Last New Year’s Eve, my family and I were in Tuscany in a charming and idyllic farmhouse. The kind farmer came over to drop off some New Year’s Eve fireworks for our son to enjoy. He gave them to my husband who understood from the hand gestures to strike it like a match, then toss it. Luckily we had the sense (although it stopped there!) for me to test it out before our son came outside. I went out, struck it, watched a little flare like poof…then nothing. I thought, “Oh that was lame.” Then.. BOOM! It exploded in my hand with the force of an exploding hunting flare (which it turned out was what it was…) I was blinded, couldn’t hear for the ringing in my ears, and could not feel my hand. The terror that ensued in a foreign country, with no phone, and no idea where to go will not be forgotten soon. Miraculously, I have no long-term damage, although the emotional scars were worse than the physical. I kept going numb and thinking, “HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID?? I am opposed to home fireworks, I know the dangers. What if I was blind and could never look in my beautiful boy’s face again? What if I could never hear his laugh? What if he had been outside…” The thoughts were endless.

My longwinded point is this: Sometimes when we are outside of our home country, we experience the brief freedom of the “When in Rome” attitude to safety and caution. We find ourselves doing things that we would NEVER do, or let our children do, in our home countries. We hope in this edition to provide some safety options, and Tokyo-specific safety solutions such as a portable car harnesses for taxis, where to buy bicycle helmets, and a pullout emergency call sheet for your fridge. I hope that in a small way, we can help
Carin Smolinski
Editor-in-chief