Being away has got me thinking

We're back from a long vacation visiting family in the UK, back into searing heat of 36 degrees and soaring humidity which has got me thinking about whether I want to stay here and all the reasons we are living here in Japan right now. At the same time I feel more energized about doing more with my time here - rekindling my enjoyment of French at the local Alliance Francaise and running an English class for 3-5 yr-olds are on the agenda for the coming month.
I'm no longer going to be a slave to my cleaning, cooking and bento prep. I'm going to make some money (hopefully) and feel good about being able to speak a foreign language (finally).
Friends say, what about your Japanese? Why aren't you learning that in Japan?
It's not that I don't want to learn Japanese, it's just that living here it's easy enough to find situations in which to practise - asking for things at the supermarket, asking for directions etc. which is all good, practical stuff and which is all I need. Maybe lurking beneath is the comforting assumption that I'm not going to be here that long, so why bother?

So what's changed in the last six weeks? Well, obviously seeing chibbi-chan delighting in playing with her cousins (a little boy her own age and twin babies of 8 months) and grandparents, as well as bonding again with my own siblings and an awareness of my parents' seventieth looming in the not-too-distant future. They want me to come back, never really accepted the idea I'd gone for good, won't believe that a poky apartment, fastidious society, dutiful wife and housekeeper are me.
As if to reinforce the anomaly of living away from both families as we do, this weekend at yochien is Grandparents' Day. Children are invited to bring along grandparents and celebrate their near and dear ones in a public forum. Only none of chibbi-chan's grandparents live here -YK's are working over in Beijing; mine are semi-retired in Gloucestershire. I'm wondering if attendance is mandatory or if we can gracefully bow out. No other mum in my class is in this quandary, so far as I know.
I always envied women I met in LA after I had chibbi-chan, who volunteered that their mom watches Dillon twice a week, or even grandmoms who dropped off, picked up and otherwise watched the entire brood of grandkids every day while their daughters were out teaching (and who lived only two doors down). These were Japanese Americans, the grandmoms, most of whom I met at Mommy and Me classes.

Am I looking at things through rose-tinted glasses? I'm not naive enough to think that if I was living back in the UK my mum would look after chibbi-chan for me whenever I felt like a break (in fact, I know she wouldn't - she is firmly of the school of thought which says if you have kids you should be prepared to look after them yourself). And I know other friends in the UK, plenty of them, whose parents and parents-in-law who have offered money towards childcare, rather than ponying up the time and responsibility themselves.
My sister says I should count myself lucky I don't have to work while I'm caring for chibbi-chan. It's not the norm, these days in the UK. But it is here, at least where we're living in Nagoya. At a mums' lunch I attended in April, just after the kids began yochien, 21 out of 22 mums were able to make it (meaning most of them weren't holding full-time jobs). So maybe I should be glad we are living here and able to rent a heavily-subsidized apartment in a good area of town for very little, thanks to the company.

If we were back in the UK now, would we be able to afford for me not to work full-time? Would I want that and to sacrifice the time I currently have to spend with chibbi-chan (and the guilt I'd feel)? If only life was that simple ...