My Story
The best part of traveling is meeting new people!
Nice to meet you!
My name is YOKO. I live in Osaka, Japan with my energetic sons, aged 6 and 9, and my American husband.
I organize a multilingual parenting community called Global MOM to MOM because I want to raise children with a global perspective. We have over 600 members, consisting of foreign moms living in Japan and Japanese moms.
I live near Osaka Castle Park, a famous tourist spot, where I often see many foreign tourists. When I see families with children traveling, I often think, "I'd love to chat with them!"
However, I often hesitate to approach them suddenly while they're walking.
I've come up with the idea of starting this website.
My community Global MOM to MOM held kids friendly events every weekend for families who live in Japan.
I'd like to invite families traveling from overseas to participate in these events. Travelers can enjoy meeting local Japanese and non-Japanse families.
For us as local families, meeting new people from around the world is a valuable experience too.
While children play together at the event, parents can introduce themselves and enjoy various conversations. We speak Japanese, English, and more!
If the children become friends during the event, we can go out for dinner together after the event or we might want to invite you to our house for dinner!
Exchanging contact information and keeping in touch even after returning home would be wonderful. and reuniting when they visit each other's countries.
For both children and parents, these encounters are sure to be a highlight of their life!
The best part of traveling is meeting local people!
I also feel it from my experiences of being a traveler.
In February 2024, I traveled to European countries and Morocco with my family. The most memorable aspect of the trip was not the tourist sites or delicious meals, but rather the people we met along the way.
My sons loved playing outside, so we visited parks in every country we went to.
In Spain, rather than visiting the famous Sagrada Familia, my sons enjoyed playing in the park in front of the castle.
They started to get tired of playing with just brothers and wanted to play with other children.
With that in mind, they happened to meet local kids and naturally started playing tag in the playground. Even though they didn't speak Spanish, the kids had fun playing together.
In France, they heard English being spoken and excitedly exclaimed, "I found someone who speaks English! Let's play!" and ended up playing with children traveling from the United States and the UAE.
In the UK, we played with my friend's children who live in London at a park.
In Morocco, we met the children of a friend who runs a guesthouse in Marrakech. At first, they were shy around each other, but soon they were running around and playing together. The conversations were a mix of French, Arabic, English, and Japanese, which made it incredibly interesting.
Through this trip, I became convinced that the best part of traveling is meeting new people.
May 15, 2024
Yoko Reynolds