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THANKS AND APPRECIATIONS

May we collectively offer our thanks and appreciations to all who have so kindly commented here and sent congratulatory emails on the birth of the surprise twins Mitsuki and Miasa, who are doing very well. Although they cannot see fully yet, they listen intently when we tell them of these things. And I can tell they thank you too.

To address one question posed by Nils regarding the boshi-techo, a sort of mother-child medical notebook, which everyone in the Japanese medical establishment and bureaucracy, in feudal Tokugawa population control fashion, rabidly insists is absolutely lifeordeath essential to obtain (for which purpose an early ultrasound scan is "required").

The Saitama midwives' organization, for one, poohpoohs all that concern, being on the side of the mothers and children and against unnecessary medical procedures such as a blast of ultrasound to a developing fetus (basically a medical guinea pig in an expensive multigenerational experiment regarding the unknown long-term effects of ultrasound on genomic replication). Kasumi was born in Spain, but was also a Japanese citizen, and was two years old when we returned here; we got an ex-post-facto boshi-techo for her, no problem.

When Kasumi was about two months pregnant with Kaya, the doctor she consulted blasted her with ultrasound before she knew what was happening, which upset her greatly (even as simply violating her rights of intelligent decision, which rights too many doctors in Japan reserve completely unto themselves, over their subservient patients) and she refused all further ultrasound, which many doctors here prefer to give monthly throughout gestation. How have we gotten along without it, all these millennia.

Anyway, the boshi-techo, being basically sort of an immunization record and of no essential import other than for bureaucratic intimidation, and we foregoing all such treatments to the extent possible, we and Kasumi have never used the boshi-techo since they were obtained (Kaya is still shot free) and the twins will get boshi-techo too, without an ultrasound certificate, which doctors and nurses and town hall clerks vehemently insist (to newly pregnant mothers who want to refuse ultrasound) is impossible.

I could diatribe at length about this, but will stop here; if anyone has any other questions about any of it, please feel free to ask, I'll do my best to get the right answers. And thanks again to you all from the carefully attentive twins. I'll try not to write about them all the time.