life.

Hence, between taking care of the kids and the house chores, you'll find her working.

The day is such a nice day, so she decided to take the kids to Odaiba after going by her shop to do some work.

Guess her husband's leaving for work now!

Hifumi, so what do you think the toughest part about raising kids is?

I don't know what I want to do, and I don't know why I'm crying.

But now, they say things like, I don't like this, I want to eat this, so it's a lot easier.

She says that when she's exhausted, she easily gets irritated, but tries to zone out to calm herself so she doesn't yell at them for the wrong reasons.

Hachi, what are you going to do with that trash can?

So the kids are old enough now to play on their own, so Hifumi makes use of this time to tidy up the house.

We are following a working mom with two kids.

We are going to Hifumi's house right now.

In Japan, law requires that all kids under the age of 6 are secured in a car seat.

But Nana and Hachi are not too fond of this law and usually struggle to get in.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Day in the Life of a Japanese Working Mom

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eventually

apparently

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