By the way, if your kids are "loud," you have three months to train them in the distinction between "inside voices" and "outside voices." Might as well start now. You can even study up on Japanese manners and make it into kind of an educational unit.

Japanese people just aren't very "loud." I've mentioned this on this forum before, but I once rendezvoused with an American acquaintance in Tokyo, and his normal speaking voice could be heard above the gentle hum of the collective voices of the rush hour crowd in Shinjuku Station.