Finding a life partner, getting married and trying to have children in the midst of the pandemic would have been hard enough in a country that supports LGBTQ+ families, but doing all of that in Japan brought extra layers of complexity. Join Carey and Allison as they share and reflect on their experiences with fertility treatment, prenatal support, name changes, visas, workplace challenges, parental rights and birth registration, as a foreign same-sex couple living just outside of Tokyo. It will be an informal session where participants are welcome to ask questions and share their own experiences. Carey is a South African and British dual national, while Allison is Canadian. Both are in their mid-thirties and teach English at private high schools. Allison first came to Japan on the JET Programme in 2012, and has been here ever since. Carey lived here from 2009 - 2016 and then moved back to South Africa for a few years, before returning to Japan.