{"id":8649,"date":"2009-09-30T10:40:46","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T14:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=8649"},"modified":"2009-09-30T16:12:36","modified_gmt":"2009-09-30T20:12:36","slug":"wit-life-50-under-the-wire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2009\/09\/30\/wit-life-50-under-the-wire\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #50: Under the Wire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>WITLi<\/strong><\/a><\/em>fe<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong> <\/strong><\/a>is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter\/Translator\/Writer Stacy Smith<\/a><\/strong> (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03).\u00a0 Recently she\u2019s been<\/em> watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together <\/em>w<\/em>ith her own observat<\/em>ions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Big news for expecting parents<\/a>.\u00a0 Going into effect today in Japan (October 1), child care costs will be\u00a0 borne directly by hospitals.\u00a0 Previously pregnant women would have to pay the one-time delivery\/child rearing costs up front and later received 380,000 yen back, but now it will be directly paid by the hospitals at a 40,000 yen increase of 420,000 yen .\u00a0 This was initially proposed in August of last year by Health & Welfare Minister Yoichi Matsuzoe, who is looking to address the decreasing birth rate plaguing his country by adding an economic incentive.<\/p>\n

A 28-year old new mother who had her baby on September 29 said with a grimace, “I somehow feel like I lost out by giving birth 2 days before the increase.\u00a0 It’s going to cost a lot of money going forward.”\u00a0 A mother who was about to give birth on the eve of the 1st expressed, “If possible, I want my baby to wait until midnight to come out.\u00a0 Of course, if he\/she is born healthy I will have nothing to complain about…”<\/p>\n

Though new mothers like this change, the hospital side has not been as embracing.\u00a0 The head of one medical clinic estimated that as a result of the implementation, as many as 10% of hospitals will have to close and 30% will be in a state of economic crisis.\u00a0 “Although we are being told to implement this as of the 1st, the details have not all been determined and we are in a state of deep confusion.”\u00a0 He added that if this continues, there will be a decrease in the amount of places where babies can be delivered.\u00a0 Stay tuned to see how this is reconciled within medical institutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter\/Translator\/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03).\u00a0 Recently she\u2019s been watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. Big news for expecting parents.\u00a0 Going into effect today in Japan (October 1), child care costs will be\u00a0 borne directly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,30,18,1,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdote-article","category-japan-trends","category-translatinginterpreting","category-uncategorized","category-wit-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-2fv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8649"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8657,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8649\/revisions\/8657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}