Kaoru OGAWA, Cultural Planning Section, full-time staff<\/p>\n
I really do love my job. Even before I changed jobs, I was the type who wasn\u2019t bothered by late-night overtime and all-nighters. During my time at the Academic and Student Affairs Section, Administration and Technology Management Center for Science and Engineering, work was beyond hectic due to reorganization of departments and graduate courses occurring at the time. I would begin in the morning and the next thing I realized, it was already night\u2014but I\u2019d think, maybe I could stick it out just one more hour\u2026 Even after getting married, this lifestyle continued, returning home after my wife was asleep and going to work before my wife woke up. I communicated with my wife through a journal. That\u2019s how bad a husband I was.<\/p>\n
After our first child was born and we began our life as a trio, we ran into problems with which of us would deal with our child\u2019s illnesses and drop our child off at nursery school. We both worked then and my wife was a teacher. She could not take days off and it was impossible for her to work in shifts. I also couldn\u2019t take much time off. We felt our only choice was to ask our parents for help\u2026 We left our beloved home behind and moved right near my parents\u2019 house in Kanagawa. My new commute took an hour and fifteen minutes one-way, including my running from place to place. I rushed to the nursery school the minute it opened at 7 AM, set the sheets on our child\u2019s futon, and ran to the station. The school only keeps our child until 6:30 PM, so I would rush out of the workplace at 5:15 PM, the official end of my workday, and run to Takadanobaba Station. This was my new life. When our child was sick, one or the other of us would take time off as much as possible, but my mother really did help us out tremendously.<\/p>\n
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