The following is cross-posted from our good friends at WeParent.com from their Fatherhood Freestyle column penned by Fanon Che Wilkins. Fanon Che “co-parents his two children from Kyoto, Japan, where he is a professor in the Graduate School of American Studies. When he isn’t writing for WeParent or in transit with his youngsters, he’s indulging his love of snowboarding, Hip Hop and arguing with his friends about what’s dope, and what’s not.”

A couple years back I was fortunate enough to be given an opportunity to take a new teaching position in Kyoto, Japan, where I still live today. When I got the news, I was so excited that I told all of my closest friends and family. I also shared my new opportunity with my ex-wife and suggested that our kids could accompany me for a year and then begin alternating between the U.S. and Japan on an annual basis. I was so hyped that I really believed that we would be able to put together a well balanced, year–on year–off living arrangement like my parents had done for me. When I was growing up I lived with my mother for one year, and then with my father for a year. This arrangement continued from elementary school until I began high school. My ex-wife was not in agreement, to say the least. Needless to say, I was shocked and could not understand why we weren’t seeing eye-to-eye on the issue.

You see, my ex and I had done what few couples have been able to do; we had orchestrated a harmonious no -contest divorce, shared custody of our children, lived around the corner from each other, and had put in place a system where our kids rotated between us on alternating Wednesdays. This proved to work well for everyone involved. So, it was within this context that I thought that we could put this idyllic show on the road—like across the Pacific. Wrong!

Find out what happened next here.