Diaper talk: Combi’s Sangenic and garbage collection

Garbage segregation is strictly implemented here in Japan. Every household has a copy of the daily garbage pickup schedule – what type of garbage gets picked up at certain days and at what time. And if you’re a delinquent and your combustible garbage is with PET bottles, trust that the garbage dudes definitely won’t pick it up.

The schedule differs with every area. in ours, burnables/decomposing garbage and plastic wrappers/cellophane/styro and similar stuff gets collected twice a week at Mondays and Fridays (albeit burnables should be in a different garbage bag as the plastics). PET bottles are on Tuesdays, big boxes and old magazines/books (should be neatly tied and bundled together) every second Saturday of the month, und so weiter. And oh, it’s required that you use see-through garbage bags, well, sometimes, it’s out of courtesy as well.

During winter, spring and fall, the decomposing garbage getting holed up inside your house is just fine. The cold ambient arrests the bacteria that would otherwise cause foul odour. It’s a different matter though during summer when it’s hot and decomposing garbage could fester fast. Thankfully, we don’t cook much nowadays, especially during the workweek so it’s not torture at all.

However, I can just imagine how used baby diapers would reek after four days of being held up in the garbage can. Or rather, I really don’t want to imagine at all.

Hence, I am convinced that this special diaper trash can made by Combi is really a boon for parents in properly disposing their baby’s poop.

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The “contraption” is actually a bit complicated when we tried to check it out – Mayumi and Hubs had quite a good laugh about it as we explored how it is used. But basically, it uses a disk of partitioned cellophane. When you throw away the used diaper inside, the opened partitioned cellophane will “candy-wrap” the diaper as it goes to the bottom, leaving a newly opened cellophane gaping wide open to receive yet another used diaper.

Supposedly, the “candy wrapping” and good trash can seal can eliminate the odour seeping out of the trash can. Hopefully. Let’s see how it is in a few months’ time or should I say, next summer.

how to gear your baby against bullying

I use “gear” and not “protect”. I have to face the fact that I can’t always be around my baby to be able to protect her against bullying and any abuse from her peers. And the mere fact as well that she has to run to us to be safe from bullying wouldn’t help her in the long run and would probably be even one of the reason why she’d be bullied.

I say “gear” because we want her to be equipped emotionally, physically and intellectually against any type of bullying. Of course it goes without saying that part of that “gearing up” is for her to be not the bully herself.

Why am I jumping to the bullying topic this early? This morning, Hubs told me about a junior high school student near Kyoto who committed suicide by jumping from the 11th floor of a building because he was being bullied by his schoolmates. The news insinuated as well that he tried to ask help from his teachers but the teachers even participated in the bullying albeit this is yet to be proven as the teachers, of course, are denying the allegations.

Hearing this news reminded us of this very pressing problem regarding bullying. All the way to Church, we had our brows furrowed with worry.

But no, we don’t have any concrete idea yet how to go about gearing up our baby. But this definitely will be one of our “main projects” from now on.

baby-safe home

After almost a month of hiatus, Hubs and I went about mall hopping again looking for baby stuff (and of course shopping for ourselves, on the side ^_^), with Babies R Us as our main objective this time.

We realised that the benefits of window shopping (onsite and online) is that as we get to see more options, what we want gets pretty more defined.

Earlier today, I was telling Hubs that when hopefully Baby already started walking, we should find a way to lock the cabinets in the kitchen, especially the ones under the sink, where the knives are – I do shiver at the thought.

When we looked around Babies R Us earlier, we found really cute options that could help us keep our home safer for Baby.

Cute electric plug socket covers.

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And THIS is what we need to lock our cabinets.

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I have a feeling Baby will have a lot of Miffy stuff; there’s so many cute baby stuff with Miffy. 🙂

This one’s to lock the fridge.

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Even as an adult, I still get my finger pinched between the door and its frame by accident. Knowing how painful it is, this one makes it a must to protect baby from getting pinched.

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This on the other HAND, is for unsafe corners.

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Who says fashion and function can’t go together? I’ve always been a proponent of fashion and function’s togetherness. Because really, they can.

Miyako and sleeptalking

Since he was out early, of course Hubs dropped by the bookstore. He bought this Baby Names book together with a pregnancy and baby magazine alongside his other books.

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After dinner, while I was munching the cake he bought for me last night, we were sorting out possible names for Baby.

Hence it was quite understandable why just a couple minutes ago, Hubs has been saying “Miyako, Miyako, Miyako, hello Miyako” (it was one of the names earlier which I rejected).

Playing along, I answered my sleeptalking husband no. But he said Miyako again and again. So I told him my reason why I don’t like it – yes, he is still asleep. But he heard my reason and answered “ah, really?”.

And then he fell silent after that.

Hehe. I think Hubs would be terribly embarrassed when he reads this tomorrow. Hehehe.

Diaclasse Air stroller, why so constant?

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve finally found the best stroller for baby at Akachan Honpo.

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But it’s at a whopping ¥63,000.

Thinking that buying it directly from the Combi page would be cheaper, I checked their brochure. But alas, it’s still the same price.

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Yet again thinking that it’ll be cheaper in Rakuten, Amazon’s Japanese rival in Internet retail, I checked out the price. And yet again exactly the same price.

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Diaclasse Air XZ-600, why so constant??