Baby Plus stuff:

We’re coming down to the end of the 3rd week. So far, nothing too specatular to report, other than Baby Plus is REALLY annoying! The rhythms are really fast now so its not as boring as it was during the first week. This means that its harder to ignore or sleep through. It’s like having a drum machine in the room, but not quite as loud.

The baby does seem to respond to it though. She moves quite a bit more compared to times when it’s not on, but again this could be sheer coincidence. The reason why I say this, because my wife says that she (the baby) is very active throughout the day. So coincidently, “Baby Plus time” could just be the time of day she chooses to be the most active. Lesson 4 will start in a couple of days, so we’ll see if she responds any differently.

Knowing that IT is now a SHE

Although she won’t admit it, my wife and I really wanted a girl. So learning that IT is a SHE makes us both pretty happy. Growing up in a generation with nothing but boys in our family was probably a bit boring for everyone. My uncle eventually did have a girl, but it wasn’t until we were all teenagers. So having a couple of girls (our child) and my cousin’s new baby, may bring a bit of spice into the family. The only thing about having a girl that may not be interesting is not having someone to do “guy things” with, like working on cars or playing sports for example. But having said that, I was never too much into playing sports, so I don’t think I would have been too good at playing ball or whatever typical father-son activities there may be. I’ve always been into artsy things like theater arts, pencil sketching, so in that sense, it’s probably a good thing.

Names….

Naming our child has at times been a very sensitive issue for my wife and me. There were a couple of occassions when the discussion escalated into argument. But in the end, we were able to sit down and discuss it out rationally. I ultimately had to sacrafice my first choice for a Western girl’s name, which was “Rebecca”. There was no logical reason why I chose this name other than I thought it sounded cool. But I figured that no one would call her “Rebecca” and rather call her “Becky” which is a name of a very popular TV talent here in Japan. And although Becky is a cute name, people may think I named her after the talent, so maybe it was a good idea to axe that name.

Conversely, my wife chose a Japanese boy’s name that just didn’t sound like something I would want to call our child for the rest of his life. By the way, the name was “Tohma” which is really unusual, even in Japan. I made it clear in the beginning that we weren’t giving our child any unusual or uncommon names with complex Chinese characters that they won’t be able to write until they are in high school, because it just complicates things for everyone. But of course, that doesn’t mean that the name has to be boring.

Ultimately, we made a list of a few names (both Western and Japanese) that we both liked and agreed on. For the Japanese girl’s name, we wanted to maintain our family tradition and use the “香” character (which means frangance) somewhere in the name. I always liked the name Haruka, written 春香, which means the fragrance of spring. It’s a fairly common girl’s name, yet not boring, and it the Chinese characters are simple enough for a grade school child to write. So this name was decided pretty early on.

The western name was not so easy to decide. But we got it down to a pretty short list in the end:

Victoria
Sydnie
Natalie
Marisol

I didn’t want something that sounded like a child’s name, because eventually she will be an adult. At the same time I didn’t wnat something that was too mature sounding. And of course, being in Japan, it has to be something that is somewhat common otherwise she will be questioned all her life on how to pronounce her name. With Japanese linguisitics being so low resolution, Japanese people tend really bastardize and mispronounce Western names. Marisol is more of a Latin name, so Japanese people would most likely pronounce it closer to its original Latin pronounciation, which would be good. The bad part is that people might just call her Mari, which is already a Japanese name and would defeat the purpose of giving her a contrasting western name. I personally wanted something a bit more European sounding, so we pretty much decided that Victoria is the winner. Thanks to Victoria Beckham aka Posh Spice (whom I really dislike), the name “Victoria” has grown quite known in Japan, so no one will question how to pronounce it. And as a child, we can call her either Vicki or Tori, which are common nicknames for Victoria, and equally easy to use in Japan.

We never got to decide on a good western boy’s name. I really like the name “William” but can’t stand “Bill” or “Will”. But we were throwing around the name “Aiden” for a while. It’s fairly common but not obnoxiously overused like John or Michael. And the Japanese name would have been “Yuhki” pronounced yoo’ kie , written “悠貴”which I admit would have been a really cool name if he were a boy.

The Verdict

Although Not ABSOLUTELY written in stone, I think its safe to say that now we know that the baby is a girl (with a good degree of certainty), the baby’s names will be:

Western Name: Victoria Hayashi 林　ヴィクトリア
Japanese Name: Haruka Hayashi 林　春香