Rehearsal Times Over

"T" is for Toothfairy

2010-03-18T14:13:00.005+09:00

On the top shelf of the dish cupboard in my kitchen is where I keep the crystal champagne flutes that my parents gave us for our wedding toast. There is also a crystal replica of the university that my husband used to work at in Osaka. Next to it there's a beautiful Japanese tea set given to my husband by his best friend from his home town. Another beautiful tea set (this one painted pottery) given to me by my mother. The rest of the top shelf is crowded with wine glasses, beer mugs, anything breakable and valuable--and a lot of stray baby teeth. There are a lot of tiny, pearl white teeth--front teeth, bottom teeth, molars--all of them are baby teeth. My children's teeth specifically.

They are on the top shelf of the dish cupboard because neither one of my children has ever shown any interest in finding out what I keep up there. When I get up there to dust, I always experience a little recoil of shock. It's like an episode of Fox's T.V. show, "Bones." The white glint of the teeth always catches my eye first. Then I remember, our family believes in the Tooth fairy, and I go about my dusting or wine goblet fetching or whatever my reason for getting up there was.

The teeth are not supposed to technically be in our house anymore. They are supposed to be at the Tooth fairy's place. They were wriggled, pulled and coaxed from my children's mouths (by my children themselves) to be carefully positioned under their pillows for collection. These baby teeth are offered hopefully at dusk in trade for a shinning 100 yen coin in the morning. Each of my daughters has a special "Tooth Fairy Pillow", with a little pocket sewn on it to hold the lost tooth and the shinny 100 yen coin the good fairy will leave when she flutters in and discovers the tooth--her treasure.

I grew up in America where children believe in Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. When my family moved from Illinois to California when I was in the second grade the most traumatic part of the move for me was that I lost a baby tooth just after we arrived at our new home in California. Only one thought dominated my mind, "WHAT IF THE TOOTH FAIRY DIDN'T REALIZE I HAD MOVED? WHAT IF SHE HAD NO IDEA WHERE ME AND MY LOST, READY TO BE CONVERTED TO COIN, BABY TOOTH WAS?"

I drew huge maps and signs and forced my father to climb up a ladder and tape them to our roof.

I have no idea when my belief in the tooth fairy ended. Did I loose all my baby teeth and get too busy perfecting teenage angst to even ponder the true fate of all those baby whites? Did someone pull me aside and tell me, "hey, it's your folks that are slipping you the quarters at night. There ain't no little winged tooth fairy." If it was the later, even though I have no memory of it, I am sure it was my older brother. I do remember him destroying the myth of the Easter Bunny for me and even more traumatic--his slaying of Santa.

I have to confess though, that not remembering when my faith was broken I also don't recall how it was instilled in me in the first place. And really, what a story to swallow: a little magical winged creature flying into my bedroom, after I was asleep, and taking my baby teeth from under my pillow. Granted, I was only five or so when they started talking about the Tooth fairy. At five-years-of age I also believed my brother when he told me that keeping a suitcase full of rotting food under my bed would keep the Bogey man away. I also recall believing that if I just got up enough speed running, I would be able to fly. I was positive that I could do it. Which is why I believed my brother when he told me that jumping off the jungle gym would also get me airborne. The blue paint from the bottom bar of the jungle gym was still on my front tooth when the Tooth fairy came to take it. I remember because I was worried that it would lessen the value of the tooth and she might "mark it down."

Because the Tooth Fairy can do that you know. Mark 'em down. Especially if they have cavities. Those baby teeth fetch only half of what cavity free baby teeth go for.

Which is probably why I decided to tell my kids about the Tooth Fairy. Even though here in Japan she is not a custom. I've been told that the Japanese throw their children's baby teeth away. Lower baby teeth get thrown up on the roof of the house (or up high) and upper baby teeth get thrown down under the house (or off a balcony or from an upper story window). Yet the Japanese keep their baby's umbilical stumps in a special ceremonial little box for life--something that Americans throw out. What the heck. My kids are doubles after all--both American and Japanese. They get the Japanese Kappa and the American Bogey Man. The Oga Peninsula's Namahage with the American Headless Horseman. And of course the Tooth Fairy.

I think it was when I was having trouble getting my eldest to brush her teeth that I remembered the Tooth Fairy. You have to brush regularly to keep the teeth sparkling white for the Tooth Fairy!

However, believing in the Tooth Fairy and being the Tooth fairy are two completely different things. Believing in the Tooth fairy lessens the pain and fear of losing something that you've grown quite used to--your teeth. Being the tooth fairy means having to stay awake until your child is deep, deep asleep so you can wrest the little Tooth fairy pillow from underneath their slumbering little head and fish out the lost baby tooth and replace it with a shiny 100 yen coin.

I have been known to blame the Tooth fairy's failure to retrieve a baby tooth on the forever-coming-home-late Daddy.

Should one of my daughters wail, bright and early in the morning, "MOMMY! My tooth is still under my pillow!" I reply sleepily, "Oh honey. I'm sorry. Daddy came home so late last night that I believe he scared the Tooth Fairy away. She doesn't like anyone to see her you know."

The tooth fairy is also sensitive to weather conditions, undue noise from the T.V. (should Daddy stay up too late watching it) and she loathes being exposed to germs so stays away if anyone is contagious. Especially Mommy.

For the most part though, I keep some shiny coins on hand whenever I see a tooth starting to go wiggly and I get the job done. Part way. I take the baby teeth from under their pillows. I leave the shiny 100 yen under their pillows. Then I go downstairs, climb up on a chair and stow the baby teeth up on the top shelf of the cupboard.

I don't know what my own mother did with my baby teeth. Did she keep them? Has she got them stored somewhere? I doubt it. She did everything but gut my childhood bedroom when I left for college. My Mom isn't big on keepsakes. Which may explain why I am. Why I hoard Reno and Saki's baby teeth up on the top shelf of my dish cupboard.

I have no idea what I am going to do with two full sets of baby teeth someday. No one wants jewelry made from teeth--aside from serial killers. No one really wants a small bottle filled with their baby teeth. But throw them away? Toss them out? I can't bring myself to throw them up or down, much less out.

It wasn't hard to throw out Reno's tonsils, which she had removed when she was seven years old. The hospital gave those to us. They were floating around inside a clear glass jar. We kept them for about a week and then Reno and I agreed together to throw them out. I think I put them out with the regular burnable garbage. The baby teeth are different somehow though. I remember their little pink toothless gums as babies and how they cried and fussed when their first teeth came in. I remember the joy and relief of seeing a white tooth finally push through the gums. I remember watching them learn how to bite and chew with these amazing new things called "teeth".

How can I simply throw them out? They are what their childhood smiles were made of.

I suspect that it will be one of many weird and bizarre discoveries my children will make about me in the future after I have passed away. They'll be sorting through my belongings, deciding what to keep and what to throw. They will get up on a chair, and reaching up onto that top shelf in the cupboard they'll find them--their baby teeth. They are all mixed up, so they won't really know which are Saki's and which are Reno's, but they'll find them all up there.

"She kept our baby teeth."

I wonder, will they?

Learning to Say Goodbye

2010-01-06T15:04:00.006+09:00

I feel like that kid in class at college. The one who never spoke up. The one who never ventured an opinion or offered a plausible answer. The one, who sat quietly for week after week after week, until when, in the last week of the semester they raised their hand and attempted to speak it seemed like not only time within the classroom froze--time throughout the world did too. Everyone was waiting, with baited breath, what would　The-Silent-One say?

So here I sit trying to think of something profound to share while my house echos with drum beats like the movie Jumanji. My kids got the Wii Taiko Drum game from Santa this year. (Yes, Reno, now nearing the age of 12 STILL believes.) But, now that I've got your attention, I've got to plow on ahead and say something.

I washed the cat yesterday.

There, I've put something out there; admittedly it is on a par with The-Silent-One's typical end of semester question, "Will the final be blue book exam or multiple choice?", but we've got one fluffy Russian Blue in house. Who smells rather floral. And is still glaring at me every time she enters a room in which I am.

We used to have two cats--Melon (the American Shorthair) and Happy (floral fluffy stray who looks exactly like a Russian Blue). But we lost Melon just before Christmas. She was only 8 years old, but died from kidney failure.

Melon is currently very much still part of our household. Physically, her bones and ashes are in an urn, in a Japanese funeral urn box, in her old pet basket on top of the cat cage. In front of the pet basket is a bowl of her dry food, a cup of water (she always preferred drinking out of cups she found on the sly left on the table, rather than drinking from out of her water bowl on the floor in the kitchen), her favorite mouse on a stick toy, and several photos of her. In the pet cage, crowding around the box holding her urn, are pictures of her that the girls have drawn and several letters to her as well as one properly bound (with yarn and tape) picture book about Melon authored by Saki.

She was cremated at a pet funeral home on the 19th of December. On February 5th or 6th we will intern her ashes at the pet funeral home. That will mark 49 days since her cremation--Buddhist tradition. I still have to check with Masa--is it 49 days counting the day of the funeral or 49 days counting from the first day after the funeral?

If anyone had ever told me that I would pay to hold a funeral for a pet, I would have laughed, anxiously. I would have had anxious thoughts flooding my mind like, "good lord. Will my life be that pathetic? Will I treat a pet like a human loved one? Will I try to make others honor my pet as a "person" too?" Flash back to my parents' home six years ago when we visited them for three months: My father accused me of causing their dog to fall into a deep depression during my visit. Because I treated Caylie (the dog) like a d-o-g. "He's not a dog. He is much more. He is as much a part of this family as either you or your brother were when you were growing up."

Disturbing statement on several levels which triggered anxious questions, the most immediate being, "We were like pets to you and Mom?"

I love my pets. I have always had pets. I loved Melon and I love Happy fiercely. But I love my pets as pets. In fact, were they people to me, I'd probably have much more complicated and difficult relationships with them. As it is, I am free to love them unconditionally as pets. They vomit up a fur ball on the kitchen floor? I love them unconditionally. They shred a favored section of the couch? I love them unconditionally. I scream, "BAD CAT!" a lot, but the love remains unconditional.

The bottom line is: I love animals, especially pets, but I love them because they are animals/pets.

Which is why this past summer when we visited my parents for two weeks, I took the opportunity on more than one occasion to fall on bended knee, look deep into their new dog's (a spirited little terrier) big black glossy eyes and say, "Tucker, you are a dog."

Saki kept asking, "Mommy, why are you doing that?" and I told her, "Because honey, he is a dog. Isn't he a cute dog?" My Dad winced in the background, but I think he got my message.

So if pets are pets, then why an elaborate funeral for Melon? An elaborate funeral which cost quite a bit of money no less.

When Melon first fell sick, it was obvious that the kids were in distress. The cat was in acute physical distress, but my girls were in acute emotional distress. It wasn't the first time that Melon had been critically ill. Five years ago, when Masa was first diagnosed with RA and sent to a hospital for three months to start treatment, Melon took the opportunity to suddenly begin vomiting non-stop. I took her to the vets where they did emergency surgery (expecting to find a blockage in the intestines, "perhaps a bit of sting, or part of a cat toy") which turned up nothing. My cat couldn't stand, eat, drink or use the litter box on her own. I expected the vet to suggest euthanizing her. He didn't. When I suggested it, he was appalled.*

So for the first month that Masa was in hospital, I was taking Melon to the vets daily for IV treatments and feeding her liquid food with an eye-dropper. She drooled non stop, couldn't stand and I had to wipe up her and her cage several times a day.

For the second month that Masa was in hospital, Melon started to stand up, although she tended to fall over on her right side a lot. But she started to eat a bit of wet food on her own and drink some water which decreased the frequency of the IV treatments.

By the time Masa came home, Melon was nearly normal. The vet proffered that they thought we should take her to a big Veterinary Hospital in Osaka to have an MRI done on her to determine if perhaps the cause of all of this was a brain tumor. But as Melon continued to regain her strength and her former feline self, we never did.

Why didn't I fight harder to have her put down? The poor thing had a quality of life that was non-existent for at least two months. The vets never offered any hope of recovery. The vets couldn't even give an educated guess (except for their final, "brain tumor?" theory) as to why Melon had become so ill. It was a "mystery disease that appeared incurable."

Because with then six-year-old Reno it all sounded so similar to the diagnosis that her Daddy had just been given. For five years Daddy had had health problems that were mysterious. Doctors didn't know what was wrong. Even with the diagnosis of RA they confessed that they couldn't be absolutely sure that it was RA and not a combination of another immune system disease coupled with a spine disease and maybe a few others. The only thing that they told us with certainty was that it was "incurable". . . but "treatable".

And Reno made those connections. Having the cat put down seemed tantamount to announcing, "and perhaps we'll have Daddy put down next."

And Melon recovered. And Daddy came home. And he is home and in treatment and doing well.

But now, this past December, Melon started to vomit non-stop again. Masa was out of country on a business trip. It all felt so familiar. Back to the vets (a new vet, but like the one in Osaka, against euthanasia). This time the diagnosis was confirmed with a blood test. Her kidneys were in failure. We did IV treatments for a week. Then one day we skipped the treatment--Masa was back from his trip by now--and she spent her last day at home, in her pet basket. Saki sat next to her on her final evening and sketched her, telling her what a good cat she was, how much she was loved. That evening, Reno disobeyed my order to "go to bed!" and stayed up with Melon for about two hours, petting her and talking to her.

In the early morning, around 2:30 a.m. I heard a terrible noise and came downstairs to find Melon dying. When she was done, I picked her up, cleaned her up, and put her in her cat basket, curled up and quiet. The girls found her that way in the morning.

I cried in the kitchen in the early dawn. The girls cried when they woke up and came downstairs to find that she had passed on. But it was a school/work day and after the girls were off on their way to school, I took Melon's body and placed it in a towel, which I placed in a cardboard box, which I took out back and put in the shed in the back yard. It had been snowing steadily for over a week and so the chances of an outdoor burial were nil. The ground, besides being rented, was frozen and buried under snow and ice.

We called the vet and she referred us to the pet funeral home. So two days later, that is where we had Melon cremated. Masa and I debated the merits of paying for such a ceremony. It was Masa who really decided in the end that it was worth doing--for the girls. It would be a kind of lesson in death and learning to say goodbye.

And it has been a lesson, a progression, a process. Especially for Saki. At seven years of age, she kept asking if Melon was really dead. At the pet funeral parlor, after sending Melon off for cremation she wept and cried. As we passed Melon's bones around and put them in the urn she was silent but alert, open. On the way home, with the urn in the car with us, Saki clutched a photo of Melon to her chest and continued to weep.

We've gone from that day of the funeral and weeping, to telling each other stories about Melon. Remembering Melon together. Saki has spent a lot of time breaking down what happened to Melon. How she first got sick, how she died, how we cremated her. Reno, more familiar with the idea of death hasn't been as verbal about it all as Saki has, but yesterday as I rearranged the letters around the urn I was surprised to discover that many of them were poems about Melon and letters to Melon that Reno has written and quietly, unobserved, slipped next to her pet's memorial.

Masa looked over at me on the day of the funeral and told me, "It's important that they learn how to say goodbye so that they can go on with living." that and, "If they don't learn to live with the emptiness of loss then they are bound to choose bad men on the rebound in the future when they break up with a boyfriend."

I think he was right. On both levels.

*Most veterinarians in Japan are against euthanizing animals, believing that it is going against the natural order to do so. Unless a family can present an air tight case for not being able to afford treatment/care they are very reluctant to end an animals' life prematurely, albeit, humanely. Ironically, most Japanese also believe that neutering or spaying animals is against the natural order. Although most vets will gladly do it.

Ordained Domestic House Goddess My Ass

2009-09-19T18:26:00.003+09:00

So. I woke up this morning (5:30 a.m.), popped in a load of wash, wandered to the kitchen, started the coffee, and began making the kids' breakfast. Quesedillas--modified to only tortillas and cheese as I can't get my hands on any chile peppers here bouts. Breakfast served, I went back into the kitchen to make some wholegrain blueberry muffins (hoping some will survive the weekend for breakfasts during the week) and continued periodically extracting wet laundry and hanging it up while stuffing yet more dirty laundry into the machine.

Masa was busy sleeping.

After load number three I took a quick trip throughout the house and successfully found enough hidden dirty socks, shorts, and shirts wadded up and pushed under furniture etc. to do yet another load of laundry.

Masa by now had awoken and was at the computer checking his email. And the New York Yankees' baseball scores.

Why is there so much dirty laundry in my house? I do laundry EVERY SINGLE day and still I have these horrid days of 4-5 loads of laundry to do. Of course on Saturday I have all the weekly school things (P.E. uniforms, bags, etc.) to wash. Sigh.

My kids are only enthusiastic about pouring the washing liquid into the machine and after that they loose absolutely all interest in having anything to do with the laundry.

At 9:30 a.m. I decided to take a shower and get ready for driving school.

When I left Masa was still at the computer, working away as only a workaholic on a Saturday can.

I made it to my 10:10 appointment for practical driving practice and the instructor today told me the exact opposite of the instructor I had on Thursday on several issues. Issue number one: where one's hands should go on the steering wheel when making a turn. Issue number two: how fast one is allowed to drive on the on-site driving course. I had fun speeding around on Thursday. Today's guy had me driving slower than a tortoise on top of which has been placed a 500kilogram weight.

How that sort of driving is supposed to prepare me for the real world is beyond me, unless he's thinking I'm gonna move back to Osaka: city of the everlasting traffic jam. The fact that he was treating me like a moron didn't go over so well with me either. I'm 42 and I drove from the age of 16-31 in the U.S. I am not a first time driver. He kept telling me in this god-awful condescending know-it-all-tone that "you are a first time driver in Japan so you have MUCH to learn."

I did a good job of not showing my irritation with Yoda at all though. I'm focused on one thing and one thing only--getting my drivers license. I'll put up with nearly anything for that!

On the way back home, I stopped off to do some shopping for lunch. Got home, made somen with sliced up cucumbers and ham on top. Chilled tofu with natto (mixed with a crushed umeboshi) on top. Added some thinly sliced shiso leaves on top of the natto tofu. Then I started to make dinner.

Masa ate lunch and then got ready to go out on a jog. Although a delightful variety program on T.V. caught his attention and delayed him by an hour.

Dinner was (will be, we haven't eaten yet) zucchini & mushroom spaghetti with a mixed green salad and some garlic bread.

Then I sorted all the pet bottles, cans, and glass bottles for recycling. That done, and Masa back from his jog, I asked him if he'd run it to the recycle center. He sighed. Deeply.

How many bags were there? Had I loaded them in the car yet? etc. etc.

This man works insane hours during the week. That is true. This man has Rheumatoid arthritis--also true. But this full-time working mother of two little girls and one workaholic husband wanted to strangle him like Homer does Bart. And then fling him around a bit for good measure.

While I stood in front of the sofa looking down at him he asked again, "Did you put the bags in the car yet?" For the love of God.

After he left with the recycling stuff (which I lugged out to the car) I headed off to the supermarket again to pick up yet more groceries as I had an idea for lunch tomorrow. Back from the store, I began making black bean vegetable soup. To go with tomorrow's beef fajitas at lunch time.

In between all the cooking I was still dealing with stages of laundry and doing a hell of a lot of dishes. We have no dishwasher so it is all by hand.

Looking around now what is left to be done is: (1) serve up dinner (still waiting for Masa to return, he decided to drop in the office after the recycle center. However, Reno begged him to take her with him so she could study in the University's library, so that's my guarantee that he will actually return for dinner--the daughter hostage.) (2) Force the young one (Saki) into the bath and evaluate her health condition carefully. She's been sneezing and coughing all day, but I've been too busy to pause longer than to confirm that she has no temperature. (3) Fold a huge pile of laundry and put it away. (4) Vacuum the entire house (5) pick up upstairs (6) Study for Driving school (7) Grade 22 essays (8) Grade 22 quizzes.

Not a chance in hell that more than two or three things on that list is going to get done.

And I forgot to put "dinner clean up" on there.

But I'm thinking. . . . I actually know several women with RA who can wash dishes. And actually, they all work outside the home too. So, would it be so out of hand to ask Masa to perhaps, perchance, do the washing up after dinner tonight?

And as soon as I have a drivers license, I am gonna start spending money on hiring someone to come in and do some cleaning to help out. Screw Masa's attitude that I am a woman, endowed with ovaries and ordained to do all domestic chores and duties.

Driving School

2009-09-18T15:55:00.004+09:00

So, jittery, nervous, constantly feeling a little anxious as I force myself through the nicotine withdrawals, and my more serious psychological dependency on cigarettes, I decided that the thing to do was: enroll myself in Japanese Driving School.

So I rushed right out and handed over the largest sum of money I have ever literally "handed over" in my life. The next 9 months of traffic and automobile safety and rules of the road lectures--delivered all in Japanese--is the most expensive thing I have ever bought for myself. I'm trying NOT to think about what kind of private vacation (to Guam! to Hawaii!) the same amount of money could have gotten me.

I need a license though. Living in the countryside of Japan, and snow country at that, without a license has been. . . not easy. Walking and bicycling in the rain and the snow and having to turn down invitations places because "I can't drive" has been character eroding. A 42 year old grown woman who can't jump in the car to go fetch a sick and feverish child from school?

And bringing home a sick and feverish child from school in a snow storm or downpour hasn't been fun. It's a nice 30 minute walk from our house to the elementary school.

I can, of course, drive. I just don't have a license to drive. And no, I haven't got an American license or an international license because. . .

REALLY wish I had a good reason to start telling you about here.

I don't have a good reason; I have a pathetic one. I just never mailed in my renewal for my U.S. drivers license and thus, rendered myself license less. Now that my kids are in elementary school I can't afford the three months in the US I'd need to get and drive on an American license in order to be eligible for an international license and thus eligible to switch over to a Japanese license after taking a really short written test in English and of course the practical driving test.

NOPE. Not me. I now have to take the lengthily, ponderous, famous for trickily worded questions, written test all in Japanese. And of course the practical driving test.

I'm not at all worried about the practical driving test as you can see. I'm a whole lot more concerned about the 800 or so KANJI I will have to learn and memorize in order to pass the written test.

Thinking about it makes me want to smoke.

16 Days In

2009-08-28T09:52:00.002+09:00

I am a non-smoker. I have been a non-smoker for a total of 16 days now. I am no longer smoking two packs a day, as I was sixteen days ago.

Why did I quit?

Because I took my girls home to see their American grandparents--my Mom and Dad. My Mom and Dad would kill me if they knew that I smoked, so I had no choice but to go cold turkey. Plus the no smoking policy on international flights pretty much promotes smokers going cold turkey anyway.

Korean Air lines in-flight videos on the way there and the jet lag once we got there distracted me from the withdrawal symptoms and it all seemed almost too easy.

Then I stepped off the plane in Japan this past Monday--back home again. I lined up in a long que for FOREIGNERS whilst my husband and daughters skipped through one of the lines for JAPANESE. I dug out my iPod from my purse to entertain myself for the nearly hour wait I had in line. I was finger printed and photographed. My only subversive act was to refuse to smile (which, being Japanese, they probably appreciated) and I refused to talk (which, again, being Japanese they probably appreciated). But still, I am a smiley talkative American, so it was subversive behavior for ME.

So. Now, suddenly, sixteen days into being a non-smoker I am dying for a ciggy. Or maybe just one PACK.

However, second-hand smoke is not good for children, nor is it acceptable role modeling to be seen smoking by ones children. Therefore, I will NOT take up smoking again.

I just wish I could get my hands on some Xanax.

The Thin Divide

2009-03-14T11:16:00.003+09:00

First, I think it is so funny now that in the top left hand corner of my blog it says "cutest blog" or something like that. I just got tired of the layout design that I had here on blogger and wanted something different. So, if you are reading because you expect "cute" go ahead and click right out. Feeling very philosophical this a.m. . . .perhaps it is a weird reaction to my children's incessant bickering from the moment they awoke this a.m. Retreat into the inner mind in a desperate attempt to escape the reality of "I told you to stop pinching your sister. If I have to tell you once more I am going to pinch YOU hard!" When they make me say crazy things like that. . . So. On to broodings that I have retreated into:

You hear about Japanese men who have taken off their company armor. Left the tie on the desk, spurned their prestigious meishi, and walked away into the country side to grow organic produce, or into the mountains to open a guest inn. Maybe they have even dared to leave Japan and live outside the embryonic yolk of Japanese society. Dared to allow themselves, their dreams, their aspirations, their desires for and of life to hatch on foreign shores.

The men who act on their dreams are amazing, unique and rare. Men who dream the same or similar dreams are not though. It seems to be part and parcel of life in the hamster maze of Japanese life style and workplace. Hard working hamsters enjoy the pathos of dreaming about what kind of life they could have or would like to have--it acts as a kind of catharsis to overcome the reality of the life that they do have. Catharsis is a good thing when it purges the feelings that cause distress.

When it becomes an enabler to a life that violates the individual it is hard to continue rushing to the theater, you can only take so many tragedies in stride before even comedies cease to ease the soul.

My husband has never had any "live-a-more-natural,-relaxed-life-in-the-country-side" kind of dreams. Although for a while, he did talk about returning to his hometown in the South of Japan, opening his own cram school, and living a more relaxed paced life. (I just nodded and listened, thinking, "running your own business, and a cram school at that--would be anything BUT a slower paced life style.") At the time, I think he just really wanted to exit the world in which he was working--with people always above him that he had to answer to and obey. You know, he just basically wanted to be his own boss.

Now, because of Masa's illness, we don't talk about retirement dreams, or dreams of what life without kids underfoot will mean for us as a couple. I wish we could get the future back, but at present, we just deal with the present and maybe the future 3-5 years from now.

The dreams that Masa talks about now are how he will change his work schedule--get home earlier in time to help the girls with their homework. He talks about getting up early and being able to drive the girls to school in bad weather and get to work on time (8:30 a.m.)

Last semester, he would get to work at about 8:50 a.m. so I could just make my 9 a.m. class and mornings were always hurried and chaotic.

In order to actually change his schedule, he would have to endure at least a month of jet lag like fatigue (which coupled with his RA symptoms would make life nearly unbearable.) He would somehow have to accept that during that adjustment period some things at work just would not get done, or at least, not done on time. He would have to be able to look ahead into the future, where a more regular sleep schedule and lifestyle would give him the energy to catch up, to keep up with the hectic pace of work. But when you are in the grips of jet lag--think SEVERE case of jet lag, where if you stop talking, even if your eyes are open you quickly fall into a deep sleep, being able to think ahead seems to become nearly impossible for him.

And of course, during that first month, he would have to bear up under incredible censure at work from those above him, even from those below him, who still working till 1 or 2 a.m. at night would resent him leaving work any earlier than them.

The rewards that Japanese workplaces shower upon those workers who are willing to sacrifice everything for the company are hard to wean yourself of: indulgence, respect, status.

Actual change is discouraged, despite what ever legislature is passed. Laws passed to eliminate the inhuman hours of overtime employees were putting in simply resulted in employees putting in insane overtime without pay. Paper trails of overwork are actively discouraged.

But dreaming about change, about living life to enjoy and experience it rather than to withstand it seem to be encouraged in Japanese culture. There is something about dreaming that seems endemic to Japanese workers. The work life and schedule is so demanding and unforgiving and combine that with a drive to achieve and a workaholic personality--men like Masa really struggle. I really admire those individuals in Japan that do actually work towards realizing their dreams of a life where they work to live, not live to work. Whether that means that they get out of the rat race entirely (opening an inn in the country side, working out of the home, farming, etc.) or whether it means that they are able to set boundaries between their work life and their home/private life and succeed in prioritizing the later.

I spent years thinking that Masa would wake up and realize that he was pouring his life away. Then I decided that while I couldn't change his approach to work/life, I could change mine. And there is a fine line there for a couple. I crossed the line and separated my life and the girls' lives entirely from his.

When I first decided to live for myself and stop waiting up nights for him, stop suffering from disappointment when he would invariable choose work or sleep over us on the weekends and holidays, I thought I could model the example of a friend of mine at the time. She lived life energetically and enthusiastically. She and her children would go to the zoo, camping, swimming, take trips to Okinawa, and back to her home country. She enrolled them in all kinds of lessons and programs and ran her house perfectly while working full-time as a translator out of her home. Her husband was basically not present most of the time, but when he could he joined them and they had some good family times (honestly, maybe only a hand full of weekends out of the year). He saw her working hard for their family, both domestically and in the work place and I think appreciate it and therefore, her. So when he did join them, she was honestly happy and he genuinely enjoyed his time with his family.

While I succeeded in taking charge of the kids and my own life--we had our schedules, our outings, our rituals--I did not succeed in living life energetically or enthusiastically. My husband was not invited into our lives in anyway.

That line is so thin that it is hard to even perceive at first. It is a fragile thin line of communication, of caring, and showing appreciation for each other and finally of feeling appreciation for each other that once crossed surprises you. On the other side, you see that while it was a thin divide, it is very deep, stretching down into areas that you can barely make out, decipher, see. And so I feel on my knees, on my side of the divide and pitied myself, pitied my children and cursed my husband. In my eyes, it was his culture, his country, his lack of effort or caring that unleashed the earthquake in our relationship that ended in this fault line, in this open crevice to the sight of a part of my soul that I had never wanted to confront. At the bottom of that crevice, if I strained hard enough to see, was me: a bitter woman who saw herself as wronged. A woman who was outraged at the life she found herself forced to live. A woman who resented her husband, his job, even the money that he brought home from work. A woman who lacked the capacity to feel even an ounce of empathy for her husband. There was only one figure in the drama of her life--which had of course turned into a monologue--starring her.

How I managed to rewrite the script to include a cast--that requires more brooding than I have time to invest this morning. And this is all kind of navel gazing stuff anyway. Anyone other than my very own navel probably isn't all that keen on following the story to its conclusion. So for now, I shall scuttle away and take my navel off to the kitchen. Where I will try to appease the restless (and feisty) offspring with calming F-O-O-D. Or what a normal mother would call "lunch".

It's a year early but. . .

2009-01-11T18:05:00.002+09:00

All I want for Christmas is MY OWN COMPUTER!

The kids are all over this one now. Reno uses it for homework assignments (researching things like the nutritional value of watermelons and the names of all the prefectures in Japan) and Saki knows her way around nearly every single game site--in English and Japanese.

Then, there's Masa who logs on for hours, working out of the home on the weekends.

When's a girl to blog?

Oh, and our DVD player broke,and since one can watch DVDs on this computer, that is exactly where Reno and Saki are watching them these days.

I may be forced to become an early riser, just to get a chance at the computer!

And How I Actually Celebrated

2009-01-01T14:08:00.005+09:00

Just to put everyone's mind at ease--there was no flaming bon fire with crazy woman dancing around it.

That was how I would have seen the year off in the second conditional world (the realm in which events and situations are unrealistic/imaginary/have little to no chance of ever occurring).

Like everyone else, I live in the real world, so I saw 2008 out the door in a real way. With Christmas behind us, I had all the American holiday traditions over with--the stockings, the Christmas tree and decorations, the Christmas Day phone calls to friends and family, the Turkey dinner. . .so as the 31st drew near it was time to switch modes: Japanese New Year.

This year we stayed up in Northern Japan. Masa's hometown is down in Kyushu, but we didn't travel home for the New Year holidays this year. We decided to stay and celebrate here. In Japan, New Years goes hand in hand with "Osoji" which is like American Spring Cleaning. Everyone scrubs, scours, declutters, organizes, shines and polishes in preparation for the coming of the New Year. Our house is full of toys, broken fans, radios, umbrellas, old pots and pans, bags of recyclables that never made it out on recycle collection days. . . my mother would probably run to a therapist's office desperate to find out "where she went wrong" in bringing me up is she saw the sty that we are currently residing in.

I thought a bit about calling it a "back lash" to being raised in a perfectly dusted, highly organized, model home environment . . . I mean, the whole "back lash" theory works successfully to explain my Freshman year at college. I entered University having never done. . . anything but study and go to Church and listen to my sage parents' advice. The spring I finished my Freshman year, I was on academic probation and nearly got expelled. But I was much more "experienced" than when I entered all clean and shiny that Fall.

While I mulled over the idea of unloading the state of my house on my parents' I had to admit that while I might have run wild when I was 18 for the first time in my life because I had no boundaries for the first time. . . I don't think it's an excuse that will float for failing to dust, declutter, organize, or regularly clean my abode. I toyed with the idea of throwing my hands up in the air and pleading the "I have small kids who are like hyperactive tornadoes and destroy any sense of order I try to create" line of defense. . . but then again, they are my kids. If they are messy it is not their fault. I obviously haven't modeled good habits for them and if they have far too many toys. . . well, who gave them all to them?

Plus, truth be told, I am a bit of a pack rat. I like to keep things, just in case. Of course, I never use them as I can never find them (maps, information packets, manuals, pictures, books I intend to read, things I think I might be able to recycle for various uses); more sinister is the fact that when I do re-discover them years later, I still look at them and think, "Oh! Here it is! It really is a useful/nice/interesting thing. Better keep it." and throw it back into the tumultuous heaving mass of ever moving, elusive "stuff" that covers and coats every inch of my house.

My youngest takes after me. Her favorite activity is to find a bag/back pack/suitcase/box and fill it with "treasures". Then she relocates the treasures to another area of the house. Recently I have discovered that she is stashing treasures (yards of twine, small picture books, photos, costume jewelry, coins, marbles, crayons) in my drawers and bookshelves. Right now her mind is still keen and sharp (not dulled by a Freshman year like the one I had) and she actually has high recall in remembering where she has tucked various valuables and prized possessions away. When ever we are looking for something, we all ask Saki. "Saki honey, have you seen Daddy's keys? Do you know where Mommy's cell phone is?"

Her sister on the other hand, has lousy recall and absolutely no design behind where she leaves things. My theory is that she has inherited the "put it in the most convenient spot" gene from her father. Which doesn't mean, the most logical spot, or the place where you would make it a habit to stow a certain item. It means, drop the object in the closest proximity to wherever you are at the moment so that you don't have to move out of your way to put it away. It still pains me whenever I hear, "Mom, have you seen my nano-pod?" I've had a special basket on the counter for the nano-pod since the day she got it. I find that nano-pod in various places throughout the house and deposit it in that basket. She never even checks the basket--she never puts it in there, so why would it be there?

But today--we have all tackled this heap we call home. Masa and Reno have been working on the upstairs rooms--Reno's and Saki's. Tomorrow I will tackle the bedroom where we all sleep. Saki uses it as a play room when her friends are over, due to the fact that her and Reno's room have been unendurable for months now. Reno sat on the clear storage bin that I use for my clothing and splintered the plastic lid into a zillion pieces. Saki's toys and old phones and faxes that she and her friends use when they play "house" or "school" are scattered all over. I'm guilty too. There are about 20 ear plugs scattered on the floor near the futons. The first day I used ear plugs at night was the first night I slept for longer than one hour uninterrupted. My kids talk, laugh, scream and shriek in their sleep. Masa comes home and stays up late watching Japanese T.V. programs, on which people tend to talk, laugh, scream and shriek. The earplugs get me a few hours of sleep every night, but I really have to come up with a better system than scattering them around the futon. . .

I'm home, off of work now, till April so I will be confronting different household chores and tasks every day. I intend to even clean the windows, inside and out. Reorganize the kitchen, scrub the exhaust fan, de-mold the washing machine, clean all the drains, wax the wood floors, tame the heaps of bills/statements and other paper menace that teeters in piles on the kitchen counter. I also intend to ruthlessly throw out anything I have not used in over 6 months. Mostly.

So, osoji, we have a handle on.

The other parts of New Years here is the T.V. fest on New Year's Eve. We watched a little of NHK's Red and White program--a music program where two teams compete (I think it is men vs. women?). But we centered in on a program where 5 comedians try to make it through a day without laughing. When they laugh guys in black body suits come running out and paddle them on the behind. It is a lot of physical slap stick humor, but I have to admit to liking it. Very typical Japanese humor. Like putting a big cup of hot coffee on someones back when they are laying down and then watching them try to get up without spilling it--and laughing hysterically when they scald themselves. The comic wrestling show before this one was also classic. A guy and a girl (I think she was a professional wrestler, he was just a comedian) swinging watermelons on ropes around and smashing each other in the head with them. I kept waiting for the guy to get seriously injured.

Just before midnight I brought out some champagne for Masa and I and filled the girls champagne flutes with ginger ale. Saki excelled at clinking glasses together. Masa coached both girls on how to offer the appropriate New Year's greetings in Japanese and then we greeted each other, formally bowing to one another. (This is a good example of one of those moments when I find myself floating out of body, looking down in a perplexed manner saying, "no really. Really? This is my life?" Never imagined my family would be bowing at one another at 12:00 a.m. on New Years Day!)

This morning we all woke up late and while Masa and I were still upstairs I heard Reno and Saki arguing downstairs about what to watch on T.V. My heart grew three sizes when I heard Reno say, "Okay. Then let's try to find a program that we BOTH want to watch." (I've been despairing that they ever listen to me at all recently, and she was modeling my daily suggestion that I make a million times when they are home on vacation together.)

When Masa and I came downstairs, I started making this year's ozoni (a clear soy sauce dashi broth soup with chicken, carrots, shiitake, diakon, spinach and mochi in it). Once that was ready we all sat down together to welcome in 2009 over a traditional Japanese New Year's breakfast--the ozoni. Then Masa called his mother and we all bowed over the phone as we offered New Years Greetings to aunts, uncles, cousins, mother-in-law, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-laws, nephews and nieces.

So. I did burn a batch of mochi later in the morning, when I got side tracked doing something outside of the kitchen and forgot that I had three mochis grilling on the stove. But that's it. I swear. Nothing else went up in flames.

Happy New Year! May 2009 be filled with good fortune, good friends, family and laughter.

Top Ten Reasons to Bid 2008 a Joyful Farewell

2008-12-29T20:30:00.003+09:00

I've been dreaming up ways to celebrate the passing of 2008. Ideally, I'd like to hold a huge bon fire and throw every single thing we no longer need, don't use or have broken and can't repair onto it. This would result in a mega bon fire, nearly bigger than but at least equal to the square footage of our house. I would like to then proceed to dance around that bon fire, ipod cranked up and a bottle of tequilla in hand. There would ideally be a pail of lime slices and sea salt nearby. My children would be in the hands of a responsible adult somewhere remote from me and my bon fire. In fact, me and my bon fire would be remote from everyone, thus enabling me to dance with abandon and scream and sing till my lungs burn as hot as the flames. I would swallow that tequilla and spit out all the bad karma that has descended on me this year. I would sing at the top of my lungs songs about betrayal and broken hearts and hatred. I would sing them into the fire and out of my mind. I would end by calmly sitting and sweeping the ashes of my spent fire into a pail to haul home. The next morning I would wake up and listen to Tub Thumping (I Get Knocked Down). I would drink a huge glass of water. I would hug my children, who would be back home after their evening with the responsible adult who was not me. I would carefully store my bucket of the ashes of 2008 in the shed out back. I'd probably forget, but if I didn't, in the spring I would take it with me to the ocean or up into the mountains where I would spread it in the wind, watch it float and settle and disappear while listening to Mary Chapin Carpenter's rendition of "Why Walk When You Can Fly?"

Top Ten Reasons to Bid 2008 a Joyful Farewell

1. I will never have to relive the past 12 months of my life.
2. I lost 30 kilos on the stress diet; thinner now and healthier. No, it wasn't cancer (thank you concerned doctor at the Red Cross hospital who ran me through every test possible--that one where you crammed a fiber optic camera down my throat while I earnestly tried to vomit it up for the duration of the test, in particular was fun.) it was stress. I tried to point out that possibility, "Couldn't stress, insomnia and no appetite cause a low grade fever and weight loss?" 2008 answered that one with a resounding, "Yes."
3. I discovered that inexplicably, it is true that apparently, no matter what happens to me, I won't shatter and cease to be. Which sucks a bit--am I the only one envious of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' lyrics, "I've had the chance to be insane, asylum from the falling rain, I've had a chance to break."? ? ? (from the song "Slow Cheetah")
4. Statistically, the terrible, unimaginable horrors that could happen to me that would be worse than what I endured in 2008, aren't very likely to happen.
5. I am no longer afraid of sudden death, which leaves me impervious to fear of earthquakes, plane crashes, car wrecks, home intrusions, in flight syndrome, etc.
6. I finally grew up.
7. My youngest will finish up pre school and start at elementary school this spring. (no more mother and me field trips, pre school sales, parades, or recitals to attend packed like a foreign over sized fish among hundreds of homogeneous sardines.)
8. I got back in the classroom after a five year break.
9. I learned that although I often feel isolated here, there are, across Japan and scattered throughout the world, friends who are there for me ready to talk, listen and support me. I also rediscovered the healing power of reaching out to help others who need a helping hand.
10. I discovered four new foreigners (women married to Japanese) living here in my little Northern Japanese city.

Couldn't Resist

2008-11-10T18:55:00.004+09:00

I couldn't resist this. Saw it over at http://hyotenka.blogspot.com/

(which is a fantastic blog by the way--her photos are AMAZING.) I love nature and I wish I had her talent at capturing it on film! Not to mention I think life in Hokkaido is fascinating and she does a great job of describing daily life there.

anyway. There are very few lists which I get interested in of this type as I invariably end up not being able to check off . . . anything and go away feeling very dowdy and unworldly. But I noticed immediately on this list--I could check off a few!

So, the things I have done are in bold. How about you? Obviously, from my answers I am one of those annoying Americans who has never been to Europe.

1. Started your own blog

2. Slept under the stars

3. Played in a band

4. Visited Hawaii

5. Watched a meteor shower

6. Given more than you can afford to charity

7. Been to Disneyland (in Tokyo and LA)

8. Climbed a mountain

9. Held a praying mantis

10. Sang a solo

11. Bungee jumped

12. Visited Paris

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch (knitting, photography, many others)

15. Adopted a child

16. Had food poisoning

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty

18. Grown your own vegetables

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France

20. Slept on an overnight train

21. Had a pillow fight

22. Hitch hiked

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill

24. Built a snow fort

25. Held a lamb

26. Gone skinny dipping

27. Run a Marathon

28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice

29. Seen a total eclipse

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset

31. Hit a home run

32. Been on a cruise

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors

35. Seen an Amish community

36. Taught yourself a new language

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person

39. Gone rock climbing

40. Seen Michelangelo’s David

41. Sung karaoke

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt

43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant

44. Visited Africa

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight

46. Been transported in an ambulance

47. Had your portrait painted

48. Gone deep sea fishing

49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling

52. Kissed in the rain

53. Played in the mud

54. Gone to a drive-in theater

55. Been in a movie

56. Visited the Great Wall of China

57. Started a business

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia

60. Served at a soup kitchen

61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies

62. Gone whale watching

63. Got flowers for no reason

64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma

65. Gone sky diving

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp

67. Bounced a check

68. Flown in a helicopter

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy.

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten Caviar

72. Pieced a quilt

73. Stood in Times Square

74. Toured the Everglades

75. Been fired from a job

76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London

77. Broken a bone

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle.

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person

80. Published a book

81. Visited the Vatican

82. Bought a brand new car

83. Walked in Jerusalem

84. Had your picture in the newspaper

85. Read the entire Bible

86. Visited the White House

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating

88. Had chickenpox

89. Saved someone’s life

90. Sat on a jury (no, but I got called for jury duty many times, just never selected. If I remember correctly, I was always the person just after the last person selected.)

91. Met someone famous.

92. Joined a book club

93. Lost a loved one

94. Had a baby

95. Seen the Alamo in person

96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake

97. Been involved in a law suit

98. Owned a cell phone

99. Been stung by a bee

and I'm adding one of my own for an even hundred

100. Taken the Japanese Shinkansen

Bears Begging in Paradise

2008-10-14T10:02:00.003+09:00

I'm so tired right now I probably shouldn't be blogging. Today is my fourth day off in a row and I am exhausted. I can tell I am getting old because these days I think about the great relaxing holidays I'll be able to take in the future when my kids are older. . .

My kids get so excited about having a day off of school that they pop awake about 2 hours earlier than usual on Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays. Sigh. Daddy is allowed to sleep in, because basically you could re-enact the American Civil War on top of him and it wouldn't wake him up.

The girls have long ago given up on 2 things: 1. trying to wake up Daddy, 2. any pretense of being quiet in order not to "disturb" Daddy. This means that I, the world's lightest sleeper (did a down feather in the comforter shift? the ear splitting clamour of it all!) get the joy of being awoken early most mornings. My one chance at sleeping in usually comes with flu season when they are so exhausted from vomiting all night long that they sleep past the dawn.

So this weekend saw me stubbornly trying to indulge my adult appetites every evening(watching non kid suitable T.V. shows, reading, drinking red wine, trying to stay up for some time alone with Masa) and then having my puffy, sleep deprived face rubbed in it the following morning when I was forcibly evicted from my futon by my robust, extremely vocal and energetic offspring.

Yesterday we took them on a road trip to view the fall foliage. Before setting off Masa had called the local tourist center there and inquired into "kid-friendly" activities in the area. They recommended a "Bear Park." Okay. So we drove up and took in the amazing scenery--glorious fall foliage--brilliant oranges, reds, golds, greens splashed across mountain valleys. We kept the kids under control by reminding them of the end destination (at the end of the afternoon): Bear Park.

Now, up in what can not be called anything other than "Nature", I expected this Bear Park to be a kind of reserve. I mean, look to the left--a cascading waterfall, look up to the right--snow pack just above a brilliant splash of crimson. Look down at your feet--a daddy long legs making a dash for it, over across the top of your Nike and off to the mushroom the size of your hand by the side of the path. Crystal clear blue rivers flowing down into an emerald green lake. How could anyone keep a bear up here and not put it in a "natural" environment?

We got to the Bear Park and saw a small concrete entrance gate/booth. Two old Japanese women were inside. They looked like they were fighting off frostbite, wrapped in several layers of different ponchos/blankets. (Up on the mountain it was about 10 degrees Celsius). Nothing looked. . . very. . . .good. The one window on their booth was cracked and broken. All the exposed metal was rusted. Uh oh. I instantly pictured forking over our money only to pass by the concrete box and find one poor bear locked up on one small cage.

That would have been a good thing it turns out.

What we found on the other side of their cement outpost still disturbs me. It will always disturb me.

In three small outdoor concrete pits were bears. Maybe 60? 70? There was also another small series of cages in which were crowded more bears. In these concrete enclosures the bears had: each other, concrete and some pools of water that looked like they were filled at the mercy of the skies overhead rather than any hose or pump. No trees or logs to climb/play with. NOTHING green anywhere. Basically: nothing. No feeding troughs, no toys, nothing to climb. . .

As soon as the bears saw us they started to stand up on their rear legs and clap or pray. They had obviously learned what humans think is "cute" in order to get food. The two elderly ladies at the entrance had sold us two bags of apples just for this purpose and my family began to desperately huck apple after apple into the bears enclosures. I think even the girls felt a bit like they were in the middle of a starving crowd dispensing Red Cross supplies.

My usually stoic husband looked panic stricken. He hurried back up the hill to buy more apples. In fact, during our short time at the Bear Park, he went back up the hill about 4 times to buy more apples. In fact, we bought ALL the bags of apples.

When we left the bears were still clapping, praying and holding onto their toes (another cute pose that they had learned).

On our way out Masa asked the ladies at the gate a few questions. They seemed very, very defensive. He wanted to know where the bears slept? What did they eat? (other than the over priced apples tourists bought to throw to them) What happened to them when the winter snows came? Where were they from originally? What kind of bears were they?

Their caregivers didn't give many answers: they are bears. We got the first two from Hokkaido. They sleep in their cages. Rain? Snow? They are bears.

When we left Masa noted that the two elderly ladies were locking the gate and leaving with us. "I guess no one stays with the bears." he said. Then, "I guess no one is going to take care of them tonight, you know feed them, check their water. . . "

I reckon not.

Maybe their caregivers were thrilled when we bought the last bags of apples to disperse among the bears--their feeding duties for the day were over.

Just outside the Bear Park there was a beautiful outdoor vista area. In the middle of it was a natural hot springs foot bath. Before going into the park we had made plans to stop and take in the sun setting on all the foliage with our feet in the hot steaming mineral water. . . but after saying goodbye to all those bears, all those bears packed together, begging together from their concrete cages. . . we decided we didn't need a foot bath.

With the Bear Park about two kilometers behind us, I reached for a package of crackers and started to unenthusiastically (my mind was still trapped on hard concrete back with the bears) offer them to the girls. Reno looked at it and then looked carefully at my face, "Mommy. After seeing the bears, it makes you kinda not hungry, huh?"

blogging just to blat.

2008-09-19T13:57:00.003+09:00

blat is a form of "blog and chat" combined.

Friday---now that I am working Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Friday has redeemed itself in my eyes as the most glorious wonderful day of the week. I celebrated today by buying 2 new drinks on the way home. The first was a Tomato/vodka drink in a can. It was a disappointment. I added it to my all veggie lunch (you know, as my liquid veggie) but it barely tasted like a tomato at all. In the future, I will just buy myself an extraordinarily big juicy tomato (no matter what the cost, even out of season) slice it up and pour vodka on top. Then I will throw on a splash of Tabasco. It would be a HUGE improvement on the icky, too sweet, weird cocktail in a can I experienced this afternoon. Next I moved on to drink number two--well, I am on drink number two right now with the plan of completely sobering up prior to Saki's arrival home on the youchien bus. It is a winner. Kuro Cocktail, grapefruit tonic. Veeeryyy smooooooth and bitter. Love it.

I also celebrated today because my husband is back on the island! He has been abroad on business for the past 11 days. (that is 10 nights, 11 days). I don't know why, but just knowing that we are in the same country again seems to have freed up my breathing and made me want to. . . sing? (I never sing. Must be this incredibly delish cocktail in a can) Although even when Masa is here I pretty much single parent--it still feels fantastic to know that there is a "second string" back in town. Great. I can now get run over by a truck and no longer worry over who would look after the kids while I was being scraped off the pavement!

Blogging without a Purpose

2008-09-17T15:36:00.003+09:00

I am blogging without a purpose here at the moment. Just because I started to feel like the blog was, well, suffering. Like the fish do when the kids loose all interest in them and start forgetting to fed them and don't even contemplate cleaning their tank.

Maybe a comparison to a virtual pet would be better: My Blog--the Adult Tamagochi.

My kids had those tamagochi things for a while and guess who became obsessed with making sure that the tamagochi went to school, ate regularly, went to the toilet, etc.? ? ? ? Good lord, I even discovered "Tamagochi Town" on line and started taking them on virtual vacations!

Standing next to another mum at Saki's preschool my daughter's tamagochi and her daughter's tamagochi's alarm went off at the same time. So we confided our addiction to each other and laughing about becoming a slave to a virtual pet helped liberate me.

Standing there and commiserating about how embarrassing it was to be constantly chained to an electronic toy and swapping stories about the trials and tribulations of tamagochi transformations--how you have to try so hard in order to get them to transform into the tamagochi you want them to be (example: send it to charm school a zillion times a day and it'll turn into a cute little strawberry looking creature. Forget to send it to school, or send it too infrequently and it'll turn out looking like a little nasty onion creature.) I realized: Oh my God, I have turned into an idiot.

So after that, I let them die off, one by one.

It's a sad ordeal too--those people who design those things know how to pull emotional strings--but die they did and then I refused to get replacement batteries when MONTHS later the girls noticed that their virtual pets had gone feet up in the air.

Any way. . . back to blogging with out a purpose. I have been READING blogs with a purpose. A lot going on out there--people making significant life choices (marriage, moves, job changes) and people celebrating important events (arrival of baby, announcement of pregnancy, the divorce finally came through. . . etc.) and I have been sitting here feeling a bit like a cicada must feel during those years in the dirt. I am going through a lot but no one around me can see it. I am working hard on transformation but it is still all in the dark.

However, I am feeling very. . . content sitting here in the dark focusing on all these inward changes. And honestly, when I poke my head out (to go to work, to go to school events, to go buy milk at the grocery store) I come back rather fatigued and ready to refocus again, on me: in the dark.

Dark does not equal (=) depression. Dark equals me tuning out everything that I feel I can safely tune out for the moment--chatter, bustle, much ado about nothing. If it is not going to do grievous damage to a friendship of great importance, if it is not going to affect my professional career, if it is not going to end up fodder for the psychologist's couch in my children's' futures. . . then I probably am not all that caught up in it at the moment. I am very focused inward and then in graduating degrees on that around me--starting with the closest moving slowly and deliberately to the outer areas of life.

Spontaneous is obviously an adjective that I have rarely met with. If I did it most likely shocked me and sent me scurrying back home.

So the seasonal change suits me quite well this year. Summer is on its way out. Our evenings are finally cool and even chilly towards the early morning hours. The leaves on the trees haven't started to turn yet, but the rice fields are now swollen ponds of gold. This morning, standing on campus looking out at the trees and lawns surrounding the building I teach in, I was delighted to find dragon flies (both blue and red) hovering above the chestnut trees. Fall is coming.

I can't wait until the trees explode in yellow, brown, red and orange and I wake up realizing that I need mittens and a scarf.

And then there will be the snow, the ice, the chill northern winds of Japan. Snow festivals. Hot nabe. Waking up at 5 a.m. to turn on the furnace.

And eventually spring will come, when cicadas dig their way out of the dirt, new creatures, transformed.

August 7th, 2008

2008-08-07T11:11:00.006+09:00

7:00 a.m.

I wake up because Reno has set an alarm clock--on a summer break morning! The real offense is that it is going off NOW. I had intended to sleep until 8:00 a.m. when I need to wake up Masa. Damn. I get up off of Saki's futon and gingerly step over Reno who is sleeping blissfully through the assortment of wild bird songs (alarm clock). I look over at Saki who is sleeping on my futon. I got shoved off of it at about 5 a.m. when she decided (as is her habit these days) that she wanted to use me as a human pillow.

I don't enjoy being used as a human pillow, especially when it involves being rhythmically kicked and kneaded.

I decide to give up on sleep and head downstairs to brew some coffee to make iced coffee. It is already quite hot inside the house and the Japanese summer sun is shinning down in samurai ferocity. Today the predicted high is 30 degrees Celsius (85 degrees F). Which shouldn't be such a hardship for a girl raised in California but it's the 66% humidity index that does me in.

Today is trash collection day so I need to wake up and get the trash to the trash collection point by 8 a.m. anyway.

We are by the way, completely thumbing our nose at the traditional natsu yasumi taiso regime. We have not even "thought" about getting up at 6 a.m. and down to the local neighborhood park to line up and perform early morning stretches and exercises to the nation wide broadcast summer taiso program.

Saki comes down the stairs about 5 minutes after me and sidles up to the computer where I am checking my e-mail and reading the U.S. news. She doesn't say anything but looks meaningfully at me.

"Good morning! What would you like for breakfast?"

Saki nods her head.

"Banana with sprinkles?"

"Yes. And milk. In a baby cup."

I go chop up a banana, sprinkle it liberally with the trans fat free cake decoration sprinkles that my sister-in-law sent from the States and fill a Playtex toddler cup with milk.

Saki will be 6 this October but still insists on the "baby cup." Mostly so that she can break the eating/drinking rule of "stay at the table" and wander the house drinking milk/apple juice/water/tea to her heart's content and my consternation.

When Reno awakes and descends the stairs I take her breakfast order. While I am frying up her bacon and scrambled eggs I help myself to a bowl of kabochya, tofu miso shiru. I offer her some and she predictably refuses it--she hates Japanese pumpkin (kabochya). She also hates Japanese style breakfast which has always puzzled me as I love it. Grilled fish, Japanese pickles, natto, rice and miso shiru is my favorite breakfast. But since I am the only one in the family who will eat it I usually only get it on vacations when we stay at Japanese style inns (ryokan).

Masa simply doesn't eat breakfast, unless it is served at 11:30 a.m.

While I am standing in the kitchen doing the dishes (which involves, emptying the drying rack of last night's dishes, washing up the morning's dishes and then setting them in the drying rack--like most Japanese households, we have no dish washer) I mentally flip through today's dinner options.

Shyogayaki pork with a nice chilled shredded cabbage, cucumber and tomato salad and some fresh shishito. Wiping a bead of sweat from my nose, before it drops on its own onto the dishes I'm cleaning, I decide to add chilled tofu to the menu. Today is going to be just too damn hot. Rice of course, for the girls and Masa. . . and miso shiru with. . . daikon and wakame in it.

I look at the time on the gas heater on the wall (gas stove, gas heated hot water) and realize that it is nearly 9:00 a.m. If I want to beat the trash collection guys (who actually hop off the truck and manually dump garbage bags into the back of a truck that to my eyes doesn't appear to have any trash compacting abilities) I had better get the trash taken out.

Outside it is HOT. Not as hot as inside though. And although we do have two air conditioning units, they are Japanese wall mounted ones, that work just fine as long as you stand directly underneath them and don't move a muscle, they will keep you rather refreshed. The furnace effect inside is more because of our cats. We live in a rented house and the screens aren't normal. They pull down out of the window frames. . . hence, if our cats tear the window screen I can't fix it. I have searched all over and I can't find out how or where to fix screens like ours that have been damaged. The first summer here the cats damaged all but four of the screens (out of 10 or so). So now, unless I bother to drag out the cat cage and stuff the felines in, we stay indoors with the windows closed all year long.

Every morning I vow to set up the cat cage and stuff them in. Then the heat sets in and I lose all desire to drag out and assemble anything. Plus they just look at me accusingly when they are in the cage.

I have to walk about four blocks hauling the trash. Today I see a tear in one bag and do my best to hold it far away from me. We have a steel bowl like thing in our sink that is for "nama gomi" which roughly translates as "raw garbage." Into which goes fish bones, left over eggs, fish heads, tofu, vegetable peelings, fish guts, chicken skin and fat, etc. Living in Northern Japan it isn't so disgusting most of the time--but in the months of July and August here, in the summer heat of our area it is DISGUSTING. I empty it frequently and double bag the contents that I empty out of it before I put them in the trash but MY GOD DO THEY REEK.

I even bought some handy "orange oil" spray to hose them down with but it just smells like oranges in a rotting heap of food.

I manage to get to the trash collection point without any disgusting-gomi-juices getting on me and I unlatch the metal cage door (we have 2 threats to the trash: crows (the biggest threat) and bears, who I have never seen and hopefully never will see in our neighborhood.) and deposit my family's garbage among the garbage of our neighbor's. I carefully shove the metal door up as I slide the bolt across it to close it. The first year here I didn't know that trick and I scrapped about two inches of flesh off of a finger one morning. "Gaijin certainly do have blood curdling beast like yells don't they?" was probably said casually over many a breakfast table in the neighborhood that morning.

Heading home I hope that my torn garbage bag doesn't rip further and spill. I was on garbage duty the past two weeks and luckily nothing like that ever happened on my watch. I just passed off the tongs, the dust pan, the broom and other "minder of the trash" things to my neighbor last night. If my bag rips open she's the one who will have to clean it up. I like her so I hope it doesn't rip. Plus, there are nearly always tell tale signs of whose garbage is whose and I'd hate to have her start looking at me with ". . .and I suppose you honestly couldn't spare the extra 200 yen to buy the heavy duty garbage bags? The one's that don't rip like wet tissue?"eyes of accusation. . .

I open the door intending to wake up Masa straight off, it's 9 a.m. so he's overslept already by about an hour, but I find him downstairs mumbling good morning to the girls, who are fighting with each other over something significant like space on the sofa. I suggest to my bickering brood that perhaps they should get outside and start filling the pool.

Masa is out the door and off to work long before the bickering brood has settled the sofa dispute much less begun to take any action towards filling their pool. I finish up the breakfast dishes and start on the laundry. First I have to bring in all the laundry off the line from yesterday and fold it and put it away. Then I have to start hanging up the load of wet clothing and towels that I did this morning. Half way through taking in the first load of clothing to fold and put away I realize that I am dripping with sweat. No, not figuratively, literally. I swipe a hand towel out of the fresh laundry and drape it around my neck and swab my face off with it. It's 10 a.m.

I finish off the pot of iced coffee that I made earlier. I was up until about 2 a.m. as Reno has dedicated every bone in her body to staying up as late as possible during summer vacation and last night Masa came home about 10:00 p.m. He usually gets in later, anywhere between 11:30 p.m. and 1:00 a.m., but after seeing the results of Reno's 5th grade kanji test on Monday evening he has been trying to get home earlier in order to help her with homework.

Just after he came through the door I put his dinner on the table. His last blood test showed that he is dangerously close to becoming officially diabetic so he is being force fed healthy fare. Last night was grilled fish, a side dish of long onions with fish flakes, soy sauce and sesame oil dressing, grated daikon, the kabochya and tofu miso that Reno spurned this a.m. and rice. I keep intending to switch him over to brown rice but the girls protest it so vigorously that I'm beginning to think I'll have to buy a second rice cooker--one for the simple carb crowd and one for the health conscious procreaters of the simple carb addicts.

Although Masa kept begging me to go on up and sleep with Saki (who BLESS her little soul collapsed and passed out at about 10:45) the American in me wouldn't succumb. I was going to stay up later than my 10-year-old even if it killed me. Masa and Reno worked on math and kanji at the kitchen table till about midnight when I did finally fall asleep on the floor downstairs. I woke up at 1:00 a.m. and enjoyed some adult only time with my husband before going up to bed at about 1:40 a.m.

Japan's work practices seem diametrically opposed to family life and specifically, they seem designed to extinguish any "adult time" that couples might have after having children. Take my two chores this a.m.: the laundry and the trash. The trash is supposed to officially be out by 8 a.m. Without clothing driers (most Japanese household still don't have a clothes dryer) the Japanese housewife needs to get up early and get her washing done in order to get the clothes out on the line to dry before the MIND MELTING heat of the day sets in.

I, by the way, am about 2-3 hours behind all good housewives. A good housewife has the laundry done and out by say 6:30 a.m. so that she can focus on making her husband a bento and creating a six dish breakfast for her children. I cheerfully offer my kids toast and hard boiled eggs and bananas and Masa doesn't take a bento to work with him. I always feel victorious when I succeed in hanging out the laundry without fainting from sun stroke.

But you can see that basically a Japanese housewife's daily chores demand that she be an early riser. Work practices demand that husbands work late or if not working in the office that they go out drinking (the social/business drinking that is part and parcel of the Japanese workplace/way of doing business). Either way they come home far later than their European or American counterparts.

I used to not wait up for Masa and it meant that we had nearly no time together, alone, as adults. When we were both awake and together it was always in the role of mother and father. Rediscovering time with my husband as just him and me has been so rewarding that I am sporting a permanent living dead sort of appearance.

Besides, if I didn't stay up to see him in the evenings two things would happen. A) he'd revert to an all ramen diet thus hastening the onset of diabetes. B) I'd end up living in a world where my conversations would be dominated by themes appealing to only 10 and 5 year-olds.

I have a few local friends but no one that can pop in for a visit on the spur of the moment and no one that I can just call up to chat. The local friends I do have are like me, juggling a career and child care and that basically makes owning a phone nearly purposeless. Unless you find a friend who stays up past 10 p.m. and wants to talk late at night when the kids are asleep.

Part of the reason I can't really have decent phone conversations is that even if I get the kids out the room, that doesn't mean that they can't hear what I am saying. So there again, all the conversations I can have while they are awake are child censored ones. Our house has four bedrooms and pick one, any one, and you can hear whatever is going on anywhere else in the house. When I escape with the cordless out the front door it invariably ends with two children frantically calling out "Mommy! Okaasan! LAURA!" until I am found.

At noon I make tuna fish sandwiches for the girls. Reno's has cucumber mixed in: Saki's only has tuna and mayonnaise. I hope she thanks me when she accepts her Oscar. The child can look ill, peeked, swoon and if need be, vomit on command. She can also detect even the most finely diced and concealed piece of vegetable--any vegetable--in her food. If it wasn't for vegetable fruit juice mixes she would be a complete anti-vegetarian.

I have to skip any lunch today as I am off for a CT scan at the local Red Cross hospital (my mother naively asked, "Are all the doctor's American? Do they all speak English?" isn't that cute?). My doctor is trying to discover why I have been running a low grade fever since February. I keep looking at her and cheerfully suggesting, "Stress?" But so far she isn't buying it. She's shoved a camera down my throat (I tried violently to vomit it up for the duration of the procedure but failed) to check out my stomach, ordered lung x-rays and a multitude of blood tests. All the tests have come back negative so far--I am one healthy, low grade fever sporting poser. At least that is how all these tests make me feel--no answers except, "you're a poser."

After today's CT scan maybe I should fess up to my chronic sleep deprivation. Actually, the real reason she is so test happy is my recent weight loss. I have lost 24 kilos in less than 5 months. But, honestly, the reason, as I told her, is STRESS. I stopped eating, because I had no appetite due to STRESS.

Anyway. I haven't lost anymore weight since I saw her a month ago. Maybe that will settle her down some. She's threatening me with a camera up the bum next. I am so excited to be 24 kilos lighter than I was in February/March but to escape the camera up the bum test I have even consumed several Snickers this week.

And so, at 1:35 I cheerful wrap up my blog post and head off to the hospital. I already pity all the other patients as I have to take my incredibly LOUD and ACTIVE offspring with me. I pray to God that while I am in the CT scan machine they don't burst into surgery in process, knock any frail elderly people down or drive patients waiting in the cardiology department to have, well, a heart attack.

Speaking of which, I better go hunt down their DS games and soft ware. The irritating noises and tunes of the software will drive people near them batty, but the games themselves will keep my two stationary at least.

It's Tough to be a tadpole: or The Circle of Life our Family's Style

2008-06-26T15:17:00.004+09:00

It's really tough to be a tad pole at our house. Reno and Saki have been marauding through the local rice fields and have taken captive a dozen or so poor little wanna be amphibians. Those that have now succeeded in sprouting legs are currently being rounding up in a Barbie house in the drive way. I just gracefully exited the scene saying, "When they stop moving, they're dead."

Not that I am a callous cold woman--I was trying to shock Saki and her friend into listening to me. I had just spent a good three minutes trying to explain that today is very hot and sunny and that these are just little bitty baby frogs with soft wet skin. I was cautioning that they really shouldn't be handled too much or forced to jump for say over a minute or so. But Saki and her little friend Yuki went right on screaming at the little green blobs that were desperately trying to escape Barbie's dream house.

So, my youngest, who is currently torturing frogs in the drive way, surprised me last week by locking herself in the bathroom to weep over the death of one of our goldfish. (All the gold fish have by now departed this planet--some kind of deadly fish fungus.) What surprised me was her completely sincere solemness about it. She cradled the dead fish in a piece of tissue, holding it gingerly to her chest. She moved in a slow stately march to the bathroom. She took a deep breath. "I am going to close the door now and I want to be alone."

Hmmmm. I stood outside wondering what exactly she was up to. When the door opened a good five minutes later I asked, "What were you doing? Did you flush the fish?" She nodded quickly and left to go play at a friend's house.

When she came home I found her standing in the genkan staring at the empty fish tank. She looked up at me. "I was crying in the toilet. For the fish. For the poor fish." And I could see her eyes glistening and threatening to fill with tears again.

Now, why was I surprised? Because I have gotten used to pets being unceremoniously chucked once they have given up the ghost. I remember gearing up and readying myself to break the news of the death of Reno's first pet to her. I was so worried and tense. It's such a blow to lose a beloved pet--so senseless, so raw so, well, emotional.

But Reno at the age of three, when told that her hamster Hannah chyan had died, blinked at me intently and responded with, "so can we get 'nother one?" No tears. No remorse. No singing songs in honor of the dear departed little fuzzy companion.

Me? I would have been gathering flowers and elaborating laying them on my pet's grave for MONTHS. In fact, that is what I did when I was three. I was in the fourth grade when I started bringing flattened snakes (road kill) home to bury in our backyard. I had a plot for all the poor departed creatures that I happened across. I wept for them. I prayed for them. I loved them beyond their life spans.

Now, when an actual REAL family pet died--I was inconsolable for LOOOOONG periods.

So when Reno greeted the demise of her first pet with a quick, "can we get 'nother one?" I was flabbergasted. Then I got disturbed.

Fish came and went and no matter how pleased she seemed with them at the time, still, death raised only one question in her mind, "Can we get another one?"

Her ojiichyan (Japanese grandfather) died and thankfully, she was content to just sit quietly through the funeral without posing the dreaded question. I expected her to be upset about losing a grandfather but she seemed a little more intrigued with gaining a portrait at the butsudan to light incense for, to put out little ceremonial cups of sake and leave tiny bowls of rice for. She was only five-year-old at the time, so perhaps I just expected too much. She was just still too young to wail and beat her chest yet like her dramatic mother.

Reassurance came on an attempted flight back home from the States later that same year. We had to de-board the flight home due to Saki suddenly spiking a fever just before take off. In the airport, clutching a screaming and feverish Saki to my chest I looked down to see Reno sobbing uncontrollably. "Oh honey, what's the matter?"

"Melon. Melon is waiting for us, but we aren't going to be coming home to her!"

Melon was a one-year-old American short hair cat, our current (and happy to say still currently alive and well) family pet.

Reno continued to sob--tears welling up in her eyes and pouring down her cheeks while her chest heaved. Saki wailed, although for a completely different reason--Otis media in both ears.

All the way to the local ER Reno continued her mournful monologue about Melon the abandoned cat. She had been missing her the whole three months in America but had always told herself to be strong, she would see Melon soon. She missed petting her; she missed watching her eat. Now she wasn't going to get to see Melon soon.

Normally a crying five-year-old and a shrieking one-year-old in the back of a taxi that was taking a good 45 minutes to get us to the ER that was supposed to be just 15 minutes from the airport would have pushed me over the edge. However, this time I was happy. My eldest daughter had a soft spot for her pet cat. The universe was back in alignment.

If there is one thing I want my daughters to learn from me it is a respect for life--for all life. I get upset when I see little boys pulling the leaves off of trees-stripping branch after branch nude. I want to take in each and every stray cat and kitten that I see, I want to save the whales, the harbor seals and rain forests and everything in them. I'm a bit of a bleeding heart really. But it is one weakness that I am not ashamed of. Seeing connections between all the living organisms in my life--from the towering dandelion weed in the front yard to the soft grey cat curled up at the foot of my futon, to my daughters, our neighbors, the world--makes me feel safe and whole. We are all in this together. Albeit my beloved daughters may spend half their time together locked in near mortal combat, and that weed at the front of the house really needs to be whacked down and ripped out by the roots--still, we are all on the same ride.

So I want my kids to learn to respect that and to learn that when someone gets off this ride it doesn't take anything away from you to pause and recognize and mark the loss. In fact, learning to mark the connections between the universal "you" in all it's varied forms strengths the individual you. You are part of something bigger than yourself.

Of course, those poor little tadpoles stewing in their portable interrogation box, I mean bug catching cage, are probably wishing that they could be disconnected from my family. But last year, I remember taking the fully developed frogs back to the rice fields with the girls and watching my girls' faces as they let each bright green frog hop off a finger tip into the tall rice--I celebrated that connection present on their faces. And don't worry, the seige on Barbie's Dream house ended before the little guys "stopped moving."

Why I Wish I Were a Fiction Writer

2008-05-28T14:46:00.005+09:00

I have never been very talented at writing fiction. I took a seminar in it once at university and while I passed the class, I found it to be exceedingly difficult to weed out my life and my experiences and perceptions and use them to infuse a sense of reality into my fictional stories and still keep the stories fictional. I tried my hand at writing fiction again in graduate school and encountered the same problem. My stories that were best received by the professor and my peers were inevitably those in which my name and the name of others had been changed, the location modified and events fiddled with.

But now I find myself in a weird ethical bind. I want to continue writing creative non-fiction prose. And I know that creative non-fiction prose isn't necessarily the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth but . . . Why do I feel this insane urge to go public with all my deepest innermost thoughts and turmoils? Why do I feel like to write from any position but the one in which I find myself mired in is a lie?

Obviously when I write, now and in the past, I choose what to omit and what to include. Omission isn't lying, at least not outright lying and many times you have to decide what to omit to help strengthen the emotional or artistic impact of a piece of writing. Just as what you decide to include is important, to me what you leave out is of nearly equal importance.

I always think of Virginia Woolf and her struggle in her quest to write a true stream of consciousness. Trying to represent reality in all its complexity is beyond our reach. Even now, sitting here at the computer typing I am not aware of everything going on at this exact moment. Yes, I am listening to my ipod (to Gwen Stefani). Yes, I am drinking a Starbucks Ice Latte (venti size--I have young children so I need the caffeine). Yes, I am trying to decide what word to write next and what word should come after that word and mostly I am struggling to repress the urge to just delete it all. And I just left out at least 20 other things going on in my mind and in my environment and they have all changed or been modified in some way in a 100 different ways already so I have already lost the ability to transmit them exactly as they occurred to me.

I guess the gist of it is that not only did a profound life changing event happen to me but it has changed the ground from which I experience my life. When I walk down the street now, I have different impressions of people, different thoughts flit through my mind than previously. If I were a telescope either someone has swung me round and pointed me at a new star field or they have tampered with my lens and my whole outlook has changed.

And that leaves me puzzled about how to write. I always just wrote from here, from me. While I always had to consider what to omit, what to reveal, what to elaborate on, what to hint at. . . I never had to consider where to write from. I knew the center of myself and I knew which perspective I was writing from. My filters were established and fixed.

It's silly really. If I write, "I took off my youngest daughter's training wheels yesterday. It felt like releasing a hawk--off she sped down the street, pedalling frantically and triumphantly away from me, her mother." You still read it the same, don't you? But the person saying it has changed dramatically. The insecurities that watching my five-year-old speeding away from me stirred up in my maternal chest were augmented by the other insecurities incubating there.

I define myself as a mother. I define myself as a wife. I define myself as a foreigner. I define myself as a woman. I define myself as a teacher. I define myself through my experiences. I'm a big believer in life shaping and molding us. If we choose to react to an event or if we choose not to react to an event we have been changed by that event. It forced us to make a decision and that decision leads us along our individual path of life to the next event awaiting us.

So I used to be strolling along, narrating bits of my experiences and observations about what I saw along the way, when suddenly my path disappeared. I'm still finding my way, testing the ground at it were, looking for my footing, watching each step. And writing on this hill side of broken rock just seems foolish. I miss the solid ground. I miss the safety of knowing where I stood, knowing exactly where I was positioned in life.

Of course that was probably just an illusion. But like a night light left on in a child's bedroom it gave me the peace and the illusion of security. No monster dares enter a room where a night light is on.

Just can't blog/write

2008-04-15T20:57:00.002+09:00

Well, I constantly think that the ability to write will return to me so I put off admitting that it has left. However, I feel guilty when I get those reports from the site meter telling me that people are still dropping by--probably expecting to find something to read.

What can I say? Write? Obviously nothing.

I basically have gone through a life changing event and it has left me changed. Unfortunately, it has left me wordless, unable to put any of myself on paper.

However, it hasn't left me hopeless. So I'm keepin the blog for a bit longer. Hoping that maybe, just maybe, a new writer will emerge from the mess that is me.

Cheers.

WTF?????

2008-04-07T19:51:00.002+09:00

I'm sorry, but WTF is up with the Japanese criminal courts? After reading this I'm still sitting here. . . wondering. . . WHY? They got him in 2000 for killing and "mutilating the corpse" of one Filipina and now he's gone and done it again? WHY was this guy let out in the first place? How long was his previous jail term and since when did murder and twisted, warped, seriously sick behavior(corpse mutilation/body dismemberment) merit just a turn in the slammer?

Okay, someone out there more up to date with the criminal system in Japan please answer the following question: If he had killed and dismembered a young Japanese bar hostess the first time around, would he have been let out to do it again?

Of Doctor Fish and Ika

2008-03-25T19:04:00.002+09:00

Our family seems to have a personal goal of visiting as many aquariums as possible through out the world. We've been to aquariums in America. We went to aquariums in Australia. We went to the aquarium in Singapore. We went to the aquarium in Osaka. Several times. We have been to the aquarium in Masa's home town now several times too. In February we went again.

I am really sick and tired of looking at fish, sharks, octopus, sea anemones, brine shrimp, sea stars, anything with gills that lives in the water. Otters I still like. They are like the ocean's cats: frisky, cute, playful. Seals stink and penguins are overrated. Dolphins are cool but I am bored watching the dolphin shows--you'll have to slap me in a wet suit and dump me in the actual tank with them before they regain my interest.

My youngest daughter, Saki however is fascinated and thrilled by the sight of a dolphin. Which is why on our recent visit to the Kagoshima City Aquarium she kept rushing into the otter viewing room and tugging at her older sister's, Reno's sleeve and shrieking in her extremely I'm-so-excited voice, "IKA! IKA! IKA show! COME ON!"

Now "ika" in Japanese means "squid." While I find them tasty, I don't particularly fancy looking at them alive and swimming around with their large eyes perched next to their tentacles. . . Disney knew what it was doing when it made that bad guy in Pirates of the Caribbean II look like a squid face. I prefer otters to palatable monsters of the deep.

Saki however would not give up. She continued to race back and forth between the "IKA SHOW" and the otter viewing room until suddenly it dawned on me what she was saying. Ika SHOW? What the hell kind of SHOW can ika put on? My interest aroused I directed Reno to follow her agitated sister to the show pool of the aquarium. As soon as we entered it I realized what was going on. There were no trainers holding up hoops with squid jumping through them. No one was standing next to the pool blowing a whistle and directing two lines of squid to dance on the surface of the water with their tentacles.

It was a dolphin show. In Japanese, dolphin is "iruka". Saka had mixed up squid for dolphin. We stayed and the kids were overjoyed to leave dripping wet from the fabulous full belly flops that the dolphins performed with the express purpose of dousing the crowd--or at least those silly enough to sit in the front rows.

We then proceeded to look and gawk at every other sea creature that the aquarium had to offer. None of them particularly interested me and I was letting my thoughts wander to how much more interesting the afternoon would have been if we had just wandered around the downtown streets of Kagoshima when something in the lobby on our way out snapped me out of it.

First it was a display that you can touch. I may be 41 years old, but things that you can touch rather than just look at still get me kind of shrieky excited. I rushed over. It was a tank of tiny little fish, they looked like minnows, with holes in the lid so that you could stick your finger in. I stuck my finger in. Suddenly, at least 40 of the fish swam eagerly over to my finger and started, well, sucking on it. It tickled. The girls shrieked with joy. Reno stuck her finger in another hole. Saki wailed in distress until I picked her up so she could stick her finger in and have the fish suck on it too.

We stood there and stuck our digits in the tank for about 20 minutes at which point Masa approached us to say in a quiet disgruntled voice, "What are you doing? You're embarrassing me." Startled, I thought he meant that we were hogging the sucking fish and should give other people a chance at them so I corralled the girls over to a rest bench across from their tank. While we sat there Masa pointed to the tank of sucking fish and said, "Watch what normal people do."

I watched for about 15 minutes and it appeared that normal people approached the tank, apprehensively stuck in a finger, squealed in fright when the 40 or so fish began to eagerly suck on their digits and then quickly withdrew their fingers and proceeded to a sink to wash their hands with soap and water. It didn't mater what age they were, young couples, grandparents, mothers and fathers, high school children, grade school children, they all pretty much proceeded in the same way. Babies cried.

There was a lull in traffic past the sucking fish tank and Reno and Saki immediately raced over to thrust their fingers back in. Masa sighed. "You guys haven't even thought to wash your hands, have you?"

I left Masa to his canned coffee and cigarette and went back over to the tank of sucking fish. This time I paused and tried to read the sign above it. Apparently these minnows were called "Doctor fish " and they are actually used to treat people with skin problems and diseases. The "sucking" sensation" is actually their little teeny mouths feeding off of old skin. There are onsens (hot springs) in Japan that have imported them and cater especially to eczema suffers. I immediately wanted to whip off my shoes and socks and stick my feet in the tank. The tank was about three feet off the ground though so I had to admit defeat. It was impossible not to mention against all propriety to stick my winter calloused feet into that tank.

On the drive home the kids and I touched each other's fingers and marveled at how smooth and soft they were.

Next vacation I want to hunt up one of the onsens in Japan that boasts of having "Dr. Fish" in their hot springs.

This is not a post

2008-03-05T15:28:00.003+09:00

This is not a post. It is a note about why I am not posting. I am not posting because life is very difficult at the moment and my mind is consumed in a fire of thoughts that have to do with things "not of the blogging world". The good news is that my family and I are all okay. So, it is not a death or serious injury or anything. No one got fired. No one got hit by a freak meteorite. No strange and poisonous snake made it through the toilet pipes to bite any one's ass. I'm just preoccupied with a personal matter.

And I am reading everyone else's blogs. . . but can't find the stamina to read and actually comment. Forgive my silence here and there!

S is for "Sucks"

2008-02-07T23:38:00.000+09:00

Well this totally sucks. I was going to use my "s" post to talk about sex. . . and then our home computer goes and DIES on me. Well. It was my fault. I took the battery out of it and apparently, laptops need the batteries in them, even when running on the outlet. . . something about overloading the networks inside and basically frying the poor little things inside out. Oops. But here I am, using a computer with a Japanese operating system and all the manuals in Japanese and me illiterate in Japanese. . . I panicked over the news earlier this year (last year?--stalwart little computer, I apparently applied nasty torture devices to it for quite a while before it gave up the ghost) about laptop batteries spontaneously bursting into flames.

So I whisked our laptop's battery right out.

Now, it's broken little shell has been whisked out of the house off to the electronics store. Where they sternly lectured us on our stupidity for quite a while. It was really embarrassing and completely sucked.

But that wasn't nearly as funny as the cable t.v. man this afternoon who responded to our desperate "something-is-wrong-with-the-cable-t.v.-come-as-soon-as-possible" call to discover that we had. . . unplugged the cable booster. So he plugged it back in and charged us about 13 U.S. dollars.

Our technological abilities suck.

Hopefully we will get another laptop or they will do some sort of transplant on the old one.

Right now I am using a laptop from Masa's work place. It will have to go off to work with him tomorrow. What keeps a mother of young children up past midnight on a weeknight? Internet addiction. I feel like a 16 year old with a cooler full of beer and parents gone for the weekend! Too bad it will all be over tomorrow at about 8 a.m. Which just sucks.

Answer to the Language Question

2008-01-24T21:17:00.000+09:00

A couple of people in their comments were asking about what language we use in our family/household.

We use English. Masa and I met in the U.S. and so our first language was English. Well, first spoken language was English. We communicated heavily in body language that first year. . . (insert happy happy sigh of remembered bliss). But I felt then, that as he was studying in the U.S. to improve his English, I should use only English with him.

How I got trapped into using only English? Well, by the time I made my way to Japan after graduating from university his English level had surpassed my Japanese language ability to such an extent that I stupidly let our relationship continue in all English. Why do I say stupidly? Because well, look at me. I live in Japan but I'm not fluent in Japanese! I have a Japanese spouse but have had no conversation partner in Japanese!

Masa just flat out says that it is too "weird" to use Japanese with me and he also gets really easily frustrated with my level of Japanese. I guess it would be something like walking into a session of the Senate and telling all the Senators, "Okay, just for fun, let's all speak like first graders today, Okay?"

Now, when we had our first child we were in the U.S. for the first two months of her life. Then we were in Queensland, Australia for the next two years. Ironically, Reno heard a lot of Japanese during those two years, but not from Masa. My best friend in Australia was a Japanese woman whose husband worked at the same company as my husband. Her husband was also Japanese. While my friend and I spoke a mix of English/Japanese with each other she made a point of speaking only in Japanese to Reno--for which I was very grateful. Especially when we were living in an English speaking country I wanted Reno to hear and learn Japanese as well as English. My friend lived in the apartment across the hall from ours and so Reno actually spent more time per week exposed to her than she did exposed to her own Daddy.

When we moved to Osaka I realized rather quickly, "uh-oh." cause Daddy was still speaking all English with his baby girl who was a toddler by then. But we popped Reno into Japanese day care and hoped for the best scenario that so many people told us would come effortlessly--that she would be bilingual before we knew it.

It is much too long of a story to get into here but no, Reno did not fall into the "she's already talking in complicated sentences--chattering away in Japanese and English alternatively!" category of bi cultural children in Japan. Her first language, her native language is English. She is now fluent in Japanese as well.

Her little sister, Saki, appears to have stronger linguistic gifts/abilities and has been aware of the two languages (Japanese & English) since she was first speaking. Reno didn't quite catch on to the "two languages=one object=two different words=same object" concept until she was in elementary school! Saki has been able to smile sweetly at the Japanese obaasan (old lady)in the park and gurgle "wan wan!" (Japanese noise for a dog barking, a baby word for dog) and then beam back at me and chirp "doggie!"

Of course she has all the advantages that a younger sibling gets. We made mistakes; we have tried to rectify them. For instance, my second child will start elementary school here having already learned all her hiragana and katakana and if I have my way all her ichinensei kanji (first year kanji) as well! Like most of the other Japanese children. With Reno, I didn't know that the ichinensei year (first grade year) is supposed to basically just be a "review and boost their confidence year". So she went in hiragana-less, katakana-clueless and kanji--what the f*@k and her ichinensei year turned into a "stamp all the self-confidence out of this kid" kind of year. We are still recouping from that experience.

And since Saki's birth and Reno's first very difficult years in elementary school Masa now makes an effort to speak to the girls in Japanese. He still tends to use English with them when we are all together as a family, but if I am out of the conversation--say I am in the kitchen or at the computer--he speaks to them in his native language. They will automatically use Japanese with him if I am not present.

Why do I have this "speak in English" effect on my offspring and mate? Well, I have offered to play clueless Jane and have them all speak in Japanese around me (in fact I have begged for them to do this.) but now, not only does Masa feel "weird" speaking to me in Japanese but my kids think it feels "weird" too. I'm the English mama.

When I am particularly irritated with my children I will scold them harshly in Japanese. . . maybe that has something to do with their aversion to my speaking in Japanese but the little smart Alec's know that they can back talk in English and no one around us knows what we're/they're saying. So when I bark out, "Mou, shinai de to yutta deshou? Nani o kangaetteru no?" (Hey, I said cut it out. What are you thinking?) they not only get to hear my best guttural mean-Japanese-mommy imitation but they know that everyone around us KNOWS that they are being scolded. Shame can work wonders in a crowded public space.

For Masa's part he has confessed that it is simply too difficult to flip flop languages. He can't talk to me in English and switch to Japanese for the kids and flop back into English for me all at the same dinner table at the same time.

Plus he just honestly HATES helping me with the language. Honestly. If I ask him, "how do you say book case in Japanese?" (for example, you know a common noun? a common household object?) He will often look thoughtful for a second and then look at me and with a completely sincere and focused face say, "we haven't got a word for that in Japanese." Of course I used to call him on it. Now I just sigh and mutter nasty words under my breath and colorful little curses and linguistic hexes--you know, like "May you end up living in an Arabic country, unable to communicate and illiterate."

Although to be fair--he is now working hard with Reno on her fourth grade kanji and kokugo (reading/writing). They write a diary back and forth to each other. He also recently has been supportive of my efforts to learn Japanese by bringing home an English to Japanese, Japanese to English, Japanese to Japanese and English to English electronic dictionary for me. And when I went out and purchased a bunch of kanji software for the DSlite he just commented that it was good that I was getting into studying kanji again.

As of recent, he has even been known to answer specific pointed questions regarding Japanese usage and grammar.

To recap briefly, our home language, our dominant family language is English. When I am with the girls I use only English with them. We watch predominantly English language channels on Cable and I prefer to watch most of our rental DVDs in English. However, Reno and Saki both have a few Japanese anime shows that they watch that are, of course, in Japanese. On weekends they enjoy the dreaded Japanese variety shows (hell for the typical foreigner) with their Daddy. Daddy does try to speak Japanese with them but when we are all together we tend to all use English. While the road to being bilingual has been difficult for my first born, it so far seems to be paved and smooth from my second born. Whether or not this is just inherent in their make ups or a quirk of birth order I can't say for sure. Although I would tend to think it a bit of both.

One thing I have never experienced, that I know other foreign English speaking mothers and fathers here have at times, is neither of my children have ever asked me to NOT speak in English to them in public. In fact, the only language they ever beg me NOT to speak to them in in public is Japanese! Neither of my daughters has ever gone on a language strike, refusing to speak one language or the other.

You know what I am really curious about these days? I wander what kind of guy my Masa is in Japanese. Because I know that my personality changes a bit when I am speaking Japanese versus English. Hard to explain but it's like I turn from one pane of glass to another and look out on the same landscape with the same world view but everything slightly tinged in a different hue. The longer I know him now the curiouser and curiouser I am becoming about what kind of guy he would seem to me were we to communicate only in Japanese with one another.

How about those of you out there who are also involved in an international relationship? What language do you and your significant other communicate in?

He Who Laughs Last

2008-01-22T20:16:00.000+09:00

You know, for the first decade or so of my relationship with Masa I have to fess up to, well, playing word jokes on him. I used to knowingly use English words that I knew were beyond his vocabulary. Mostly my jokes were little sarcastic or ironic commentaries on things that amused me no end and seemed harmless enough. If he had ever paused and said, "hey, does that mean ----?" I would have given him truthful answers.

Well, it looks like I have entered "pay back" territory and honestly, although I'm a little peeved I have to say I'm proud of him! He got me good.

The other day after dinner, Masa looked up from the dinner table and called across to me in the kitchen (which is about two feet away from our dinning room, which is to say, our dinner table, this being Japan and us living in an honest to God typical Japanese house) "Can you get me a toothpick?" Since I looked blankly back at him (being in a bad mood because I had just finished cooking dinner and was now preparing to clean up from dinner) he switched tactics and asked Reno instead. But when he asked her, he used Japanese, "Tsumayouji kashite kudasai."

My ears pricked right up. I even took off my i-pod ear phones. "TSUMA what?"

And this is where my guy shines. He did such a good job on me. He didn't smile, he didn't sneer, he just said, in a distracted tone, "yeah?" and then asked Reno again, "tsumayouji kashite kudasai!" a bit louder as she was simply staring blankly back at him (being a tween and entirely moody and uncooperative even over the simplest things, like getting someone a toothpick).

Now, I studied Japanese three years in college, went on a semester exchange to Japan in 1988 and lived and worked in Yokohama for two and a half years after graduation. In 2000 we moved to Osaka, Japan and we have been here in Japan ever since. My second daughter (Saki) was born here in Japan.

Am I fluent? Hardly. Apparently English language schools, or at least the one for which I taught in Yokohama, want their foreign teachers to speak only English so badly that they threaten to fire you if they find out that you are speaking any Japanese on their premises. The university I worked at in Osaka didn't threaten to fire me for speaking Japanese but since I was teaching English language immersion courses, well, I spoke very little Japanese. I want my daughters to grow up bilingual, so our home/family language is English.

I speak Japanese regularly to sales people. It consists of the following:
Kore wa ikura desu ka? (How much is this?)
Kore onegaishimasu. (This please.)
Arigatougozaimasu. (Thank you.)

Maybe a couple of other words. If I am feeling linguistically extravagant.

They don't do small talk here.

So my Japanese, while I have enrolled in the odd Kumon course here and there and have amassed an extensive library of Japanese language texts and currently study using my daughters DSLite with some excellent kanji software, has not really improved much. In fact, when I was an exchange student, I think my language skills were more advanced in Japanese than they are now. I've not only failed to learn more kanji, I've forgotten kanji that I used to know!

So, when Masa said "tsumayouji" I immediately thought of the two words I do know that sound like that. Tsuma which means "wife" and youji which means "task or thing to do." Now, thinking of "toothpick=wife task" I asked him hotly if indeed the kanji used for tsumayouji was the kanji for "wifely task".

He is so good.

He even acted like he was impressed with my language ability--that I could guess the kanji like that.

So all week long I have been fuming and seething about "stupid dumb worthless sexist language--grrrrrr----dumb Japanese!" However, this evening as I was sulking in the kitchen, I mean, cooking in the kitchen, it occurred to me, "no. . . . . he didn't. ? ? ? ? " So directly after doing the washing up I headed in to the tatami to the computer to look into the Japanese word for "toothpick".

It turns out that the kanji for "tsuma" in "tsumayouji" is the kanji for "claw, nail or talon" and the kanji for "you" is the kanji for "Willow". The remaining kanji, "ji" is for "bough, branch, twig or limb."

I can't wait to give my man a great big hug tonight when he gets home. I am so proud of him. And he kept it up for two days--even working in a lecture to the girls last night on how in the old days, women used to ceremoniously pick their husband's teeth for them as a sign of respect.

And here I was thinking that my man was a purely slap stick toilet humor guy! He got me with a word trick! Oh, will I never stop falling for this guy?

8 Things Meme

2008-01-15T20:22:00.000+09:00

I got tagged for a meme by Cherry Blossom Adventures! I like these things--reminds me of getting writing prompts in writing workshops at uni. I'm such a geek. I also adored essay tests through out high school and college.
So here goes:

8 Things I am Passionate About

1. Humor--especially wit. But anything or anyone who makes me laugh makes me happy to be alive. It is actually one of the few things that amazes me to this day, the fact that my husband Masa is a typical slapstick, toilet humor kind of guy (this humor does not amuse me) and I am more a Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead/Monty Python/The Daily Show/David Letterman kind of gal and yet we do find things that make each other laugh and things at which to laugh over together. For the record, no one, and I mean NO ONE on Earth will ever or has ever made me laugh as long, as hard and as whole heartedly (until my soul was about to burst with joy) as my life long best friend from high school and university, the creator of "le poison".

2. My Friends--need to have good senses of humor and sharp intellects (which enable them to be extremely witty) as well as wide hearts and accepting minds. This in turn earns them fierce loyalty and devotion, even boarding on outdoing the devotion of a faithful lab or golden retriever.

3. Music--is emotion that you can hear and dance to.

4. Finger Printing--oh you unwitting fools. Now I know how grass root campaigns get started and how small groups of people can become determined enough to actually bring about changes in the larger arenas of their lives. I don't appreciate Japan treating me as a potential criminal/terrorist/human germ sponge. In fact, I passionately dislike this new policy of finger printing and photographing every foreigner coming into Japan, be they the first time tourist or the seventy-year-old permanent resident.

5. AFWJ--the Association of Foreign Wives of Japanese. Yes, the organization's name is a bit long and sounds sort of. . . remarkably like a Japanese group name, simplistic, direct in its naming but doesn't exactly leave one marveling at the beauty of the English language does it? In the early years of living in Japan as a wife and mother I once lamented to a fellow foreign wife, "I have no nakama. No group." and she laughed out loud, slapped me on the back and said, "but you do, you do. You are in AFWJ. We are your nakama." At the time it was a kind of break through for me. There I was still at some level wishing and yearning to be brought into Japanese society and treated as a member of it. Ha. Ha ha. Up until that minute I hadn't wanted to admit that maybe my life would not be remembered by a large number of the Japanese people in my community. Perhaps it would only be remembered by the Japanese students whom I taught, the neighbors with whom I had daily contact, the rare Japanese acquaintance turned friend. . . picturing your funeral attended by mostly obligatory visitors is not a fun day dream. But here I was a member of this fantastic group, able to forge and maintain friendships with some truly stellar and fantastic women and I wasn't "counting" them as "real" because they weren't Japanese. Ha. Ha ha. (It's all in the rhythm there, if you do it in the right rhythm you get that ironic laugh, if not, I probably seem like an idiot to you.)

Now, well into my life here in Japan, AFWJ has been an integral part of my life here. Contacts, advice, help in the form of verbal advice, a willing ear, laughter and practical things like a box of maternity clothes in MY SIZE during pregnancy. The benefits of belonging to this group never cease but only seem to increase as my involvement with this organization grows and deepens.

6. The written word--a perfectly formed sentence can make me swoon. A cleverly phrased insight leaves me exhilarated. I am, first and foremost, a word nerd. God, I even enjoy simply reading the dictionary!

7. Nature--Oh I was dying when we lived in the concrete jungle of Osaka. Never did I upon waking gaze up into the smog filled skies and bless the lord for letting me live another day. The day that I got excited and mistook some incredibly disgusting and honestly physical revolting insects in the local rice field for poly wogs. . . oh my. I bent down and eagerly scooped up a half dozen of them in the palm of my hand. That is when I realized that they looked like tiny pill bugs but flatter, sharper and with many, many more ever moving, never at rest disgusting little legs. I wanted to vomit. It was something like reaching out to pet a kitten and instead discovering that you're caressing the dying, hairless body of a skinned baby rabbit. It was really gross, but I don't know what the hell those repulsive little insects were so I can't give a picture of them.

In contrast--Oh the rapture of life in Northern Japan, smack in the inaka (country side). I do wake up every morning and feel flushed with gratitude to live amongst the marvel and beauty of clear skies, green grass, towering pine trees. The lakes and rivers are so clear I can stare at the fish meters and meters below. In the course of a typical spring walk I can see a snake, a few hawks, some Japanese cranes, fish, cray fish, poly wogs, frogs, turtles, and an abundance of wild birds whose calls I now recognize but whose names I still do not know. Damn! It is evening snowing tonight for the sixth day in a row and I LOVE shoveling the snow! I get to live in a snow globe! How lucky is that!

I grew up just below Yosemite National Park in California and my parents idea of summer vacations were to take us to every National Park in America that they could drive us to. I might have sat in some of those nature talks, wearing dark sunglasses, being a snide teenager, but I ended up IN LOVE with the natural world. Sky scrapers? Who needs them. They block my view of the sky.

8. Animals--Okay. I wanted desperately to be a veterinarian, until I found out that I would need math and chemistry to get into veterinary school. I worked at a local vets during high school and loved it. I even got to assist and watch surgeries and autopsies and never once felt anything but fascination with the proceedings. I even watched when my own beloved lab/golden retriever mix had an operation and was delighted to discover that my loyal companion was golden outside and pink inside! Even her organs were cute. My dog was so cool. She was remarkable--inside and out! My current animal obsession is our small feisty--you-can-live-or die-for-all-I- care-just-feed-me Russian Blue cat. I love the fact that she is willing to use me as a live hot water bottle to warm herself during winter nights. But I also have an inordinate amount of affection for my big fat gold fish. Out of 21 festival gold fish, only this one survived. And it just keeps getting bigger and bigger every day. And I was infatuated with a praying mantis that was living in the bush by our mailbox this spring.

Bottom line, I am so passionate about animals (extending to many insects with the exception of SPIDERS) I nearly crash on my bicycle whenever I spot a hawk circling or gliding overhead because--well they just flat out mesmerize me. Nature is such a show off--sunsets and hamsters that snuggle in little piles. Hard to beat.

8 Things I want to do before I die:

1. Travel all over Europe

2. Look back at my daughters' teenage years and think "they survived and so did I" (yes, I like to worry in advance, my eldest is only 9 now.)

3. Become fluent enough in Japanese to be able to follow the nightly news

4. Become functionally literate in Japanese

5. Get a Japanese Drivers License

6. Swim with dolphins

7. Publish a creative non-fiction essay and get paid money for it.

8. Go skiing here in Japan

8 Things I often Say

1. For the love of God (I like to be dramatic when I plead with the kids to listen to me)

2. Number one (this when listing reasons to the girls, usually reasons why they can't do or have something)

3. Just calm down (to the kids, to myself, you know, to whoever needs to hear it.)

4. Don't you dare (to Happy our cat when she is poised to sharpen her claws on the wall)

5. I swear to God (I like to be dramatic when I threaten the kids)

6. Just a second (usually said every three minutes or so when I am at the computer and the girls are asking for something or trying to get me to let them get on the computer.)

7. Uh-huh. (what I say every other three minutes or so when I am at the computer and the girls are asking for something or trying to get me to let them get on the computer. I am such a one task person. Multi-tasking hurts my head.)

8. Stop shrieking. (my youngest has a fondness for shrieking over speaking)

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over

1. TubThumping I Get Knocked Down

2. Fast Car- Tracy Chapman

3. Hand-Jewel

4. Vaseline-Stone Temple Pilots

5. Everything-Michael Buble

6. Accidentally in Love--Counting Crows

7. Dani California--Red Hot Chili Peppers

8. Why Don't You and I--featuring Chad Kroeger (on the CD Santana Shaman)

8 Books I Have Recently Read (or am reading. . . I seem to be forever trying to read and never getting to. . . )

1. "We Need to Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Shriver

2. "Spontaneous Healing" by Andrew Weil, M.D.

3. "Because I Said So" 33 mothers write about children, sex, men, aging,faith, race & themselves. Edited by Camille Peri & Kate Moses

4. "Mothers Who Think" Tales of Real-life Parenthood, Edited by Camille Peri and Kate Moses

5."Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life" by Barbara Kingsolver (Author), Camille Kingsolver (Author), Steven L. Hopp (Author).

6. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J. K. Rowling

7. "Kids are Worth It!" Giving Your Child the Gift of Inner Discipline, by Barbara Coloroso

8. "When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull up a Chair" by Geneen Roth

And unfortunately, I haven't really got anyone I can tag for this. . . those I know of who enjoy doing memes have already done this one or been tagged to do this one. . . so I will leave it open as an invitation to any of the lurkers reading here--here's your chance to step in with the perfect introduction, do the 8 Things Meme! Just be sure to leave a comment directing me to your responses. Or if anyone else out there that I know and have pegged as a none meme type blogger is indeed NOT a non meme type of blogger--douzo (by all means)!

It's all good news!

2008-01-03T21:34:00.001+09:00

Quick update on the news fast. So far, in the year of 2008--nothing bad has happened. No one has hurt anyone else, for money, in anger, to make a political statement or to turn a buck. All parents that I have been in association with love their children and are trying their best to raise them as best they can. As far as I know there is no other nationality lurking in the shadows here in my neighborhood or even prefecture, waiting for the chance to blow me up. No one has attempted to break into my house and strangle me in my sleep.

But guess what? Turns out that I am so addicted to the news. It took two days to train myself not to even attempt to click on the various news sites that I have bookmarked on my computer. I really need to make a folder for them. Then there was the hurdle of training myself not to cheat by looking at the bits and pieces pulled from the news that Yahoo! puts up on their main page.

I have been indulging in researching the weather instead. I have always been a big fan of the weather channel anyway. But recently I am looking at the 15 day forecast. Tonight we might get more snow from midnight through morning. By afternoon the skies should be clear again. And I know the current weather conditions of every town I have ever lived in in America. That is sooooo useful, I know, I know. But it doesn't stress me out at all like say, being able to tell you what CNN led with tonight.

Last year I spent a lot of time quoting from the Bernstein Bears book "Fear of Strangers" in an effort to reassure my daughters over the unlikelihood that they would be the child that some bad man grabs and takes away forever. Admittedly, it is not only my news addiction that has made them nervous. The schools tell them about every incident of violence against a child perpetrated in this prefecture--in an attempt to make them "aware" of their surroundings and "prepared" to scream and yell out and escape from any weirdo that should try to get them. Then there is my preference for T.V. shows like Bones, CSI, and well, Bones and CSI. But then CSI has the three different ones, Miami, Las Vegas and New York so it is like three shows all about people doing bad to one another and how to catch them after they've done the bad.

But back to the Bernstein Bears, in that particular book Mama Bear tells Sister Bear that bad people are like bad apples: you can't tell that they are bad from the outside. But also, like apples there are only one or two in every barrel. I.e., most strangers are not potentially your murderer.

Living without daily doses of what the bad apples are up to has helped me refocus on the fact that I live in a community of many, many good apples. My neighbors are good apples. The girls' friends and their families are good apples.

Whew. It is amazingly relieving to be reminded of this.

And we went up into the mountains to an outdoor onsen. There is nothing better than sitting up to your neck in hot steaming water with big fluffy flakes of snow falling on your face. In fact, sitting in that onsen, watching Saki show us how she can do "the crawl" (although technically you're not supposed to actually swim in an onsen, but hardly anyone else was there) while Reno was timing how long it took snow balls to melt in the onsen (technically you're not supposed to put snow in the onsens but. . .) looking out over the snow coated mountains while Masa kept telling anyone of us that would listen "It looks just like a sumi-e!" I was completely happy to be here in Japan with my family greeting the new year. I felt--positive.

"R" is for "Resolutions"

2008-01-01T11:57:00.000+09:00

With New Year's Eve over and 2008 officially on the calander I'm behind in the holiday dance of greetings--as usual. No 2007 Christmas cards have gone out and in lieu of them the pile of 2008 New Years cards that I bought to address and send out to family and friends sits forlornly somewhere in my house waiting to surprise me come mid summer when I shift things about and "discover" them sitting there long forgotten.

Maybe when I am old and officially whimsical (boarding on being a kook) I will start to send out all the old new years cards that never got mailed out on time. I'll send people 1998 Year of the Tiger post cards on which I will simply chat about my latest visit to the doctor's. On the 2002 Year of the Horse post cards I'll moan about how my children never bother to call home anymore. If I am still living in Japan when I officially become a "character" and if I am sending these eccentric recycled new years post cards out to my Japanese descendants (gasp, imagine, I may one day have Japanese grandchildren!) they will be greeted with muffled exasperation and embarrassment, "ara. . .matta? obaachyan wa nani o kangaette no?" (what? Again? What is Grandmother thinking?)

But, bottom line, there will be no waste and like the toys from the island of misfit toys my pile of chronologically incorrect correspondence will finally settle into homes.

Of course I still have a window of opportunity here. I reckon that if I get the New Years cards sent out by the end of the week I should be okay. 2008 is the year of the Rat (imagine that!) and I have a cute little pile of post cards on which rodents cheerfully proclaim the opening of the New Year.

I like this year already because for some unfathomable reason nothing tickles me quite like saying, "The year of the rat, imagine that!" in my best pre-school story time voice. Honestly, it amuses me.

(You can see that I am practicing for my future as an old foreign crackpot.)

It's a long term resolution: to grow old and interesting.

Which brings me to the holiday dance step of today--New Years resolutions. In my teens they were always inspired by publications like "Seventeen Magazine" and dealt with profound aspects of life like losing 5 pounds or changing my handwriting so that it would look more elegantly loopy and less pathetically scrawly. In my twenties and thirties losing weight still usually topped the list but thanks to publications like "Mademoiselle" and "Elle" I added in things like vowing to remember to do my kegels daily, and I got more specific about the physical resolutions. I wasn't just going to lose 5 pounds, I was going to tone my thighs.

While there are a ton of habits that I would like to form and a HEAP of habits that I would like to break this year I feel a bit more mountain top than that. Mountain top meaning that at the age of 40 for the first time I honestly am not looking outside for influence on how I should change myself. I mean, it's still lovely to get ideas for change but I don't feel the need to look at what society/magazines/T.V. or other pop culture institutions are holding up as standards. Yes, Julia Roberts looks amazing at the age of 40 and Oprah has not only lost all her weight but she has spiritual stability. And you can read any parenting book and realize early on in the intro that I indeed could be a MUCH better mother.

I guess it is really more of a change in approach than anything else. My resolutions used to be goal orientated but this year I am aiming for things less tangible.

It was at my daughters' final piano lesson of 2007 when I decided to chuck out the idea of creating a concise list of goals for 2008. Saki always has her lesson first, so while the teacher was busy trying to convince Saki that indeed yes, she did want to play the piano and yes, indeed, playing the piano is fun I was sitting at the table with Reno playing my just-an-ignorant-foreign-mother-who-doesn't-understand-what-her-five-year-old-is-saying card. Saki was of course frequently peppering her conversations with the teacher with the following phrases, "iyada." (an expression of disgust/dislike) and her number one favorite phrase during piano lessons, "mo owari?" (are we finished yet?).

Seated at the table with me was Reno in all her tween glory striking a uniquely apathetic yet antagonistic stance. Her dialogue, conducted all in English so that I was sure to understand it all and the teacher wouldn't went something like:

"Oh great. These (colored pens found on the table) don't work. Don't you have better ones? (because all good mothers should carry with them a set of color ink pens and only stupid ones wouldn't, or so her tone implied.) Didn't Saki bring some? (again, because a good mother always makes sure that her youngest daughter also packs around a set of color ink pens.)

Next came her big finish--the ice cold delivery of the one word, "Whatever." (I HATE the way she perfectly mimics my tone and attitude when she belligerently says this. How did my mother refrain from slapping my little preteen face on a daily basis?)

Of course she was really frustrated with me because I was refusing to speak back to her. I was remaining silent and only gesturing answers at her because of the "Two Rules." Rule Number One is that "we do not talk in English in front of others who can not understand English". Rule #1 doesn't apply when we are out in public spaces like department stores or at the beach or in a restaurant but it does apply when we are in the company of someone who does not speak English--like the piano teacher. Rule Number Two is: "We sit quietly at the table during our sister's piano lesson."

The piano teacher had now resorted to reading Saki stories which she furnished with impromptu piano accompaniment in a bid to show Saki once and for all just how fun playing the piano can be!

So Reno said loudly and combatively, "Can you tell the teacher to stop reading those stupid books to her?" and when I replied with a cut throat gesture across my vocal chords meaning, "shut up!" she sighed dramatically, rolled her eyes at me and then proceeded to lay down on the floor behind the teacher's chair!

So I sat at the table wondering which would look worse to the piano teacher, me struggling with my nearly 10-year-old child in an attempt to haul her up off the floor, or the sight of that nearly 10-year-old child herself, spread out on the floor behind the teacher's chair. Next I mulled over what the chances were that the teacher might not notice the sulky tween laying on the floor behind her. . . when miraculously said sulky tween hefted herself up off the floor and came back to the table. This time she leaned across and whispered to me,
"Today at school our teacher told us that the lady who cleans the school died last night."

I broke rules number 1 and 2 simultaneously by saying, "Really? How?"

"I don't know. Suddenly. Everyone was very surprised."

"Oh. How old was she?"

Reno looked at me intently. She usually doesn't know specifics so I was a bit taken aback when she answered quickly, "She was 60. In March she was going to stop her job and start having fun."

But. . . she died on December 27th, two months and three days before retirement. I wondered for the rest of the evening what kind of an impact that cleaning lady's death was having. Did she have children? Did she have a husband? Did she manage to have some fun in the 60 years leading up to her death?

What was on her list of things to do after retiring that now she wouldn't be able to do?

And it was at that precise moment that I decided to toss the idea of making a list of resolutions for this year. What I want to do, I decided, is to change my perspective, shift the angle, change the filters, and above all, find some balance. I don't mean find a spot on which to perch my fat ass, sit back and watch life going on around me. I mean I want to get up, shift things around, figure out how far I can go to the right without falling, how far I can go to the left without wiping out. I want a center of balance from which I can experiment. Put simply, at the age of 40 I've already learned how to fall. I want to take on the big slopes, ski the moguls of life, maybe try a jump or two.

Of course all of that is incredibly abstract, but on a more practical level, instead of resolving to lose a certain number of kilos, I want to change the way I approach eating/hunger/nutrition/cooking. I want to change my relationship to food.

Instead of resolving to study Japanese for a set amount of time each day, I resolve to re-engage with Japanese culture and language. I've been floating along in a bubble of English and I need to get out, get wet, get misunderstood and be misunderstood but communicate!

Instead of resolving to walk/swim/dance a set number of times each week/month I resolve to find out what I am passionate about and do it.

I got an i-pod from Masa this Christmas so I have already reconnected to a passion--music. They'll have to pry my iPod buds from my dead little ears! I can once again listen to 9 Inch Nails without worrying over what kind of efffect songs like, "Closer" are having on my children! The first song I downloaded from iTunes was "Tubthumping (I Get Knocked Down) " and in this year of the Rat I can't stop be bopping around the house.

Speaking of rats, I've always liked them. I may have been one of the only sixth grade girls in America who begged her parents for not a hamster, not a gerbil, not even a Guinea pig but for a rat. Rats are clean and smart. If you put a rat on newspaper they will eventually die of ink poisoning because they will lick their coats over and over to get any ink off that gets on them. A pet rat will sit happily on your shoulder or snuggle contentedly in the cuff of your shirt. I got a rat--whom I named Raspberry and who had alarmingly huge balls, being a male rat. I had aimed to get a female so I wasn't overly thrilled by his male endowments, but he was clever and he kept as tidy as he could although unfortunately dependent on the twelve-year-old me to clean his cage.

So, in 2008 let the girl who wanted a rat come back. Before teen magazines befuddled my mind. Before Mademoiselle ever compared me to my Hollywood contemporaries. Before I spent too much time inside my own head. I mean, 2008 has got to be a delightful year, it is after all, "The year of the Rat, imagine that!"

News Fast

2007-12-29T14:56:00.000+09:00

I'm doing it. For the next week, for the start of 2008 I will NOT read or watch any news. This morning's news made me decide for good. In the international news--all the pictures of the violence and brutality of the assassination itself and aftermath of Buttoh's death. In U.S. news the story of the daughter and her boyfriend who killed her family on Christmas eve, including shooting a six-year-old and a three-year-old in the head. In Japan the stories, back to back, of the elementary school vice principal who was handed a suspended sentence for paying 16-17 year-old-girls for sex and the 12 year jail sentence handed to a man for raping his own two daughters. So. This morning, after reading the news I feel sick, sick, sick.

Lets see how a news fast affects my psyche. I know that you can't just bury your head in the sand and expect anything to change. But overdosing on all the news has me down on my knees thinking about puking up the last bits of hope in my system. So. News fast for the new years it is. I'll let you know how it works out.

I Gotta Stop Reading the On-line News

2007-12-23T09:25:00.000+09:00

Okay. I know I promised never again to be political. But this isn't so much political as . . . just observational? I woke up. I put my morning pot of coffee on. I turned on the computer and made the mistake of doing the rounds of the English language on-line newspapers. In the Mainichi Daily News I found an article about a prestigious high school wrestling team that has gotten in trouble because several of the older team members have been bullying the younger members. You know, doing things like wrapping towels and t-shirts around the younger guy's necks until they lose consciencness. That kind of fun, team bonding, character building stuff. You can read the article for yourself here.
(the article is "Top Aichi high school wrestling club members suspended for bullying")

So I stumble into the kitchen, shuffle up to my coffee maker and peer at the pot. Still not finished brewing yet. Damn. Back to the computer.

This time I read an article about an adult man, the boss of a decoration company, who has killed an employee. He was disciplining him by punching him in the gut in front of the employee's home. (The article doesn't mention if the employee was married, a father or not, but I guess if he was, then the boss wanted to teach the whole family a lesson.) You may peruse this article here. (The article's headline is "Tokyo boss arrested for fatally 'disciplining' employee: 'I went too far')

Okay. This time I clip back on into the kitchen, pull out the coffee pot (although it still isn't finished brewing) tip out some strong black liquid into my coffee cup and replace the pot. I stand for a second or two listening to the angry hissing noises my coffee maker now makes as it boils a few drops of spilled coffee that fell on the burner. If I were awake, fully awake, I'd be making similar hissing noises over the news stories I've just read, but as it is, I stand there and let the coffee machine do the hissing and booing for me. Back to the computer where I plop down, open up this blog and hit "new post".

You know, frankly, if this employee hadn't ended up dead at a hospital from his boss's stomach punch, it wouldn't be news here at all.

People lament the extent of grade school, junior high and high school bullying taking place here in Japan but bullying really isn't limited to early or later child hood education. I think the younger generation is just in a kind of bullying "boot camp." You're either in training to be a bully or to be bullied. You are being tutored in accepting, sanctioning and most insidiously of all in tolerating bullying as being a normal part of the social structure of heirarchy. The scariest part of bullying for me is that whenever one kid is singled out for the abuse there is a crowd of kids that are simply on the side lines watching that abuse taking place. Everyone is being conditioned by bullying--conditioned to do it, endure it or take it for granted as part of life, no big deal, the way things are.

Bullying takes place in the work place here--both emotional and physical bullying-- and it is unofficially sanctioned. My husband has an ex boss whom I hate and he still can't understand why. Part of the reason I hate the ex boss is because he is/was a bully. He treats the majority of those employed beneath him as crap. He is a very successful man and my husband even admires him. (My husband, the workaholic, is spinning around so quickly on his rat wheel that he never doubts the wisdom of the system here) I didn't admire the guy so much when he lectured Masa for taking a day off after having surgery on his hand. His reasoning was that he himself, at Masa's age had often worked for over a month straight without taking a day off and that my husband was setting a poor example for other workers in the office by taking the post operative day off.

I'm not saying that Japan isn't trying to do something about the problem of bullying. In fact, one of the classes I observed at Reno's school last year was about the ijime (bullying) problem. The teacher had the kids generate a list of words and phrases that made people feel bad about themselves. Then they dramatically put big "X's" over all those words and decided not to use them with each other. Then the teacher asked kids to contribute words and phrases that made them feel good about themselves when someone said them to them. These were the words that they decided they would try to use with each other.

Of course, Reno came home and started to use quite a few of the crossed off words with her sister. . . but because I had been at the lesson I was able to nip that in the bud quickly. (We're talking slang in Japanese here. If I hadn't been at the class I wouldn't have had a clue what some of those words meant!)

Reno has also brought home a national hot line number for children to call if they are experiencing ijime and don't feel comfortable confiding in a teacher or parent. She currently has a binder, a ruler and a handy index card with this hot line number on it.

The government is allowing parents and their children to sue schools and individuals over issues of bullying.

But if a Dad comes home well past midnight for over a month because he "has to work late" (without overtime pay) or if a Mommy is systematically excluded from the social circle at the PTA meetings or from the class meetings at her kid's school, or if a young woman is given the cold shoulder by absolutely every single one of her female colleagues at work, or Daddy's boss cuffs him upside the head for a mistake on the job. . . no one is passing out any binders or rulers to the adult folk.

And the young folk are sitting on the sidelines, clutching their bullying hot line paraphernalia, watching, listening and learning.

"Q" is for QUIP

2007-12-19T10:22:00.000+09:00

Which, according to the online Merriam Webster is: a clever usually taunting remark. I feed on quips, literally. When I hear a good one in a movie or on T.V. it is like someone has suddenly chucked a bonbon at me. I savor it and suck on it. Quips make life interesting. A quip is also often: "a witty or funny observation or response usually made on the spur of the moment." (Thank you to Merriam Webster again.)

To be able to deliver a good quip though--there is a pleasure rush that I constantly crave.

Of course, my fondness of quipping doesn't really render me Sound-Of-Music-Julie-Andrews nice. And in instances, it sort of aligns me more with menacing ladies like say. . . Malificent from Disney's "Sleeping Beauty." Remember at the opening to "Sleeping Beauty" when Malificent quips, ". . . oh how nice, and the rabble too!" in reference to the three good fairies having been invited to King Stephen's party for the infant Aurora?)

Yup, that was me, the six-year-old snickering over the quip that Disney's villainess let fly.

Quips are handy though. They can infuse a bit of humour into otherwise humourless situations which make them excellent for the workplace. This of course would be the quip of the second kind--witty, funny observations.

Quips of the first kind, the cutting kind, are nearly indispensable for dealing with social situations in which you have been slighted. For example, here in Japan groups of junior high and high school students often like to scream HERRO at passing foreigners. No, they don't know me, they don't even recognize me from anywhere, they just recognize from my western face and build that I am indeed, a foreigner. This seems to grant most of the population of Japan the inalienable right to scream poorly pronounced English greetings at me whenever they are in the mood to do so.

I have considered stalking groups of Japanese on their famous tour packages in the U.S. to scream "KONNICHIWA" at them again and again but sadly, experience tells me that a) anything a monkey does is entertaining and in their eyes I would be just another excellent example of a gaijin/monkey screaming "KONNICHIWA" at them. b) many Japanese upon spotting a foreigner fail to understand anything coming out of the foreigner's mouth as they are propelled into a fear of English void. To wit, a friend of mine, in the course of a conversation with a woman in her town was left open mouthed when the other woman at the end of their conversation said, "Oh my. How do you and your husband communicate if he doesn't speak English?" Of course, neither did this town-woman speak any English and my friend had been conversing with her in fluent Japanese for well over half an hour or so. I have asked for directions (in Japanese) in downtown Tokyo many times to have the person I approached answer me in broken English, "No, EN-GU-RI-SHU." Gee thanks. No English? Riiiiightttt. . . even pointing out that that is fine, as I speak Japanese often doesn't quell the fear enough to get a decent response out of them. And finally c) I was raised never to point or stare at strangers much less yell out something at them. Such behavior is as reprehensible and appalling to me on a gut level as walking up and urinating on a stranger would be. I would be much more comfortable (and capable of) curling up into a fetal ball on the sidewalk and chanting, "happy place, happy place" than pointing and yelling at strangers.

So when I am walking down the road and pass a group of high school students who wait until I am about half a block away from them to scream "HERRO! AMERICAN JIN! EIGO JIN!" the quip is my weapon of choice. I go back. I smile. I turn and point at my posterior. "Oh my! I didn't realize that greetings were to be offered to people's bums! I thought they were to be given face-to-face!" Then I take my foreign ass and leave.

I've also been practicing a few quips in Spanish and French alternatively as it drives me nuts that most Japanese assume that ALL Westerners speak English.

It's About Time

2007-12-16T15:05:00.000+09:00

Well, after months and months of feeding off the creativity of other bloggers out there I have finally gotten around to (or in more embarrassing truth, figured out how to) add a side bar that lists my favorite blogs! These are the poor individuals whom I hover under like a starving bird, clicking their site meters through the sky with my incessant visits, always hoping to find something new to read and ponder. If anyone has been added who does not wish to be added, simply drop me a line and I'll fix that for you. If you don't know these bloggers already, check them out!

Don't Ask Don't Tell

2007-12-06T21:33:00.001+09:00

It's that time of the year again--Christmas and my in house man-in-red (aka Old Saint Nick) worshippers are getting incredibly bright eyed and optimistic. Of course, financially pinched Mom and Dad aren't feeling so jolly.

I think I have Reno seriously doubting the integrity of Santa if not the credibility of his actual existence. She has noted recently that all the gift cards signed "from Santa" were suspiciously enough, written out in my handwriting and I have done nothing but stare back at her like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonder land blowing smoke rings in Alice's face. I haven't made the slightest move to try to debunk her theory.

Plus I came out and announced officially that Santa would be leaving only one gift per child.

Still, hopefully this season, though sparser than previous Christmases will not end up as the disastrous "they ruined my childhood"counseling session I tend to envision in moments of great trepidation and serious maternal fretting.

However, when my mother asked me for gift suggestions this year, my heart just literally thumped. BA BUMP. Suggestions? Gift suggestions? In an economically squeezed holiday season I was instantly thrilled! What we couldn't afford to get the girls, their grandparents could! They could go to Toys R Us and get that Gabrielle action figure doll for Saki! They could even, oh gasp of joy, purchase the High school Musical II DVD for Reno!

Of course, in my spasm of unconcealed elation I momentarily forgot who I would be sending gift ideas to--my mother.

My mother and father told my brother and I that after the age of 21 we were in no way entitled to anything from them--monetary support, lodging, and certainly not presents. Now, about the money and lodging, they meant we weren't going to get either from them, flat out, no room no board no mula. (My husband actually payed my graduate student health insurance for me--and he himself, was a poor international grad student! He still can't believe that my parents refused to even after they knew that he was coming to my rescue.)

About the presents clause though. What they meant by this was we were never, ever after the age of 21 to express desire for anything. Gifts were gifts because they were things that they wanted to gift us with not because they were things that we wanted or needed. So when my brother blew his knee out in Judo and he asked for help to go to a surgeon they told him, "why do you think we have been paying into the welfare system all these years?" The welfare system offered to weld his knee in place. His girlfriend's parents ended up paying for the specialist who was able to restore full movement and range to his knee. I didn't get student health insurance from my folks but I did get a card that announced that they had made a generous donation in my name to a charity.

Now, while the "Don't ask. Don't tell." policy regarding presents annoyed me a bit in my early twenties and still was rather irritating in my thirties. . . once I became a mother it became down right frustrating. Because I have not been allowed to make suggestions we have several duplicates of videos and English language children's books. Thank god that my parents actually do ask me about clothing sizes. But do you know how painful it is when you are an expatriate and you want to give your kids something from your native country/culture but you aren't allowed to ask for it? You want to get them "A Little Princess" which you can't find here anywhere but instead, you have to bite your tongue and gratefully receive another copy of Snow White--which you already own, having bought it over the Internet for a birthday earlier in the year.

So, this year when my mother actually sent a written request for suggestions--oh the searing second of rapture! I enthusiastically wrote out a list. Reno would ecstatically welcome anything at all connected to High School Musical (which interestingly enough doesn't seem to be popular in Japan at all!) and Saki's passion is Dora the Explorer, the Cheetah Girls and still anything to do with Disney princesses. I cautiously gave them the link for the Foreign Buyer's Club from which they could order American board games to be shipped to the girls (to save on shipping costs for them). I enjoyed visions of my kids playing Clue, Life, Cranium. . . .

My mother was very quiet. I heard nothing back for weeks. Then this morning the phone rang. As Saki had just finished vomiting (for the fifth time since she woke up at 5 a.m. crying) into the big bowl and I thought I had a good chance of 15 minutes or so until she needed to vomit again, I picked up.

Mom was calling to let me know that she had decided against going with the suggestion list. She was going to send the girls clothes. Which they need and which we will appreciate I am sure. It's just kind of sad to see my own childhood Christmases replayed like that for me on my own children, "oh. socks. Thank you Mom." (Okay, they aren't going to give them socks--that was for the first generation--me and my brother. The grand kids get actual outfits and they are usually quite cute.) Still, those of you who got woven and stitched things instead of bright shiny, impractical noisy things on Christmas mornings will know the feeling of quiet sadness I am talking about.

So the next part of our conversation really surprised me. "Do you have birds?"

Now, my parents LOVE wild birds. They have probably messed up the migration patterns of numerous species in their part of the U.S. as they have on their property about five different feeders. A local newspaper even came and did a special community focus story on them.

"Uh, in the spring, summer and fall we do. I haven't really seen any since the freezing rain and snow set in."

"Well, your father and I are going to send the girls a winter bird feeder. You can make it with them. "

"Ooooookay."

"Will that be okay?"

I kept trying to respond, really. But I just couldn't stop trying to remember when exactly it was that I last saw a bird outside here. Crows. There must still be crows I thought. I hate crows. And I hate building things. There was a really good reason why I never even considered taking "Shop" class in high school. I even loathe having to put the numbered stickers on the toys that come in the kid's Happy Meals here.

"Oh yes. They like building things. We get lots of birds in the spring."
(I am so good at saying the polite opposite of what I am feeling inside.)

"Well, this bird feeder is a special winter bird feeder. For in the winter. Do you have bird seed there?"

"I've never seen any. Well I have seen bird food for parakeets in pet stores."

"Suet?"

"Not that I have ever seen." (that wasn't attached in thin stings to the sides of cuts of meat. . . )

Mother was sounding displeased with my answers. Japan was proving itself to be a useless little country once again. I felt very much like the stupid silly daughter who went and moved to a far away country that didn't even have the decency to try to be more American!

"Well. That's decided then. We will be sending clothing and a bird feeder. "

Before hanging up with her she reminded me to have the girls complete their questionnaires and return them to her. My parents are trying to get to know their grandchildren better so Mom sent a list of questions for Reno and Saki to answer. Interestingly enough while some of the questions are very appropriate, "what is your favorite animal?" others are a bit perplexing, "What is your favorite musical piece to play on the piano?" I mean, they just started taking lessons last Fall. Their musical pieces are all by Yamaha and are called things like "Bunny Rabbit" and "Butterfly."

And instead of "What is your favorite food?" she asks, "What foods are special?" I left it worded just like that to see what the answer would be. Saki frowned, thought hard and answered, "Bananas." When I asked why she said, "because I would like to eat a banana."

Knowing my mother though, I know what she was really saying with that question. "Because you are being raised in a foreign country far away, you are foreign to me. You and I don't eat the same foods or celebrate the same holidays. What strange weird foods do you consider special?" Like my five-year-old is going to get all enthusiastic about describing some seasonal Japanese food to her American Grandmother. Even at the age of five, Saki seems to intuitively know that Japanese Obaachyan isn't the one to talk to about High School Musical and that American Grandma isn't the one that you offer to sing "Santa San RinRin Rin" to. She separates out her American cultural heritage from her Japanese. And my nine-year-old just plain knows that if she answers "omochi" it is going to turn into a kind of at home cultural report so she is more likely to answer "Bananas. Bananas are special." just to get out of the assignment.

Don't Ask. Don't tell.
How I forgot that simple rule for even a second of this Holiday season I don't know.

But I do know that I am going to have a good look at the winter bird feeder kit thing before I put it under the tree for the kids. If it looks like the "Headache of Christmas 2007" I am not going to put it under there. Instead, it is going to arrive tragically broken into tiny pieces--further proof that Japan just isn't up to snuff. That in itself will be a kind of gift for my mother--giving her ammo of any kind is treat. A strange dysfunctional kind of thank you note. Ah, my family--definitely a Don't Ask. Don't tell kind of clan.

"P" is for Pathetic

2007-11-22T19:15:00.001+09:00

I'm an American for crying out loud. (And from California too--remember the song by Missing Persons, "Nobody Walks in L.A." from the 80's?) And old. That last musical reference kind of let the cat out of the bag on that, didn't it?

But here I am in Japan without wheels. Which is entirely my fault. I stupidly let my American drivers license expire while my eldest child was experimenting with sleep deprivation torture techniques (can Mom go more than one year with less than three hours of sleep a night? I know I can, let's see what 'ol Mom is made of!). As a mother of a newborn with colic who was on the very lowest end of the sleep scale I let my license expire. I could have just sent in a postcard and renewed. Apparently 'ol Mom crumbled like a graham cracker, I didn't even have the energy or wits to do that.

Which didn't bother me all that much when we lived in Osaka. The buses and trains were so convenient, coming nearly every ten minutes and always on time. But, by the time we moved to the country side up North the only way to get a valid U.S. drivers license was to establish residency in the U.S. again and take both the written and the driving test. . . I had an uneasy feeling that back in Australia when I hadn't sent in that renewal post card I had made a major life mistake. I knew I had when ALL my new northern neighbors answered my questions about the local bus the same way.

First they looked confused. Next they clarified the question, "You want to know about the bus?" Then they persisted in looking at me as though I had asked them to tell the average number of mosquito bites they get on the third Saturday of August of each year. "The bus?" Then they usually sort of threw their hands up in the air and laughed nervously. "I have never taken the bus."

Months later I scored a bus schedule. My stop was not listed. Many, many stops were not listed. And the buses apparently came like every hour, hour and forty-five minutes. Often there seemed to be a bus in the morning but none after 9 or 10 a.m. . . . . hmmm.

Then I managed to ride on a local bus and instantly realized, "Oh." The only other passengers were about 70 years old or older. I bet none of the passengers knew how to use a cell phone for e-mail, program a DVD player, burn a disc or download from the Internet either--much less drive a motor vehicle. I'm American for the love of God and now I live the limited life of someone outside the info/technological loop. I ride buses in the country side of Japan. And here in the country side none of the bus stop's schedules and timetables are written out in romanji--just kanji. I can't read kanji.

Then our first winter here arrived. It was a strangely warm winter the locals all mused. We didn't get much snow fall, or I should say, much snow fall that accumulated. We'd have snow and high winds, then freezing rain and sleet. By 4:30 p.m. the roads were sheets of ice. Bicycling completely lost its appeal and although I did invest in spikes to strap onto the bottom of my snow boots. . . I just lost the enthusiasm for leaving the downstairs family room--the room in the house with the heater. Japan hasn't really gotten into central heating. Most homes don't have it and most homes also are not insulated. Our heater runs on kerosene. A big kerosene truck comes and pumps something like 200 liters into it every two weeks to a week and a half (depending how cold we get/how much we use it) during the winter months.

My most courageous act of motherhood during the months of October through April is rising before the rest of the family, donning my knee high winter moccasin slippers, whipping an extra sweater over my pajamas (which consist of a thermal undershirt and long johns), slapping a jacket on and going downstairs into the "morning Arctic zone" to turn on the heater. It takes about 1/2 an hour to kick in and start warming the downstairs room.

I have to confess that out of the entire realm of maternal experiences, even being vomited upon, this has proven the most difficult for me. At least vomit is warm.

So, the chill of winter has really highlighted the fact that NOT having a drivers license sucks when you live in Northern Japan in the country side.

My poor daughter, Reno, turns big pathetic eyes towards me on mornings when the snow is falling heavily and the winds are whipping fiercely (our first year here I thought it was always a typhoon coming in, until locals told me, "no, these high winds are typical for this city.") as I cheerfully stuff her into her snow suit, muffler, goggles (to help see through the snow) mittens and snow boots (with spikes built into the bottom to help prevent her from slipping and falling), "itterashai!" (Have a good day!) I boom at her as she whimpers "ittekimasu" ("I'm off!). Saki at the age of five is still riding the youchien (preschool) bus so she hasn't fallen victim to long morning treks to school in snow storms yet.

So when the first spring thaw hit last year I contacted a local driving school. If you haven't got a drivers license from another country you can't switch to an international driving license here. You have to take the Japanese driving license test, both written and road. To pass this test, it is basically a given fact that you must enroll in a Japanese driving school and pay thousands of dollars for them to teach you the intricate orchestrated "dance" of the driving test. One glance over the wrong shoulder at the wrong moment and you have failed the test. Most people take the test an average of about 3 times before they pass. You have to pay a fee each time you take the test too.

So I decided, time for drivers school.

But when the drivers school representative knocked at my front door, the first thing he did was pass me a pamphlet written entirely in Japanese/Kanji. "Can you read this?"

"No. Well, I can read through the second grade level of kanji."

"Then there is really no point in you entering our school. All written tests are administered in
Japanese only."

Aye, there's the rub. (I just feel piratey at the moment, but basically it does sum up my dilemma.)

So. I am she of forty years of age stranded to two feet. And my children are sentenced to experience only the world within walking distance of our home unless Masa has time off of work to drive us somewhere.

Fast forward to this winter season. Snow fall has arrived early this year with three out of five days last week seeing the white stuff descend. On Monday I stuffed and laced and zipped Reno into her snow gear and pushed her puffy waterproofed body out the front door. She returned about 15 minutes later to announce that she couldn't "see the road" and was too "afraid to go to school."

Now our morning schedule runs:
Reno out the door by 7:15 a.m.
Saki on her bus by 8:40 a.m.

I didn't have time at 7:30 a.m. to escort Reno to school and still get Saki on the bus on time. The walk to Reno's school in good weather is about 3o minutes, in freezing cold, high winds and snow, about 40 minutes. So I ended up putting Saki on her bus first and then walking Reno to school. But I had to call the school by 8 a.m. and let them know that she was going to be late.

The man who took my call was kind enough not to laugh in my face.
"Why is she going to be late?

"Well. . . she did leave for school but then she came back. She couldn't see through the snow."

"I see."

"I will walk her to school as soon as I get my youngest daughter on the youchien (preschool) bus."

"I see."

To locals, the snow storm that day would have seemed like a walk through the park. So I recall even sending a small prayer of thanks up to heaven that the man let me hang up after that, without laughing audibly in my ear.

However, while I may have gotten away with avoiding a proper mocking for coddling my nine-year-old on Monday, on Thursday when I transgressed against the cultural codes and allowed the same nine-year-old to remain at home with me that day rather than shuffle off in the snow to school. . . ah. I got pounded.

First off, they take this "the child goes to school every day" thing very seriously here. It is a bone of contention betwixt many a foreign parent here in Japan and the school system. The school sends home letters telling you how to raise your children. They tell you the proper way to feed your child, the proper way children should dress according to the seasons, the proper time that they should come in from playing outside, the proper time they should sleep, wake and leave for school. They send home daily schedules for vacations. I wrote in another post about the summer "rajio taiso" (radio exercises) that you are supposed to send your kids off to at 6:30 a.m. on lazy summer vacation mornings. (ha ha ha. . . titter. . .get it? Lazy summer vacation mornings? I am still so not indoctrinated into the school life here.)

Okay. Confession time. Yes, I had already been lectured by Reno's teacher earlier this spring about how in the FOURTH grade life gets serious. They are training for adulthood. Therefore, tardiness is not acceptable. (And, yes this past week Reno was tardy on Monday, so strike one.) Reno also forgot to take two hand towels, two laundry clips, a cup, a toothbrush and a hand mirror with her on Tuesday. I had to drag her sick little sister Saki to the school with me to drop off the forgotten items after receiving an irate phone call from her teacher requesting that I get the missing gear there within half an hour. That was my first trek through the falling snow last week. So calling in absent on Thursday was a bit cheeky, especially as Friday was a national holiday. . . giving the kid a FOUR day respite from schooling? Unthinkable.

But good 'ol American me, decided that in the midst of planning and preparing for my first ever genuine Thanksgiving day dinner at my house ( I am now officially all grown up. I hosted a Thanksgiving Day dinner and roasted a turkey that people ate and NO BODY got food poisoning.) having my eldest daughter home to help out a bit wouldn't be a big deal.

Cue weak laughter. You now, the nervous kind.

2:30 p.m. The phone rings. I answer. It is Reno's teacher.

"I understand that Reno stayed home today?"

Me: "Yes. "

Mean Teacher: "That would be because? ? ? "

Slightly flustered me: "She woke up this morning not feeling very well."

And this is where it gets scary. From this point on in the conversation I knew that I was in for a pounding. Because in Japan, one rarely, if ever, needs to give an excuse. Giving an excuse is even sort of considered rude. You apologize right off and that is the end of it. I have never ever had to go into detail about why my child has missed a school day. Just, "Chotto, kigen warukatta desu. . ." (she was feeling a bit off) and they "Odaijini" (Get well soon) you and that is it. I mean, if it is flu season, yeah they might ask if it is the flu and if so, which strain? But otherwise, you still get to pull some parental authority and declare that you judged your child not to be well enough to go to school. Not so with Mean Teacher.

Mean Teacher: "What are her symptoms?"

Completely flustered me: "What?"

Mean Teacher: "her symptoms, s-y-m-p-toms. . . ? ? ? " (Mean Teacher frequently talks to me in incredibly over enunciated long drawn out yet "simple" sentences. I don't really like Mean Teacher much at all.)

In fact, during most parent-teacher conferences I feel like Mean Teacher is fiercely concentrating on not rolling her eyes at me.

But back to my thumping.

"Er. Well, she has a cough."

Mean Teacher: "A cough?"

Me: "Yes. It gets very bad at night, waking her up. Her little sister has had one too. Her little sister has finally been started on antibiotics by the pediatrician for sinusitis. I think Reno may need antibiotics too."

Mean teacher: "Fever?"

Me: "No, but her little sister hasn't run a fever with this either."

Mean teacher: "Very well. You need to come to the school by 3:30 p.m. to pick up home study work for Reno."

Me: "oh. . . . well, I don't drive, but I. . . . well. . . . I guess I could leave Reno and Saki here alone and walk to the school."

Mean teacher: "by 3:3o. " click.

It was SNOWING outside with incredibly HIGH WINDS.

So, I put on long johns, jeans, snow boots, a turtle neck, a fleece and my down waterproofed parka, muffler and ski gloves. I lectured Reno and Saki about everything that they were not to do under any circumstances while I was gone and quizzed them on what to do in the event of a fire, earthquake, stranger at the door, stranger on the phone. . . etc. Then I pushed the front door open against the fierce gale like winds and walked through the storm. It took me 25 minutes to get there and I only fell on ice twice. I called home on my ketai (cell phone) to monitor how things were going between siblings twice.

The whole way there I kept having the same picture flash through my mind. It was a picture of Mean Teacher getting out of her car in front of our home when she had come for the home visit at the start of the year. I know she drives.

Waiting at the traffic single near the school it became clear to me.

"I am being punished."

Mean Teacher seemed very happy when she handed me a bag of homework for Reno to enjoy over her three day weekend. I think my beat red (from the wind and snow and ice) face and my completely soaked rear end, thighs and calves (big fast truck splashed about 20 liters of ice water on me) gave her satisfaction. She seemed giddy with delight when she bowed and waved at me as I disappeared back down the dank gloomy school hallway headed for the blizzard outside again.

And I dislike Mean Teacher so much that I was actually eager to get back out into the welcoming frost of the winter weather.

You'll be relieved to hear that both my five-year-old and my nine-year-old, as well as both cats and the structure of our rented domicile were all still in tact when I got home. I was relieved. Although I did walk home alternatively talking with one or the other of the girls on my cell phone. (They've been fighting a lot recently and Reno has taken to wrapping her hands around her little sister's throat when she gets really frustrated. Saki for her part just goes at Reno like David fighting Goliath--with no fear and A LOT of enthusiasm. So leaving the two of them alone in the house seemed very high risk to me.)

What has all this done for me? It has rekindled the fires of determination to get my license! The last few years here I have stopped looking right, left, right and then stepping out in front of on-coming vehicles. That alone seems like a sign that I'm ready to tackle the Japanese roads. Plus with a license, I'll be less pathetic and much less vulnerable to Mean Teacher's punishment. Hell, I could even drive up to the school with the radio cranked up and slide in to those cold grey corridors without a hair out of place, no sweat on my brow and dry clothing!

More practically I could take Reno to school by car on cold harsh winter mornings, drive the kids to the doctors when they are sick rather than dragging them through the streets and we could explore the entire prefecture let alone the whole town! And I could invest in a good pair of shades, order a Missing Persons CD from Amazon.com and re-live my teen years whilst cruising on the Northern roads of Japan!

"O" is for On-line petition

2007-11-18T10:50:00.000+09:00

After my last post I realized that while I complained about a situation I didn't offer any possible actions that I or others could take to try to change that situation. I would like to remedy that in this post.

An on-line petition has been started by Thomas in Kyoto that you can put your name on. I think it is really important that we, foreigners in Japan, do not sit quietly and take the wait and see attitude towards these new changes in Japanese immigration law. Look what has happened in the U.S. and other first world industrialized countries! In the U.S. there has been this, this too and this.

For some examples of events in the U.K. have a look at this and this.

If such horrible instances of injustice can be carried out in the U.S. and the U.K., why should we sit by and watch the road paved for further violations of personal liberties and basic human rights here in Japan? And it doesn't always happen to high profile academics and artists. It happens to us normal people too. We just don't get as much press space.

To sign the petition, check out the Online Petition (created by Thomas in Kyoto--(http://lariviereauxcanards.typepad.com/)) which is available at:http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/fingerprints-japan/

And if you are personally coming in and out of Japan, Arudou Debito has also supplied a link to a Bilingual protest letter you can print up and hand in as you clear Customs.http://www.debito.org/index.php/?p=652

There. I didn't want to just get other people pissed off as well. Hopefully if we all work together we can effect some positive changes.

And I promise, unless I am unfairly arrested, detained, questioned or otherwise personally dragged into the political realm I will not be posting on politics again! I am so not political. Really.

NOW I'm pissed off

2007-11-14T21:21:00.000+09:00

Okay. "N" is for now or whatever.

Japan has decided to follow the U.S.'s stunning example of being a world leader for freedom and individual liberties and rights (I'm typing sarcastically) and the next time I come back into Japan after getting out of this special little country I will be herded into a line for "foreigners" and my fingerprints and photo will be taken. In case I am a terrorist.

I'm a 40 year old mother of 2 Japanese citizens (and remember, this country NEEDS more children). I am a permanent resident and that is because I intend to live out my life here in Japan--with my Japanese family.

Here's a link to an article where someone much more articulate than me discusses why finger printing all foreigners coming into Japan is a bad idea. Check it out.

It's not like I am suddenly being slapped awake from a beautiful dream of "belonging" here in Japan or even a light nap in which I might have dreamt briefly of being "accepted" here. I mean, my name isn't even on the family register (specifically the jyuminhyo or residence certificate) downtown. Our family register shows Masa, Reno and Saki. No wife. Why? Because our family lacks a Japanese wife. Because I am a foreigner I must be listed separately in an official alien register.

The other thing that has ALWAYS reminded me that I am not exactly welcome here (oh yeah, youkoso Japan, if you cut all the tatemae crap stuffed in that you'd just print up huge billboards that read, "Welcome to Japan. Now go home.") is the fact that no matter how frequently I have protested that honest, really, I haven't got any other home than my home here in Japan with my husband and children (you know, my family) I am always under the obligation to supply a "home address" to the folks at immigration. And when I get off the plane I have to fill in a reason for my "visit" to Japan.

Which makes me wonder, what is going to happen when I no longer have living parents in the U.S. who let me put down their address on those forms for a "home address". (Although, honestly, it is kind of hard for me to write it out without laughing out loud at the idea. My parents would stick me and my kids in the car and drop us off at a homeless shelter in seconds flat should I ever turn up on their doorstep saying, "I need a place to live.")

Anyway, I tried to remain calm about the whole finger printing/smile into the camera for your future "wanted" posters thing that the Japanese government will be starting here this month. I tried. Even though my stomach hurt at the thought of my children standing and watching Mommy being finger printed with all the other "foreigners." I mean God forbid they should ever forget the severity of having one non-Japanese parent. If you can't make them feel freaky enough by rushing them in public and demanding that they say something English or calling out, "hafu!" when you see them why not orchestrate it so that they will have to line up with every foreigner in the airport to get through customs very publicly chained to their FROM THE OUTSIDE mother. I tried though, not. . . to. . . get . . . angry. I thought about the way liberties are being trampled on and how personal privacy is being invaded by the government back in my home country. But then this came out.

To cut foreign crime? I am so sick of hearing all about how only foreigners commit crimes here. Don't these idiots read the newspapers in which their wonderful full blood 100% Japanese citizens are out there randomly slashing passerbys, poisoning, strangling, dismembering, stabbing, beating, raping, . . .ARGH! Don't they read their own newspapers? Like all crime in Japan is committed by foreigners?

Great. I know. Lets go one better and put all those Self Defense trucks to good use and just go out and round up all these pesky foreigners and dump them off the island. Seriously, is my alien registration card going to suddenly turn into a badge that I have to wear at all times? (And I actually really do carry mine on me at all times. When I was an exchange student, two students in our group were taken into the local police box for questioning when they were found to not be carrying their alien registration cards on them during completely random--as in, hey look. A foreigner. Let's card them.--checks.)

I am so NOT feeling all "whatever" about this thing now. And I really hate the photo of Kazutomo Miyamoto (the "T.V. personality and celebrity") playing with the foreigner finger printing/photographing equipment. It reminds me of when they let you stand in a cell at Alcatraz. Jerk.

Let's Meme!

2007-11-09T11:17:00.000+09:00

Okay, Suzanne Kamata over at Gaijin Mama tagged me for this meme.

“List your (and your kids’) current seven favorite children’s books, along with their authors. Then, if you’re so inclined, tag seven fellow bloggers to do the same.”

Only seven? Sigh. Practicing self-discipline and restraint is good for me, so I promise to keep it only to seven. Although it hurts. Really. A sort of twisting pain in my stomach.

1. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. (ages 4-8) I can do this one by rote. Saki can do this one by rote (and has been able to since the age of three). My kids love it. Reno, even at nearly 10 years of age, still adores this book. And I still do too although I'm pushing 41!

2. Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban and Lillian Hoban. (Ages 4-8) I grew up with this one. I gave birth to two picky eaters. I ran out and bought a copy. They love it. Reno will now eat anything. Saki still makes vomiting noises at just the sight of a vegetable but she loves the book--maybe because she can so closely identify with the Frances who will only eat bread and jam at the beginning of the book.

3. Wait, No Paint! by Bruce Whatley (Ages 4-8) This book is hilarious. The illustrations are hilarious. The story line (a re-telling of the three little pigs) is LOL hilarious. We love it.

4. The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (Ages 4-8). I. . . can't. . . . bring. . . myself . . . to recap this one. Yes, it is brilliant. Yes, universally children adore it. I just feel like it has been used as an implement of mother torture in our household. PLEASE, don't ask me to read this one AGAIN!

5. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling (this one is classified as "literature" on Amazon--so ageless!) I am totally in love with this series. I grew up on fantasy. I never out grew fantasy. My kids adore it as well. We like the humor, adventure, wit and mystery of the books. I'm still sort of in rehab over the end of the series. . . which reminds me, I haven't read the series from the beginning again in over two months. . .

6. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (another one classified as "literature on Amazon--so again, ageless!) Hmmmmm. I wonder if there is something to be said for losing your complete first and middle names to initials in the publishing world? My sixth grade teacher read this series aloud to my class. The magical spell that was cast over us still is upon me to this day. I was so exited when I was able to pull out "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" and start to weave that spell over my own kids.

7. A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle I haven't read this one with my kids yet. I own it though and have it upstairs, waiting. This was one of those books/series that opened my inner creative mind to the endless possibilities in the universe both without and within. Basically, if I was drawn to fantasy before reading this, I was definitely smitten with it after. Plus the heroine definitely isn't fodder for the cover of Seventeen magazine, and she's smart and funny and likable. And the boy ends up liking her despite her lack of Cheerleader genes.

I'm tagging:

Mommy In Japan, Ramblings of a 30 Something, Homesick Home, Sakura Family,
Purple Kappa , Cafe Yamashita and finally Mommy Colored Glasses

"M" is for my method to soothe my little monkeys

2007-11-08T17:19:00.000+09:00

In this case, my little monkeys are of course, my beloved children. The ones that exasperate, challenge, and, as Reno progresses slowly and steadily towards puberty, berate me. I mean on the one hand I have my nearly ten-year-old rolling her eyes at me, giving me the "look" (The same one I used on my mother and that woman must be made of steel. How on earth did she refrain from bursting into tears and fleeing the premises or from alternatively reaching out and grabbing me by the neck and shaking me about like a rubber chicken? Note to self, shower mother with affection, appreciation and gratitude for letting me live to adulthood.) and on the other hand I have my just turned five-year-old dramatically sighing and saying things like, "I wish I had a nice mommy."

Ah. Karma exists and I have entered payback time. So this week I took away "sugar."

Oh the monkeys beat at the cage bars and screeched when the disappearance of all refined white stuff was announced. The thing is, they can have sugar. . . in low dosages. But recently Saki has become a kind of sugaraholic. She will lie to get. She plots to get it. Her focus and intensity regarding consuming the stuff is actually frightening me. Hence, the sugar ban. Which was inspired by my husband being called into work on a Sunday evening as the local hotel staff had discovered a visiting professor laying on the floor, paralyzed and in diabetic shock. So, I let Masa be the strong hand--he made the announcement:

"You shall not have any sugar during the week. If you eat good food to make you grow strong and stay healthy then on the weekends you can have treats." Then he went off to work where the shit flung from the cages couldn't reach him.

But, after a terrible, horrible, awful, certainly very no good detox the girls emerged . . . . calm. Not completely. I mean, they don't say things like, "let's all sit quietly and draw each other's shadow portraits like the Victorians did" or even, "say, let's sit and listen to Mum read Shakespeare's sonnets aloud." They still want to vault off the sofa, do back flips over the cats and then get into fisticuffs with one another just because they are bored. But the "edge" was taken off a bit. The spirit of playfulness seems to have replaced the mean sugar drunk swagger.

And then in a stroke of genius I discovered the magic of music. Specifically the magic of elevator music. It's a CD that I had bought when I was pregnant with Reno and was looking for soft soothing music to labor to. I actually really like it. I'm calling it elevator music because it is pop music without the words. A collection of cover hits from the pianist Lorie Line.

Actually I had used music on the girls when they were babies. Reno loved groups that harmonized like Simon and Garfunkel and Peter, Paul and Mary. Saki liked. . . ah, um. Isn't it funny how you remember all the details with baby number one but not with baby number two? (Poor little thing. I found her older sister's baby book yesterday and immediately decided that I need to set aside time and forge entries into Saki's baby book.) But I remember sleeping with a portable CD player beside me whenever I was sleeping with a breastfeeding baby.

I had forgotten the power of soothing melodies though. We were busy shaking and wiggling to Shakira and doing the Hokey Poky to the traditional tunes but soothing music I had forgotten.

Until last week when I found myself threatening to "give you a BIG smack if you hit your sister one more time." The sheer stupidity of that statement made my mind go blank. If you hit. . . I'll hit. . . ludicrous really. So I went immediately to my personal medicine cabinet--my CD collection and decided to take a dose of Lori Line's greatest cover hits. And Saki after swirling and twirling as Ariel in an underwater dance to "Part of Your World" sat down and peacefully played with blocks--building a palace, building with blocks, NOT using them as blunt objects to beat with or throw. And Reno, by the time we reached "Tears in Heaven" actually suggested taking a bath as she was, get this, feeling ready for bed.

The next night I popped it in around the witching hour and presto--it worked again.

On Saturday evening, when they were both totally amped and doing a recreation of "10 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" I snuck the old CD player back in the bedroom, popped in the CD and bing! They were out within 10 minutes.

Of course I worry a bit that I am conditioning them to enter elevators and lounges world-wide where as soon as the soothing strands of elevator music rise up to greet them they will be out like light bulbs. . . but in the meantime, anyone have some good soothing CD's to recommend?

"L" is for Loyalty: Is the Loyal Samurai Trustworthy?

2007-09-23T17:36:00.000+09:00

My husband is very proud to be descended from Samurai. His family name is the kind that was only granted to families of the Samurai. His most recent forefathers were school teachers and professional gamblers, but still it's the samurai in his family past that keeps him firm in the belief that his blood is nobler in some way than that of the blood of the unfortunates all around him descended from farmers and merchants.

Being a modern day descendant of samurai seems to have instilled two features into this man I married. One is a sense of obligation and duty: to work (first) to family (blood family first) and then finally I would hazard a guess to me. The foreigner that he married and reproduced with, his wife. I want to say that he is loyal too. And he is in the sense of honoring his duties and obligations to either work or the family.

But can my loyal samurai be trusted? When we first started to date my mind ran wild with all kinds of doubts and second guesses. The influence of new love, where as fires burn hotter and hotter jealousies tend to become magnified, was compounded by throwing the Pacific ocean in between us. We went on our first date in 1987 but for the next two years we saw each other only for 2 weeks here and at the longest 3 or 4 months there. There was plenty of time to sit and gaze off into the distance and fret that my man was frolicking with some homegrown geisha girl. Apparently he worried that my affections might wander a bit as well, hence the habit of proposing marriage to me via air mail during those first two years of our "courtship."

It took years until I felt so completely grounded in my relationship with Masa that I no longer pondered his potential to betray, humiliate or worse than any other foreseeable act, stop respecting me. When we were engaged he had to go back to Japan for a few months just prior to the wedding. A good friend of mine (a male friend) used to enjoy grinning at me and teasing me that Masa was probably cheating on me with a Geisha. And this story shouldn't be misread as "by God she had horrible choice in friends." Rather it shows that my very good friend knew how much I trusted my fiance and knew he could kid about my fiances faithfulness with me.

Or I am a poor judge of character and my friend really was trying to prod me into a total emotional melt down?

But, the point is that regardless of my friend's reasons for teasing me in such a way, my faith in Masa was unshakable.

My faith in his fidelity to me ran so deep that even after we were living in Japan and I had already started to go down hill in the fashion and looks department, especially when compared to the beautiful, svelte young Japanese women all around him at work. . . I never seriously considered the idea that he would ever act in any way unfaithful to me. I even wasn't bothered by the idea that certain young women at his workplace fancied him.

I should qualify the "even when were were living in Japan" statement. Not every Japanese husband is unfaithful to his wife. But, if a Japanese husband is unfaithful to his wife it doesn't really seem to shock or ruffle many feathers on this side of the Pacific. In fact, as long as a husband is discreet about it, an extra marital affair may easily be overlooked by his wife. Mother in laws are quick to point out that the daughter in law is the one to fault for the affair, not their sons. Just as a young boy who runs into a room at full speed only stopping to make kicks and karate chop the air around him (and occasionally a mate who gets in the way) is heralded as "genki ottoko no ko desu ne!" (what a healthy little boy!) so a husband who cheats on his wife is, well, ottoko wa ottoko desu--a man after all. The sex industry here caters to married men and while basically the sex industry in every country caters to married men, it is disturbing to me here in that it doesn't seem to disturb many of the Japanese that that is the case. It just is a fact of life.

Which makes it rather ironic that Japan keeps getting the top spot on lists of countries with sexless marriages. Although I guess, those lists are talking about the lack of sex between man and wife, not exactly lack of sex on either side of the equation. . . When we lived in Osaka I got so sick and tired of getting the local sex shops ads in our mail box. In our family apartment building mail box. Invariably there was a naked girl (except for the high heels of course) either bending over or squatting in exactly the manner I am trying to teach my daughters never ever to bend or squat. And on the other side their price list. I learned a lot of dirty Japanese from those price lists.

Even when I go on line to get my English language news on Japan, if I visit the Mainichi Shinbun's site (a top Japanese newspaper) I usually have to scan past their WaiWai section (wai wai is a scream of excitement I believe) in which they detail the latest sexual services offered in the sex industry here in Japan. The "ick" factor is high in these articles as the men writing them, well, they "try out" the pantiless yakinuku joint, or the nipple massage with blow job service. . . The articles aren't written by staff at the Mainichi, the Mainichi's Wai Wai section is just a collection of articles taken from Japan's top weekly magazines--titillating gossip and smut.

The convenience stores here place their porno mags and pornographic manga face out so that you see the whole slew as you walk up to the store through their glass window fronts. And I wonder why my daughters sometimes horrify me by striking incredibly sexually provocative poses. . .

When I lived in Tokyo and had to ride the trains every day it drove me nuts that businessmen routinely read (read? looked at maybe a better word choice) the most explicit sex mags on the train next to me, in front of me, basically so close to me that it would have been more practical just to ask me to hold the damn magazines up for them!

The number and availability of sex industry services here is mind boggling. I assume that there are similar services available in my home country, the U.S.A. but thank god for America's puritanical roots--Hustler and Penthouse were well and truly buried, obscured, hidden under the counter behind a black cover at the local market. I had to babysit in order to be able to peruse my first pornographic magazines. (My pre-teen girlfriends and I had a network going, if you discovered pornography, magazines or videos, at a babysitting job you had to tell the group that way we could all look it over.)

Sexuality and nudity on T.V. here would be a whole different essay. It has changed since the 80's. I remember watching a game show in which the bimbo girl would have to take off a piece of clothing for each incorrect answer and as soon as she was nude she had to get on a slide and slide down into the all male audience. Or my favorite I-love-to-hate-him comedian, movie maker, wife cheater, Takeshi Beat's show where he conducted interviews while everyone had a naked woman sitting astride their neck/shoulders. I think that show was protesting the new restrictions on allowing nudity/sex on television shows.

(Of course, on the other side of the Pacific, I should probably confess that I tuned into a episode of Fox's Nip and Tuck and couldn't believe my eyes--sex and nudity? Big time! I have to watch most of my own T.V. shows after the kids are asleep. I let them watch a few episodes of Friends (comedy so I considered it innocent) and I got so tired of hearing them say, "Let's have sex" that I had to cross that off the child appropriate list. I am down to watching The Power Puff Girls and Lizzy McGuire re-runs. It is driving me nutty.)

Health Delivery girls (think about it), Soap Lands--use a nude girl as your shower sponge and then get extras thrown in--hiring a van and the prostitute in the back of it to "service you" while driving about the city are big. There are companies that provide elaborate ruses for spouses--back ground noises to throw them off the scent. Calling from the local soap land? No bother, your wife will only hear the typical noises of a train station platform in the background.

I mean, there is so much invested in deception and the alteration of perceptions here in Japan. Whole industries--the mobile phone industry is scary in all the different methods it has produced to make sure that a spouse will never figure out who you are really calling on your mobile phone. . .

But the bit about it all that disturbs me the most is that it isn't done to protect the person who is indulging in experiences "out of the bonds of matrimony" as much as it is done to "protect the spouse." I mean, if in the end, the truth is discovered, it is not so much a problem. Unless the guy has put his whole family in debt for the services offered in the red light district. THEN it is a problem. But otherwise, so what? A guy is a guy is a guy and ignorance is bliss and ensures domestic tranquility.

Example: Guy in my husband's hometown leaves his wife and children for a young Filipino bar hostess. Then he embezzles money from his insurance company business to buy her stuff. He embezzles A LOT. We're talking thousands of dollars from several different customers. Probably into the 100's of thousands. My mother in law is one of them. First he runs away. Then he comes back. To avoid being black listed in his professional field he promises to pay all of his clients back. He pays my mother in law about a hundred dollars a month. (He owes her THOUSANDS) Everyone in town is perfectly happy with this arrangement. Everyone extends him courtesy and friendship, comrade ship. He gets new clients.

What he did wrong was he embezzled money from clients. I can't get past the wife and kids. . . I mean, who's going to pay for those kids' college? How does the wife get through each day without making him into salary man sushi? My mother in law lives in a small town. EVERYONE knows what this man did.

So your man cheats on you? It is to be expected. So while I explicitly trusted Masa for the first 7 years of our marriage I have to admit that I kept up of a front of being a little jealous. It was meant to be done in a teasing manner but beneath it lay a tiny bit of real fear. Fear that he would give in to the cultural pressures around him. Fear that he would give into group pressure or give into a midlife crisis. He has had friends who were unfaithful to their wives. One of those friends even brought his lover into his home to babysit his children. And Masa still considered the man a friend: I considered him the scum of the Earth and a bit like dog shit that needs smeared from one's shoes onto a sharp edge of concrete.

There's a cultural divide here that I just can't get across. In fact, the most annoying thing that Masa has ever told me is that he is the world's best husband because he has never cheated on me. Uh. . . huh. Should I be doling out gold stars for each day he successfully doesn't have an affair? Or, maybe I should rephrase that: should I doling out gold stars for each day that he successfully doesn't have an affair?

"K" is for "Kitchen"

2007-08-23T12:51:00.001+09:00

My mother's kitchen is huge. It has unparalleled counter space. It has two sinks--one in the counter and one in the isle counter--a convection oven and a conventional oven. She has an assortment of cutting boards (two built into the kitchen counters others that I remember from my child hood moving house to house with us.) Cooking in my mother's kitchen is a delight, because it is a social event. My last trip home, four years ago when my daughters were 5 and 1, one of my closest girl friends flew with her 5-year-old daughter to spend Thanksgiving at my parents home with me. To try to offset the burden of extra company for Thanksgiving, my friend and I volunteered to cook up the entire feast. Mom insisted on doing the turkey herself, but apart from my parents sneaking in in the early morning to pop the bird in to the oven, the rest of the day was spent with five-year old girls grating, peeling and washing things at the two separate sinks while my girlfriend tutored me in the art of preparing mouth watering dishes.

My girlfriend is a real cook. She is in her element in a kitchen.

I am not. I am not a real cook that is. I am a recipe cook. I select the recipe, I study it, I consider it, I study it some more and then I follow it, painstakingly down to the last detail. My food tastes pretty much like one would expect, edible but not memorable.

Despite my complete lack of cooking finesse, I enjoy a good kitchen. I love my mother's kitchen because it is HUGE. On that Thanksgiving day five years ago, my one-year-old sat at the end of the kitchen isle unloading pots and pans from a cupboard underneath the isle, my five-year-old viciously and cheerfully frisked and scrubbed vegetables at the isle sink. My friend's five-year-old painstakingly grated huge mounds of cheddar cheese next to her mother by the stove top. My friend was busy teaching me the art of creating a light and flaky pie crust.

And I brewed and poured coffee into our earthenware coffee mugs. (I love my mother's plates, dishes, cups and bowls--so many local pottery pieces). I leaned on the kitchen counter and laughed and gossiped and talked and talked and talked. In the moments when we got the girls out of the kitchen and to the dinning room table to color in turkeys and fall leaves, we dissected our lives and our marriages over our cups of coffee. But all afternoon the kitchen never sat in silence.

My mother's kitchen, the 2 sink, middle isle one is not the kitchen I grew up with. That kitchen was in the house in the foothills of California. It had only one sink, no center isle and only one cutting board. But it had an attached breakfast bar, where in fact my family ate most of our meals.

While one person was cooking or cleaning up in the kitchen, another could sit at the breakfast bar and do what I like to do best in a kitchen: talk.

In fact, should you ever find me at all reticent, drag me into the nearest kitchen and I'll open up.

I don't recall a single conversation of importance with my mother that didn't take place in the kitchen.

Even guests seemed to intuit the conversational pull of the kitchen and despite seating arrangements or name placards the best conversations always erupted in the kitchen.

When I was 9 and I was helping my mother by offering guests tea or coffee I remember how out in the living room the adults would receive a tea cup with formal thank yous but how they would later walk into the kitchen and leaning against the kitchen counter start real conversations with me. Sometimes they told me about their own childhoods or something about their own children. Often they gave me advice or offered insights that made no sense to me at the time, at that age. Just this morning, as I sat staring at Saki (4 years old) who was whacking a large empty cardboard box with a stick (loud, but still not as loud as last week's obsession which was dumping marbles in a metal bowl and then swishing them around and around and around) I heard again, Mrs. Rudemyer confessing in my mother's kitchen, "Oh Laura I can't wait until my Amy is your age! And can talk about something! I can't wait to have interesting conversations with her! Talking with you is so fun, you have opinions and ideas! Young children can be so repetitive and . . . . boring. It's a challenge." As Saki continued to enthusiastically whip the box with her stick the 40 year old me smiled at Mrs. Rudemyer and thought "how true."

And yet, I want that little box whipping child in my kitchen! In fact, I try to lure both girls into the kitchen with me whenever I can. Unfortunately, our kitchen here in Japan is basically a thin rectangle. There is no room for anything, certainly not for more than one person at a time. I worry that the cat will eventually show signs of brain damage I end up stepping on her and booting her about so frequently in the kitchen as she tries to wind her way past or through my legs to her food dish at the end of the kitchen. One side of our kitchen is lined with the refrigerator, the sink and the stove top. The other side is lined with the dish cupboard, a standing plug in isle (wooden table with outlets built in it) pushed up against the wall that holds the rice cooker and coffee pot and the small convection oven. The convection oven is a BIG domestic triumph and it took me five years to get it. But now I can bake American style and it can even fit a small turkey. Then at the very end there is a tiny space for the cats bowls. They have to eat shoulder to shoulder. Counter space I create by laying cutting boards across the sink.

And yet, here I am still trying to coax my daughters into the kitchen to talk with me. I am never so desperate for conversation as when I am in that tiny kitchen.

Our first apartment here in Japan had an even tinier kitchen. It was only one side of the wall and that was the wall that was also part of the family room. I enthusiastically bought a huge wooden table to plunk down opposite the wall with the kitchen on it. The table was so big that you could barely squeeze past it. In fact, Reno usually just danced up on and down the bench rather than try to squirm around it. It looked like I had put Barbie furniture in a traditional sized doll house--very out of proportion. And still no one stayed to talk to me. Reno and her father usually sat in front of the T.V. at the end of that room. We ended up calling it the "overpriced cutting board."

When we moved into our mansion in Osaka I was enthusiastic over the kitchen. It was marginally larger, but the part I loved was that the sink had dual facets in it (although after living there for four years I only remember one occasion on which I actually had a friend there to use one facet while I used the other.) and that there was an open counter looking out into the dinning room. Where I of course placed the monstrous dinning table. My family however, continually drifted towards the end of the dinning/family room, pulled by the force of the T.V. and my big homey table became a kind of "side bar". I could look out that kitchen window at that empty table as much as I wanted to. The hoards stayed firmly encrusted on the sofa, opposite the table, out of my range of view, in front of the T.V.

Of course at meal times I could force them to sit at the table. But where was the epicenter for conversation in our family? In Osaka, it ended up being in the ofuro. Which is fine for family, but you can't exactly drag company in to the family bath, ask them to disrobe and get chatty now can you?

Here in Akita, I find that the kids open up and want to talk to me at bed time. No matter how long the day has been or how late the bed time hour, they sit up, suddenly perky and willing to divulge all kind of fascinating details about their day or they are inspired at the precise moment that I say, "now lay down and go to sleep" to ask questions that are deep and significant.

Growing up, I was inspired to explore and plumb the depths of the universal truths by the site of a peeler in my mother's hands. My kids seem to get inspiration from the lines etched in my face from fatigue.

For me, a kitchen is a place for creation and communion. If there is someone in there that can cook too than not only my soul but my palate will be satisfied as well. But my main concern in the kitchen is the feeding of my soul. Japan's skinny kitchens have put that aspect of life on a strict regimented diet. No one wants to squeeze in there with me!

So I am trying to perfect the art of meditation in a kitchen. Using recipes as mantras, stirring and whisking and chopping up the events of the day, preserving memories and striving to balance my soul while I attempt to put something edible on the plates at the big table.

Oh, and if you ever have the desire to call and chat during the pre-dinner hour (from 5 to 6p.m. Japan time) please feel free to ring me! My cordless phone works perfectly well in the kitchen!

"j" is for . . . .

2007-08-20T09:46:00.000+09:00

"J" is for Japan! I first came to Japan as an exchange student in 1988. I didn't eat sushi, I couldn't stomach natto (fermented soy beans) and I disliked even ramen! I lost a lot of weight and looked fabulous when I returned to the states. I also seriously fell completely in love with my husband. Although we had met the year before in Oregon at my university, being an exchange student here in Japan just made the love affair all the more intense. I still remember how he looked when he would crawl through my window at the seminar house (where all the exchange students stayed) late at night. He was working at a juku (cram school), so it would be maybe 11, or midnight, he would be in suit and tie, his crisp white shirt loose, half unbuttoned, his tie stuffed in a pocket. I loved watching him concentrate on levering himself up and then the moment our eyes would meet and he would freeze there on the threshold to my room. It was a hot and humid summer and I didn't care. I couldn't get enough of him. I cried ceaselessly for days after returning home. Still have no idea how I was able to get on a plane and put all that distance in between us. I felt like I had ripped my heart out and left it on a bench in Narita (large international airport in Tokyo)!

Japan. The country I live in now. It is hot and humid and my husband asks me why I sweat so much. Oh how twenty years can turn lust on its head.

Japan. Eating with ohashi (chopsticks), cooking with ohashi (I was chagrined to find myself dropping the stirring spoon in the pot, fumbling with the cooking utensils I grew up with on my last trip home. Actually thinking, "Good lord, what I wouldn't give for two fine long and straight sticks!"), gohan (RICE. Not the rice of my childhood, overdone and mushy. Not the long grain rice I grew up eating in Thai food or Chinese food in California but short grain Japanese rice, cooked in a rice cooker, rinsed and drained and soaked and steamed in our state of the art rice cooker.) My daughters bringing home a dirt covered diakon (large Japanese radish), a dirt covered sweet potato, a dirt covered potato from ensoku (field trips). I love the enthusiasm with which Saki and Reno have dragged home their vegetable trophies. The kids excitement over beetles. The Onsen--even with two children who have to be reminded again and again "this is not a pool! It is a hot spring! RELAX and stop JUMPING." DS lite software, digital cameras, plasma screen t.v.s --I can wander an electrical store here for hours, happy. Onigiri, nori (dried sea weed) on salted white rice wrapped up like an edible softball, still warm. The smell of incense lingering over the tatami in the room that houses the butsudan (Buddhist anscetstoral alter) at MIL's house.

Japan in the summer--sofuto kurimu (soft cream ice cream)kakigori (shaved ice), uchiwa (hand held fan) and mugichya (roasted barley tea). My bell crickets ringing on a hot August day, the kind of day when you step outside and feel the moisture in the air settle on your skin and roll off of your face as you wipe at it with a handkerchief. It is cold somen (thin wheat) noodles, cold soba (buckwheat) noodles, cold ramen noodles and chilled cucumber strips for dinner. It is the bags of gold fish that my daughters gleefully bring home from local matsuris (festivals), along with brilliant (very breakable) electrical swords that they brandish at one another and squeal with delight as they draw on the night sky with them. (They've already broken the light toys that we bought for them at the big Kanto matsuri this year.) It is the hanabi (fireworks) that light up the sky overhead and the senko hanabi (sparkler) gripped in your four-year-old's hand, sparkling and showing her sandaled feet on the grass poking out from underneath her colorful yukata.

The shrill cry of the early summertime semi (cicada), the dragonflies that hang on the autumn breeze, suspended over the rice fields on invisible strings, the hawk as it glides and circles close enough for me to yearn to raise up an arm and stroke it's cocoa brown chest (I would forget about those talons and beak until they sank into me--Hawks mesmerize me, I love them).

The preying mantis the size of my forefinger that defends the bush at the front of our house. First difficult to spot as she sits on a green leaf but by early October striking in her contrast with the by then bright red leaf underneath her. The fact that she eats her husband? Plucky. I like that in an insect.

The first day of winter when the vending machines switch over to "hot" drinks and I can make my favorite fall dish--butajiru (miso based soup with daikon, gobo/burdock root, tofu, carrot and konnyaku and fatty pork) with grilled sanma (Pacific saury)and a wedge of saduchi lime. As the weather chills and the temperature drops deciding that it is too cold to eat anything but nabe(one pot dishes)--Kimchee nabe, kiritanpo nabe, seafood nabe. Until January arrives and you can start to lay the slabs of homemade omochi ( pounded glutenous rice cakes that MIL sends every year) on the stove and watch them puff up. Drizzle a little shyoyu (soy sauce) on top and warn the girls for the billionth time--small bites and chew well!

The change of the seasons themselves, reflected in local decorations, culinary dishes, even the snack foods offered at the local convenience store--in the spring time, snack on ume (plum flavored) potato chips, in the fall snack on yakiimo (baked sweet potato flavored) chips. This summer I enjoyed my first Cucumber Pepsi--a Summer time seasonal drink. So popular it sold out locally within two weeks of being introduced. The seasons reflected everywhere because in Japan the four seasons are distinct. There is no such thing as an autumn like winter night or a summer like fall evening. The change in the season ("Today is the first day of spring!") is announced on T.V. not because it is fanciful to do so, but because it is a fact.

I like looking up into the night sky in Japan and seeing the rabbit in the moon. And although I have taught my children to find the man in the moon as well, we all agree that we prefer the nocturnal quiet of that bunny to the face of that man looking down on us.

Japan is a feeling, a way of being, an undertone a nuance. I love my American sense of independence and I absolutely love small talk when I return home. But for a few minutes in the airport I miss for a fraction of a second the invisible veil that I have in Japan. The space between me and those around me is suddenly consumed in the noise and the vigour of the American crowd around me. And when I am absolutely dead tired, jet lagged on my feet, I even miss the anonymity of never being expected to say more than, "Good afternoon. This please. Thank you." at the register. Reaching out to receive a gift with both hands, bowing on the phone, unwrapping the furoshiki, greeting the delivery man in the genkan (traditional Japanese entranceway) who brings you your ochugen gift (summer time gift, one of several seasonal gifts traditionally exchanged during the Japanese year) of chilled mikans (Japanese tangarines sent by MIL).

The chorus of aisatsu (greetings) that encircle life here and bind us to one another:

Inviting someone into your house : aggatte kudasai (please come in)

Entering someone's house: ojamashimasu (I'm sorry to bother you)/shitsureishimasu (I'm sorry to intrude/be rude)

Leaving someone's house: ojamashimashita (I'm sorry to have troubled you.)

Morning greeting: ohayogozaimasu

Afternoon greeting: konnichiwa

Evening greeting: konbanwa

Good night: oyasumiyasai

Before eating (when serving food) : meishi agatte kudasai (please eat) douzo (here you are)

Before eating : itadakimasu

After eating: gochisosama deshita

Excuse me (used a LOT more than in English for nearly every situation imaginable, asking a clerk to ring up a sale, after bumping into someone, when trying to get past another person, etc.): suimasen

Please: onegaishimasu (used when asking a favor)

Thanking others for their hard work: otsukare sama deshita (for instance, when you leave work to your co-workers)

Goodbye: sayonara or matta ne (the later is more informal)

Thank you for everything: oseiwa ni narimashita (I have to write this at the beginning of each note to my girls' teachers, a kind of acknowledgment for all that they do for my children and therefore for me.)

Take care: genki de ne

Get well: odaijini

Apologies: mo shiwake arimasen (kind of an "there is no excuse, I am sorry"
gomenasai (a more literal, "sorry")

Excuse me for leaving before you (when there are people still at the office working, for example) = o-sakini shitsureishimasu For letting someone go ahead of you = douzo osaki ni

Pleased to meet you: hajimemashite, yoroshiku onegaishimasu

"J" is for Japan: the country where I say "Tadaima!" (I'm home) and my children and husband answer, "Okaerinasai" (welcome home).

"I" is for Identity

2007-08-17T11:19:00.000+09:00

Which is what? What is my identity? I am. . . American? An expatriate? A foreign wife? A Gaijin? Do I qualify as international?

Am I over-the-hill, old, an obaasan--a mother, a wife, a footnote to my former self?

If identity is in part based on origins, mine lay in the mid-west of America. My father's family is all from Illinois and I was born in Kentucky. We lived in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Illinois from the time of my birth until I was in the second grade. I remember bits of Pennsylvania (we lived in Hershey, Pennsylvania--who can forget the smell of chocolate after rain? The street lights shaped like silver wrapped Hershey kisses?) and all of our time in Illinois.
My mother's family also comes from the Midwest--Pennsylvania and Michigan. But my parent's marriage was a kind of shining-knight-rescues-damsel-in-distress deal so I grew up in the knight's compound and didn't really mix much with the clan from whence my mother was taken.
But my father re-located our Midwestern family to California in 1976 when I was nine-years-old. In California we had only our nuclear family which means that I was raised in the universe of my parents. It was a fascinating sociology experiment. A bit like the movie "Mosquito Coast" just tamed down and camouflaged. And my parents remained there for the next two decades. They relocated back to the Midwest, to Indiana, after my father's retirement from teaching.

So all my pre-teen (tween as it is now fashionably called) years and teen years were carried out under the optimistic strong glare of the Californian sun--tattoos, liberalism, fresh oranges a buck a crate, the smell of suntan lotion and burning asphalt and the glorious rebirth of the foothills in a brief baptism of green until spring runs away and summer lays her golden mantel over the Sierra Nevadas. But somewhere in my background is the tenacity and the humility of farmers who settled in the plains of the Midwest--humidity, home grown tomatoes, lightening bugs, real green grass lawns, front porches, lightening storms and hail the size of baseballs--Midwestern reserve and Bible belt morals.

My educational background, another element in forming identity, was a small private liberal arts college in Oregon, followed by graduate school at a California State University and then my formal education ended in Reno, Nevada where I was working on a Ph.D. in English literature. That I never completed. And I feel it so keenly that I am convinced that any doctor to perform an autopsy on me would be able to cut me open and point out, "Ah, and see here? This is where she was unable to complete her doctorate program."

And really, now that I have metaphorically got myself up on the slab, cut open for inspection, we get closer to how I feel about my identity: Bits and pieces. Bits and pieces that for a time here and there are able to form enough cohesiveness to pass for "me."

Most of the bits and pieces of me have reached the shores of Nihon, the land I call home and the home of my children. They don't all fit in here though, although I can't say for sure that they fit perfectly in the U.S. either. Being Gaijin here helps the western immigrant keep a tight perspective on their cultural heritage. I will never be Japanese and so I can unburden myself of the albatross of cultural assimilation. I learn the customs and the ins and the outs of living in Japan, but I don't have to remold my soul to fit anything at all here. I am fundamentally foreign and safe to remain so.

Does this make the American me more American? In the beginning, I realized that living outside of America did highlight for me what it meant to be American. Ironically I won the sixth grade speech contest, "Why I am Proud to be an American." It's ironic, because I can't remember why I was proud at that point in life. And ironic because I realized that I had no clue what it meant to be American until I left America years later.

Now that I have lived outside America for a decade I realize that I am unable to come up with the necessary cultural passwords. I use the Internet to try to fill in my American cultural gaps--I read about Britney and Hilton, about the political scandals and the homegrown backyard victories. I listen to the top ten and watch American Idol, spell bound.

But when I was home for a visit four years ago and sat in front of the evening news it hit me for the first time that I was an American living far from America. The first news that scrolled across the screen were the names of local soldiers who had died in action. We were at war. The next morning when I took my parents dog out for his morning walk my mother pointed out the homes of those who had loved ones over in Iraq. The yellow ribbons on the trees, I kept wondering, why hadn't I noticed all the yellow ribbons before?

In Japan, I knew we were at war, the U.S. and Iraq. I knew it, but I didn't feel it. Just like I know that my children are Japanese and American, not one nor the other but a combination of both--incomplete in some areas of each, but whole in the sum total. This is easier to see and accept on an intellectual level than witness in action. When we drove in from the airport to my folk's house in Indiana my children shrieked with delight, "A park! A park! Can we stop?" over and over again. They were pointing at backyards filled with climbing gyms and swing sets, something that they don't see here in Japan. Swing sets and slides are for public parks, not private homes here.

The disappointment that became palpable at meal times in my parents house when my children refused American favorites, pizza, jam, SpaghettiOs, macaroni and cheese, pumpkin pie. . . making it hard to swallow. The resignation when my mother offered up the rice cooker ( a gift we gave my folks years ago) and rice. The greed and glee with which my children danced around the steaming rice cooker, squealing with delight, "It dinged! it dinged! The rice is done!"

The distance that inevitably starts to fill the space between my American friends and I. Shared experiences no longer strong enough to build a bridge in certain areas of our lives. If I complain about the heat and the humidity to my friend who lives in an insulated, central air conditioned house. . . how can she understand mold that grows in the bathroom, on the window sills and behind the furniture on the wall? If I whine about household chores to my friend who uses a dishwasher, a dryer and an oven large enough to bake two trays of cookies at once how does she find a way to understand my frustration with hanging up laundry indoors to dry during the rainy season?

When I first came to Japan as a married woman, my Japanese mother-in-law suggested that my husband and I live tanshinfunin (a common practice in Japan where the husband lives in a different city or area of Japan from his wife and children for work purposes). I remember looking at her incredulously. I couldn't fathom the idea. When she asked me how to translate tanshinfunin into English I told her "separation" as in prior to "divorce". She looked at me incredulously.

A friend of mine is faced with a making a decision this spring. Her Japanese husband has decided on a job in a different prefecture from where they are currently living. They just bought a beautiful home in the area of Japan in which they are now. Her eldest child has started elementary school there. Her youngest is finally settled in a new day care there. I asked her if she had considered tanshinfunin? To me, it makes sense now.

There are a lot of things now that make sense to me. It doesn't bother me at all anymore when someone cancels plans or turns down an invitation just by saying, "I have plans/something came up." without offering any further details. I no longer give excuses. In fact, just saying, "chotto. . . " rolls right off my tongue. Chotto literally means, "a little", but in conversation it can kind of translate into "uhhhh . . . " and whereas it used to frustrate me to be "chotto'ed" by someone, now it doesn't offend. If feels right.

And I feel a little anxious until I know the exact age of the person to whom I am speaking. Then the ground levels out and I know exactly where I stand or where I should be standing in relation to them.

A foreign friend came to my house the other day and when she left I went outside and stood in the street and watched her car disappear down the road. When I could no longer see it I went back inside. I knew I probably didn't have to do that. She is American too. But I didn't seem to be able to stop myself from following her out the door. Waving at her. Bowing at her disappearing car.

Identity. I'm still searching for mine--the bit of me out in the street watching my friend's car vanish, the bit that has memorized all the Japanese nursery school songs and finger plays, the bit that got drunk off of Coors beer in the back of my boyfriend's car in high school in the California foot hills, the bit that hugged my professors fiercely when I received my MA degree, the bit that sang 9 Inch Nail songs at the top of my lungs, the bit that answers to the word "Mommy", the bit that wants to roll the windows down and feel the San Joaquin's heated breeze rush over my face. In the kaleidoscope of me, I sit watching the pieces fall into different patterns. Is this a constant act of reinvention? Or is it the process of being?

Identity: fractured, incomplete, incandescent, in motion, in memory, a figure in a life in progress.

"H" is for Homage

2007-08-14T09:40:00.000+09:00

Which is what I would like to pay to Claire over to Sakura Family. Go on over and read Claire's post on raising biracial kids in Japan--this is the kind of writing that I live to read. It rocks. Because Claire writes what I feel, she expresses what I think and she feels it and says it so much better than I ever could.

Not to mention she is one of the coolest people I have had the great fortune to call friend during my lifetime. Just all around--go and read Claire's post (entitled, "Cool Water on a Hot Day"). You won't regret it.

Oh and a bonus for "H":

"H" is also for Hooray! Tomorrow I am taking my girls and we are getting on a train and going to the coast. And the most exciting thing about it is that we are going to meet up with another foreign wife (American) and her three kids and we are going to HAVE FUN.

So "I" is gonna have to idle for a while.

G is for "Ghosts"

2007-08-13T21:29:00.000+09:00

When I was thirteen, my best friend and I began to play with the Ouija board, all-the-time. Don't have time to get into the whole story, but lets say that although it is a board game marketed by Parker Brothers I'll never play it again and it isn't because I am not a good sport it's because I have a soul and I want to keep it. Take a peek at the "Alleged consequences of usage " section from Wikipedia for a few reasons why I will never ever touch one again. So, anyway, during the summer and fall that we were into playing with dangerous mystical occult things we of course had experiences with ghosts. Then there was my friend a few years later who worked at a hotel famous for having ghosts. Her stories were riveting. Then there were the incidences of strangers walking up to me, proclaiming themselves to be sensitive to the "other world/s" and constantly telling me that I was basically a human lighting rod for ghosts. When my roommate my Freshman year at university confided in me that she hoped that the poltergeist from home hadn't followed her off to college I wasn't thrilled. When she woke me up one night with a terrified whisper of, "oh Laura, it's here. It's here!" I sat straight up in bed, and said loudly and firmly, "GET THE HELL OUT. WE ARE CLOSED." I have steadfastly remained closed and unopened to the "other world" since. I sincerely intend to remain as about as spiritually conducive as a large lump of granite.

Being so adamant about not being receptive to ghosts obviously tells you how firmly I believe in them. And the real reason that I am absolutely sold on them is due to my scientific, fervently Christian father. This is the man who used to read aloud from "Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas at dinner. My father is by profession an organic chemistry professor. He also was nearly constantly a member of the church board at one church or another during my childhood and adolescence. We were so thoroughly inundated in theology and science that I felt like God surely was up in heaven combining DNA and whipping up black stars just like any diety who loves science would be.

So the day that my father told me a ghost story I was very, very skeptical and a little nervous, wondering what he was up to. Turns out that Dad had had a very difficult day at work. He had moved our family from Illinois out to California in order to take up an administrative job as Head of the Department of Health and Sciences at a university in the central valley. Aside from having a hard time adjusting to being taking out to eat at Mexican restaurants (a variety of food he had no previous experience with) and learning the new job, he found out he was expected to lower the axe on several tenured professors in his department. He became one of "them" after years of being on the other side. Then after several years of excelling on the "them team" (administration) he finally couldn't stomach any more football tail gate parties and took a big pay cut to go back to teaching organic chemistry. The problem of course was that all the other chemists in the department still considered him "one of them" and they reverted to nearly school boy level bullying and prank pulling. I mean, at the time I was only an 8 year-old little girl trying to find her Daddy's office. I walked into the department of Chemistry and there sat about six grown up men. When I asked for my father's office number they exchanged knowing looks and then several said at the same time, "you must be really lost little girl. There is no Prof. X in this department!" At that moment the department secretary stood up and took me by the hand. "I'll take you to your father's office." Just as we were going out the door she paused and threw back over her shoulder, "You should be ashamed of yourselves. She's just a little girl! Grown men!" and made a wonderful harrumph noise that must of certainly put them in their place.

Anyhow, after a particularly difficult day of dealing with his hostile colleagues, Dad came home in a down mood. The mood got worse when he and Mom had a bit of a spat about something or other--the usual. Probably the fact that California--does not have grass. No real leaves, nothing but mile after mile of scorched brown dirt and long weeds. Dangerous weeds, like foxtails that were forever burrowing into mother's beloved cockerspaniel and having to be surgically removed. Mom didn't transplant that well. It took about seventeen years before she kinda liked living on the West coast. So Dad retreated upstairs, carrying our ancient upright vacuum up the stairs with him and as he vacuumed and thought about the mean guys at work and the unhappy wife downstairs and the cut in pay he had taken and the loss of status he had taken with it he started thinking about his Grandmother. Dad grew up with his mother, father, his older sister (kinda. she was ten years older so she wasn't at home as long as Dad was) and his maternal Grandmother. Apparently Grandmother Cross was always there for my Dad as a young boy.

When he opened the barn doors to show off his FFA flock of sheep to his local FFA chapter and each and every single sheep was on its back, legs up in the air stiff, dead as a door nail, she would have been the primary comforter and pillar of strength that he turned to back at home. When the pony his dad bought for him kept scraping him off it's back by galloping into the barn when the double doors were open on the bottom but closed on the top . . . Grandmother Cross was there to dabble the home remedies on his cuts and bruises and her comforting words for his bruised pride.

Apparently Grandmother Cross always laid her hands on the back of his neck.

Apparently this is just what she did that day that he was vacuuming upstairs. He shrieked and ran downstairs completely white and visibly shaking. Then he didn't tell me about it for several months.

He reckoned that she was only trying to comfort him. But he told me about it at the same time that he cautioned me to stop messing around with the Ouija board.

I think that the opinion of my father on the matter of ghosts had a greater impact on me than even the multiple unexplainable highly eerier and frightening "Alleged consequences of usage" that I experienced.

So, there you have it. I believe in ghosts. But I definitely don't go looking for them. I have several times entered houses and immediately experienced intense discomfort and had overwhelming feelings of dread. These places have always later been revealed to have had some sort of supernatural connection. Did I go back? Did I even stay the first time? Good God no. Remember, "I'm closed to all supernatural forces."

And now I have the added benefit of living in a country where the ghosts will feel uncomfortable around me--you know, a "gaijin" and even if they bother to whisper threatening things at me chances are that I might not catch what they are saying. I can probably get off with looking confused and maybe even scare them off by answering back in English.

"F" is for Flat out rude

2007-08-11T11:05:00.000+09:00

Which is what I told the young couple sitting on the bench out front of the Michinoeki (a way station along a highway that usually sells local specialities of the area), that they were flat out rude. The young guy nudged his nubile, fashion-pop-idol-look-alike girl friend with a sneer splayed across his face and I instantly knew. He was going to point me out to her and then say something incredibly amusing--at my expense. So I turned my head towards them to see and sure enough she was scanning me from head to toe and a similar sneer was creeping across her face as she put one of her beautifully manicured hands up to her mouth to cover the "giggle." I stopped and said loudly in English, "That is just flat out rude." They both froze. Then the girl exploded in laughter. The boy grinned sheepishly and raised a hand in a kind of wave. I took two steps away. Two steps backwards. Then I did a kind of "talk to the hand" kind of thing and left.

I'm sure the overweight, aging gaijin glaring at them with mad piggy eyes and then growling gibberish (English) at them will be a funny anecdote they can share for years to come. "Remember that fat old gaijin baba? (shortened, slang form of "obasan" or "Aunt" which is used to address or refer to older women. An insult word.) Ha ha ha."

Why did I stop? Why did I do a crazy lady crab walk (forwards, backwards, forwards again) kind of frustrated skittle in front of them? Why in God's name did I do the "talk to the hand" gesture?

Well, obviously, this time the gawking and the I've-got-something-funny-to-say-about-the-gaijin thing got to me. It doesn't always get to me. I often purposely redirect my attention/route to avoid stupid comments or direct gawkers. But today was hot. REALLY hot and humid and I hate hot and humid. And my period had just started. And my family was headed for a day at the beach. Imagine my joy at the idea of sitting in the sun watching my family frolic in the ocean's waves while I sweated and menstruated away on the sand--beached by biology and circumstance. And of course I inherited the infamous PMS of my mother's family. We're talking PMS of epic proportions.

My entire family used to just hunker down and walk quietly for the duration of my mother's bouts of PMS each month. My father was the only one who would breech the lines and venture into my mother's room (which was their bedroom). She would stay up there with her faithful cockerspaniel and only come out to fix us with a look and then announce, "we are all, each and every one of us in the process of dying. The moment of birth is the beginning of the journey to the grave."

When I read Jane Eyre, it wasn't hard at all for me to imagine living in a house with a mad woman in the attic.

Unfortunately that mad woman moved into my attic when I entered my late thirties.

So, the picture perfect young lovers today decided to mock the mad woman. Mistake. Not that I made them pay for it, remember, instead I did the weird "argh! you, you, you, . . . look at the hand." dance which probably actually really amused them.

Now that my moment is gone, I have gone over different scenarios in my head again and again thinking of different things I could have said and done. I could have ignored them. I could have turned to them and asked, "What is it about me that you find so amusing? That I'm fat? Old? Or foreign? Or is it just the overwhelming thrill of finding all three in one person?" but my Japanese isn't good enough to say all that. So I could have ranted at them in English and then paused and looked thoughtfully at them and said in Japanese, "oh, but I'm sorry, you can't understand what I said, can you? You studied English for what, six years? Oh, maybe not huh? No high school probably?"

But I didn't and it's too late now and the other thing that got me so frustrated and angry was that I am tired of running these scenarios through my head. I miss living in a country where I don't have to think up good come backs. I miss living in a country where if someone approached me and asked me what kind of food I ate, or if I could sleep on a futon, or how long I had been living there I knew in an instant, "nutter" and I could cut and run. And how many people used to wait until I had walked by and then started to scream "hello! Heeeellllooooooo!" at my back when I was living outside of Japan?

Common sense in dealing with others apparently doesn't apply to dealing with foreigners here in Japan. But the most frustrating bit of it all is that there is a large number of individuals (or I am just really fucked by fate and just happen to have encountered nearly every member of the minority of individuals) here for whom the idea that they might actually be being just flat out rude in their relations with gaijin is unattainable. These are the ones who just flat out don't get it.

Good example: pregnant gaijin woman meets group of neighborhood Japanese women.
JW (Japanese women): Oh! Your baby is going to be soooo kawaii (cute)!
PG(Pregnant Gaijin): Uh, thank you but we'll have to wait to see.
JW: Oh! no no! Hafus (plural of Half, short for half and half, indicating a biracial child usually half Japanese and half Western ) are so kawaii!
PG: All babies are kawaii!
JW: Hafus have such big eyes! Oh, your baby is going to be so kawaii!"
PG: Excuse me, but saying that my baby is going to be kawaii just because it is going to be a hafu is kind of rude isn't it? I mean, what about Nakagawa-san's baby? Won't her baby be kawaii as well? Even if it isn't a hafu?
JW: (blink) (blink) (blink) Oh no. Everyone knows that hafu babies are kawaii!

And Nakagawa-san is one of the blinkers. Some people just flat-out-don't-get-it.

Have you ever tried to teach a cat to heel? It is just an exercise in frustration and exasperation and ultimately disappointment if you really had any kind of vested interested in training the cat to heel. That is how I felt about the young couple sitting on the bench publicly mocking me today. I just wish that they had huge fur balls that they had to spit up later today--and dirty filthy litter boxes and cheap nasty tasting dry food.

So I think my hand went up to push my internal dialog away from myself. A kind of self-exorcism if you will. All the legitimate reasons to reprimand /confront them--pushed away.

I retreated to my family and then I worried for the remainder of our time there that the cm ( Japanese English for commercial) perfect couple would spot us and mock my kids too. Although actually, my kids act as a nice shield for me, instead of mocking the aging fatty with the two cute kids, people tend to focus their energies on squealing over the sheer kawaii force a hafu packs when they see my two. Which is gratifying to the parent and child until one or the other realizes that the reaction they are evoking in people is similar to the reaction that cute animals in the zoo evoke in them.

In fact, the sheer absurd underside of taking a biracial child to the zoo here is ponderously heavily. There stands Reno gazing at the baby monkeys in the monkey pit, she keeps telling me enthusiastically how cute these small furry babies are. Behind her stands a local Japanese mother, directing her own 9 year old daughter's attention towards my daughter---"ooooohhhhh look! A hafu! She's so cuuuuuute!"

So today, I decided to leave the zoo and with a freedom that those baby monkeys can only dream of, I walked away from the couple and back to my own family and on to the beach where we had a fantastic time and we met several fantastically friendly people and families (these are all words that begin with "f" as well.) and one boy even showed me a beautiful rock he had found on the shore and then gave it me.

So for the rest of the afternoon I didn't give the glamor shots duo a thought, until we were driving home after the unbelievably beautiful sunset and then, as I felt the weight of my thoughts crushing down on me I did a mental talk to the hand to myself and thought, "Fuck them. I'd rather focus on having fun with my family." Which we did. We went out for sushi and home for a family communal shower where we rinsed the salt out of each other's hair and my beautiful little daughters are happily sound asleep, exhausted and dreaming of all the wonders of the sea and the Earth.

"E" is for Envy

2007-08-10T10:32:00.000+09:00

Which is something that I seem to experience on a day-t0-day basis.

You know, I envy my neighbor her husband who gets up early, goes to work early and is home by 9 p.m. He also gets up on the weekends and seems to adore doing lawn work. She confided to me at the neighborhood festival this year that he also cleans the ofuro (Japanese style bath) every day. I envy her her husband.

Or the foreign women here in the Land of the Rising Sun who have Japanese husbands who participate in child rearing activities. Or friends who travel to English speaking countries frequently. Or the majority of the female population of Japan for whom shoe shopping is fun (I can't even find my size here--unless it is in the men's section.). I envy women who breast feed and lose every ounce of pregnancy weight.

I envy friends who's kids are academically gifted, eat vegetables and are naturally helpful and outgoing. And who go to bed regularly, every night before 7:00 p.m. I envy all the families I see out and about with Dad's who can pick up the kids and swing them around, throw them up in the air and catch them.

I envy people who have to ask, "What is 'RA'?"

I envy people for small petty things too. Like women who seem to be able to keep their hair style perfectly arranged despite intense humidity or high winds. Or women who can cook a meal and carry on a conversation at the same time (I am in the kitchen with phrases like "One tablespoon of soy sauce" thundering through my head until I actually get the Tbs. of soy sauce into the dish. . . If I ever try to multitask while cooking. . . alas, the final product will prove to be inedible.

Oh! And I envy everyone who can drive (long story short, yes I know how, but no I haven't got a valid license here in Japan). I envy other foreign wives who can read and write in Japanese (big irony in my life, the English literature major who flew off and went to live as an illiterate mother of two in a foreign country). I envy writers who have the confidence to attempt to publish their work.

I envy people who have fat, lazy, soft and fuzzy cats which never even contemplating scratching the interior of their owner's homes down to the dry wall. I envy women whose husbands tell them that they are pretty and that they love them--more than every few years. I envy people who can go out side without ever catching someone staring and pointing at them. I envy people who are really good natured about being stared at and pointed out.

I envy people who seem to be able to appreciate abilities, qualities and even admire possessions that others have and say, "Wow, that is nice." and it leaves them feeling good. They are pleased to find something right in the world. They don't become inward focused, resentful or bitter. In fact, seeing something good happen to someone else, or finding good in someone else builds them up, makes them stronger, increases the faith. You know, the faith that happiness is out there so it is attainable?

I want to join those people. I really do. And I'm working on it. I'm trying my best to strangle that little sarcastic voice of bitter resentment that likes to respond to others' good fortunes or situations by spot lighting the corresponding deficiencies in my life. I am trying to swing that spot light back to where it should be. I'm telling that voice to just go sod off. I mean, what good has it ever done me?

So, while I can't say that I have won the battle with my personal demon (Envy) yet, I can say that I've gotten pretty good at bobbing and weaving and escaping Envy's punches. And its left me feeling light on my feet, eyes wide open, facing forwards, even a bit eager for whatever might be coming up next. Because I have a hunch you see that I might even win the next round. Envious?

"D" is for Daughters

2007-08-08T18:54:00.000+09:00

Of which I have two. Doll-loving, doll-toting, dainty, delicate daughters with a flare for dress-ups, dancing and drama. Danger-loving, daring, Daddy's little girls who are difficult, determined, devious, dirt-lovin, and delightful. That render me dog-tired by the end of each day! Which I am today. So that is it for "D", I'm "done!"

"C" is for Cancer and Cut It Out

2007-08-08T13:12:00.000+09:00

"C" is for Cancer. Which in Japanese is "gan" which is the word that I was focusing all my powers of attention and concentration on trying to pick up in conversation at the hospital this morning. My husband Masa went in this morning to get the results of his blood test from a week ago. A week ago I was at home with the girls (who were right on schedule in their morning bickering and shrieking at each other) when the phone rang and Masa was on the other end telling me that "It's all over. I'm over. Take good care of the girls." and he wouldn't tell me much of anything else. He had gone in to get the results from a battery of tests that he had undergone two days previously as screening to qualify for the new biological therapy meds they are using for RA. So I knew that one of those tests had found something.

I could go on to tell you all about my frantic ride in a taxi (with bickering children), our ungainly entrance into the large prefectural university hospital and our harried search through all the different departments until we found Masa but it wouldn't begin to adequately depict the tsunami of panic that was crashing over us. What the tests had shown was a spot on one of Masa's lungs. The first doctor proclaimed it "cancer." The second wasn't so sure so he ordered blood tests to look for cancer markers. Then he sent us home to wait a week for the results, our free pass to hell.

Finally, after sitting in the flames, spinning over different scenarios of death, separation and despair we graduated to hell proper--the doctor's waiting room this a.m. And then the clouds parted and a drop of grace fell and quenched our twisted souls. The cancer marker test came back negative.

Which leads me to my second word for the letter "c". Cut it out. Okay. Phrasal verb and not a word, but the first word in it starts with a "c". I say this phrase a lot, "Cut it out." is one of my on automatic mommy phrases, along with, "stop it. I said stop it. I mean it. Stop it. Stop it now." and other classic selections like the count down: "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, . . ."

However, I'm smuggling in the whole set of words (all three) not as a phrasal verb here but for their actual literal meaning, cut-it-out. Which is what I immediately wanted to ask the doctor at the hospital to do. Cut it out. Out spot! Out damn spot!

Sitting in the corridor outside the oncologists office I turned and asked Masa if he didn't mind just waiting and seeing what happened with the spot. How did he feel about cutting it out?

"Surgery?"

"Well, couldn't they just go in and take it out?"

Turns out that they could but they would have to go in on the side of his rib cage, cutting through a rib or two and remove a chunk of him, not just the spot. If we understood the doctor correctly. Pretty serious surgery and thus the doctor is recommending that we just sit back and see what spot will do. Will spot grow bigger? Shrink? Turn into cancer?

We sat silently for a few minutes and then Masa stood up and went back into the office. When he came out he sat down. I continued watching the line of elderly patients line up to use the free blood pressure cuff in the reception area. You could tell who had good results and who's blood pressure was too high from studying their faces as they retrieved and read the bit of paper that the machine would spit out after taking their blood pressure. The winners would kind of wave their result strip in the air or share it with a friend. The losers crumpled theirs into tiny little balls that they heaved angrily into the waste bin at the side of the machine. It seemed like a kind of lotto for the elderly.

After a bit my mind wandered back to the issues I had been trying to keep it from pondering. A mental image of my husband laying on a surgery table like a parody of Adam while the surgeon-God carefully extracts a bit of rib began to form when Masa broke the silence and announced:

"I made an appointment to find out more about the surgery."

"Isn't it too risky?"

"I want it out. If they can I want them to cut it out."

And I said nothing. Because I want it out too. I want it out.

"B" is for Bastard

2007-08-07T12:55:00.000+09:00

It is one of my favorite swear words. "You bastard." It is such a cutting two word sentence--precise and penetrating.

Although in my family swearing of any sort was strictly forbidden I grew up to be a foul-mouthed-baboon (as my father would say). Foul-mouthed-baboon is strong speaking for my father.

I remember enduring lectures for saying "I'm pissed off." Pissed off is a toilet-potty-mouth phrase. Despite it being a phrasal verb which means "to be angry" it contains the word "piss" which obviously if used in speech indicates your lack of respect for the listener to the point that you are verbally peeing upon them.

I went off to Girl Scout Camp in Kings Sequoia National Park at the tender age of 9. I had never uttered a curse word before in my life. I was a gosh!-oh my!-gee whiz!-Oh Man!-kind of gal. Till Girl Scout Camp. When my cabin mates discovered just how uncomfortable swearing made me they kept at me relentlessly.

"Say fuck. Go on. Say it. Fuck."

It only took a few days to progress from hesitant barely audible whispered obscenities to swearing like a trooper. "Damn! What the fuck! Where's my. . . you bitch, give me back my towel!" By then, the other girls were still encouraging me to swear because I could do it with such amazing gusto and my delivery skills were something others coveted--the way I could coat my words with scathing sarcasm, irony, or real rage.

When I got off the bus and my Mother asked me how camp was I promptly responded, "Fucking great!"

Which was pretty much the last curse word I uttered until I went off to college.

Now I'm having to face the consequences of speaking strongly--the potty mouth's ultimate curse. My own 9 year old looked me in the face and said, her voice dripping with disdain, "Fuck Off."

"WHAT DID YOU SAY?" I roared at her ( I even called her "young lady") .
"You are not to use the "F" word. Not to anyone and certainly not to your mother!"
She smiled demurely then she said "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFish."

I had to choke back the spontaneous "you smart ass" that rose in my throat and instead sputtered out a strangled, "don't be flippant with me young lady." and was left standing there like an ineffectual baboon.

Encyclopedia of Me

2007-08-06T16:08:00.000+09:00

I've been working on a couple of different pieces but I am far too close to the issues that they discuss to achieve the amount of objectivity I need in order to avoid them sounding ominously a bit like my collection of "Poems to Die By" penned during my teenage years.

Yet I need to keep my writing practice up and going. So, I was reading over at Purple Kappa the other day and came across her "Encyclopedia of Me" meme which she had found over at Bella Dia. After reading what both bloggers are doing with the idea I felt inspired and have decided to give it a go.

So, beginning with the letter "a".

Albatross. Not the bird, but the metaphorical one inspired by Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I loved that poem the very first time I read it and I think it is because there was so much in it to identify with. You'd think that I came out of utero with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck I have such an affinity for having some sort of restriction or encumbrance in my life or metaphorically speaking, hanging around my neck.

Oh albatross, albatross, I've had so many different ones over the years. But to be sure that I don't cloud the category and heave in insecurities, fears and every thing else under the sun lets look at a definition. From the Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary
I found the following definition:

2 a : something that causes persistent deep concern or anxiety b : something that greatly hinders accomplishment : ENCUMBRANCE

So, if I stay within the framework of the above definition, my current Albatross would have to be a double headed bird. One head is for my overwhelming debt. I actually have nightmares of having a bounty put on my head by the American Department of Education. Not because I am not making my regular payments towards my student loan debt, but just because they are there, hanging around my neck for years to come and what happens if one month I can't? The fact that I am paying off on college loans that were used for my graduate school studies in my PH.D. program that I never finished just seems to have packed a few extra kilos of anxiety onto that bird.

The other albatross head would be the albatross of poor health. I have been spending a lot of time in the past few years with my marriage vows echoing through my head: To have and to hold from this day forward; for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health ,to love and to cherish, till death us do part. They were the traditional sort. When I stood up and said them it was like the final opening night after all the childhood rehearsals. I said them enthusiastically and with tremendous conviction. But I hadn't really weighted the words beforehand. Now they are very heavy words.

On the one hand I am happy to realize that I did mean them and do mean them. So I wasn't completely just playing a part in my wedding. But it is hard to know exactly when I began to really mean them, to really understand them, to honestly bear the weight of my wedding pledges. I looked the pledge about "for richer or poorer" in the face when we were the proud new parents of a baby living at the poverty line in Australia without any health insurance. I collected my husband's pocket change and horded it until I had enough to go to the local toy store and buy something for the baby. Each toy that Reno had for the first two years of her life took me about three months to save up for.

Other vows have become significantly more weighty in recent years. At the girl's swimming school the other day I sat up in the second floor viewing area during their lessons. In between waving at my four-and-a-half-year old and flashing the thumbs up sign at my nine-year-old I noticed that one of the athletic clubs coaches was pretty old. He had that "old man" body so that although he still had a decent build and lean muscles, his thighs seemed too thin, his stomach a bit paunchy and his back and shoulders slightly curved. I lusted after that body. Not after that coach, but after that body. I want an old man body in my future. I want to see my husband's body at that age. I want to actually really grow old with him. I don't want to stop having and holding, not so early, not so soon.

RA is not just an encumbrance in that it affects what my husband can do and can't do on a day to day basis, but it qualifies as an albatross on many other levels. Being an auto immune disease and fatal it pretty much can trump just about any tentative plans one shakily tries to scrawl on the future.

And now he is having other health complications on top of the RA. All I want, all I really want right now is to know that I can have a little old man body in my future. I want the Ancient Mariner, not the albatross.

Sites Everyone Should Have Bookmarked

2007-08-01T21:40:00.000+09:00

(My poor cat Melon, who lacking the skills necessary to get on the internet just has to immitate a fuzzy pillow on the sofa during the long hot summer days)

That summer lethargy has settled in big time. Take the girl out of the comfort of hot dry heat and stick her into a humid sticky, my God you sweat like a frog country like Japan in August and you basically kill all initiative and desire for anything other than the spot directly in front of the fan.

So I pulled the fan over to the computer. Here are some good sites to whittle away the afternoons and still too hot and sticky evenings:

I Am Bored This is a great site for finding amusing, interesting and entertaining things and news.

Fund Free Mammograms Because even when you are bored you can still do some good.

Skrt A great place to find great stuff. Which is what you need when you are apathetic and bored, you need stimulating great stuff--check it out.

And finally, drum roll please and those of you who laugh are automatically invited to click on a link and get outta here:

AccuWeather.com Because Mother Nature is gripping and it might help you make plans for real life in the real world. And it freaks people out on international calls when you casually drop in the conversation, "so what are you doing stuck inside with all the rain today?"

Collision

2007-07-18T17:21:00.000+09:00

Last week Reno got a new bicycle. It was delivered on Monday afternoon and stood waiting in the driveway for her return home from school that day.

We practiced riding on it for about two hours that afternoon. I noticed that the frame was a little too high for her. . . but kids grow so fast. Before we have always gotten her the bicycle frame that fit her exactly at the moment we were purchasing and then maybe two months later she was begging for a new, bigger bike!

So this time, Masa went ahead and bought her an adult size frame bike. I wasn't with them when they purchased it. Sure she has to use her toes to balance it standing, but she could just slide off the seat to set her feet firmly on the ground.

Unfortunately on our first test run out with the new bicycle I realized that Reno wasn't doing that--the sliding off the seat for firm footing thing. She was instead desperately pedaling around looking for curbs and rocks and things to balance against when she had to stop the bike. I pointed this out to her but she continued to stop only by finding open curb to balance her toe on.

So when we got home I told her that until she could pass my bicycling test (stopping quickly on a dime, turning around without having to use the entire street space to do so, etc.) she was limited to bicycling only within our neighborhood. No crossing any major roads or bicycling on/along unfamiliar roads. Confining her to the limits of our neighborhood meant that she had access to eight roads--all within a residential area. She protested a bit as now that she is a 4th grader according to her elementary school she is entitled to bicycle within the school zone not just her neighborhood. (1-3rd graders are limited to just their neighborhoods.) Her school is about 20 minutes away from our house by bike and the route crosses two major roads. I was resolute that she would have to practice, get the hang of her new bicycle and pass my test before she could leave the neighborhood.

On Thursday she got hit by a car while bicycling just two blocks from our doorstep.

I had just had the bright idea of taking her along with me on another practice session with the bicycle when I stepped out the door to go get her. She had been cheerfully waving each time she cycled pass our house as she went up and down our street but when I stepped out to intercept her I didn't see her anywhere. Hhhhmmm. . . perhaps she has taken a spin around the block? I thought. So I started off down the street thinking I could check in on Saki who was playing at the neighbor's house three doors down from us. Saki was standing in front of her friend's house pouring water into empty bottles. "Have you seen Reno?" Saki paused, put a hand to her forehead to shade her eyes and squinted at the open road in front of and behind me. "No." Hmmm. . . . I thought and I turned towards the road again intending to walk further down another block to the neighborhood park.

Then I saw Reno, walking rather stiff legged towards me. An unknown woman of about my age was next to her, steering her by the arm. Reno was walking her new bicycle next to her. As I got closer to them, it dawned on me, "she must have crashed on her bicycle!" So in Japanese, as I got closer I called out, "koronda?" (did you fall). Reno didn't say anything, without turning her head she looked sideways at the woman next to her and then back at me. By then I was close enough to realize that she had tears in her eyes and that the trembling lip she was biting was bleeding. The woman immediately bowed deeply towards me and said something about her car hitting Reno and Reno falling down off her bicycle.

At that moment is was as though my mind were run on a gear system and all the chains simply fell off. So information was coming in but wheels were spinning without any progress being made towards processing any of this information.

I stood there swallowing words whole: car, hit, fell. And I seem to remember concentrating on trying to look friendly. I kept reminding myself to smile. I think I apologized to the woman but I still don't know quite what for? For my daughter being in her way?

The woman leaned down and lifted Reno's skirt to show me where she had fallen. The scraped side of the leg wasn't very bad looking but what my mind seized on was the woman's hand--shaking uncontrollably and suddenly "hit her with my car" was processed. My daughter had been hit by a car. The woman was so terrified, Reno was in a kind of state of mild shock. . . and I was standing there practicing my "friendly face".

A quick inspection of Reno revealed that she had scrapes on both legs, her left arm and when I pulled back her bangs a cut on her forehead as well as some scraping along the left side of her nose. She was holding her left wrist but could bend it. Her lip was bleeding and when I had her open her mouth I was shocked to realize that the lower right corner of one of her front teeth was gone. "Reno, where did you hit your head?"

Reno continued to stare straight ahead, her eyes large and watering. She shook her head slightly but said nothing.

"On the road? On your bike? Do you remember hitting your head? Not at all?"

The woman looked anxiously at me so I translated my questions for her into Japanese. While Reno continued to just shake her head ever so slightly to respond negatively to all my questions the woman told me that she had not seen Reno's head strike any thing.

"Hmm. I think I will take her to the hospital just to have a doctor look at her though. It concerns me that her head is bleeding, her tooth is chipped and she has no memory of hitting her head on anything."

The woman nodded.

I don't remember the order of things from that day very well, but sometime in between calling the taxi, collecting Saki from the neighbor's to take her with us, and calling Masa to let him know what was going on the driver left and then came back again. When she came back we looked at Reno's bike (no major damage, just some scrapes on the front basket) and the woman explained where the accident had occurred and how.

Reno came out of a blind exit from the park at the same moment that the woman had just come around a bend in the road and they collided. Thankfully because the driver had just completed a sharp bend in the road she was traveling at a low speed. I'm sure in retrospect that Reno on her bicycle must have seemed like a torpedo coming out of no where. Reno more or less agreed with the woman's version of things although she kept insisting that she had looked both ways before leaving the park. There was no one else present to give an objective report.

Interestingly enough it never occurred to me to look at the driver's car. And although I kept thinking, "if I were in America I would be asking for her insurance company information and taking down her license plate number. " I couldn't get past just thinking about it. Because I don't know how to ask for someone's insurance information and details in Japanese. I was concerned that if I asked for official information I should ask for it correctly.

My daughter gets hit by a car and I turn into a grinning second language idiot.

Just as the taxi pulled up Masa returned my call (I had left a message for him at his office) so I asked the taxi driver to wait and handed the phone over to the driver of the car that had hit Reno. When she handed the cell phone back to me Masa was demanding, "did you ask her to call the police?" It wasn't so much a question as an accusation. I defended myself by saying that mostly I was just concerned with getting Reno to a doctor to be checked out at the moment.

When I asked if I should tell the driver to call the police now he responded that he had already told her to do so and that he would meet us at the hospital later. I hastily exchanged phone numbers with the driver and then sped off in the taxi with the dazed and still shaking Reno and the exuberant Saki who likes taxis. In my mental fog I neglected to give the driver either my or Masa's cell phone number and she also only gave me her home phone number so for the next two hours we could not contact each other. Finally the police contacted us through the hospital.

Reno, thankfully was not seriously injured. No broken bones, no sprains, just scrapes. The most serious injury was to her tooth and on that front we are waiting to see if the tooth's nerve will recover or if she will need a root canal and a cap. In Japan, generally, whenever a driver hits a pedestrian, be they on foot or on a bicycle, the driver is the one who is held at fault. So the driver's insurance is paying all of the medical/dental bills. They even offered to cover the cost of a CT scan if we wanted one done.

So now, in the aftermath of the event as I ride the aftershocks of the initial collision I am left wondering. First, I wonder why I froze at the "if I were in America I would. . . " point of the thought process. I mean, yeah, I'm not in America. So why didn't I just do or say something sensible instead of just standing in the road concentrating on trying to put the driver at her ease? Not that I wish I had jumped all over the woman and run around shrieking or something. I just wish I could have transformed into capable adult not grinning foreigner freak.

And even after 7 years of living here as a wife and mother it is coming as kind of a shock to find myself once again in uncharted, unknown cultural territory. I have no point of reference in accident/collision behavior.

So, if Reno had been hit by a car when riding her bicycle in America:

Would the driver have spent over five hours waiting at the park--first to talk with the police and then to wait for our return from the hospital ER to discuss the matter with us?

Would the driver have called my home to ask how Reno was feeling later that evening?

Would the driver have called my home again the morning after the accident to check on Reno's condition?

Would my daughter's fourth grade teacher have driven over to our house after school to check up on Reno?

Would the police have painstakingly outlined the whole incident in chalk on the street where it occurred? Here is where the car hit the bicycle. Here is where the car came to a complete stop. Here is where the bicycle fell over, in swirls of yellow and white chalk. (I was so thankful when rain the next night washed it all away.)

Would the driver have appeared the next day on our door step with a box of cookies from a high profile bakery?

Would the driver continue to call to get the latest updates on Reno's tooth?

And just like I sat in amazement, my jaw hanging open at the site of Japanese baseball fans politely returning the caught fly balls to the umpire at my first Japanese major league baseball game, here I am now waiting and waiting for the self defense comments to come. But the driver never says any of them. She simply looks distraught and continues to repeat, "I just didn't see her at all and then there she was. " She usually follows this with "I am so sorry."

Why doesn't she scream, "She came out of no where! How was I to avoid her? She was a missile on a bike!"

I ponder all these differences as I chew on a shortbread strawberry cookie from the bakery gift box. I've talked with other foreigners here in Japan who have been involved in traffic accidents. All of them spoke about being unable to choke down the various edible apologies that they were given. Saki, Reno and I had finished half of the gift box of bakery goods on the very day that the driver brought it by. Of course, our accident wasn't as serious as those that others I know have been involved in. No one was seriously injured. As far as I know both Reno's bicycle and the woman's car don't need any repairs. Only the tooth. That one front tooth, which happens to be an adult tooth. It's the only crack left after the collision.

Writer's Therapy or The Workaholic's Wife

2007-07-15T20:59:00.000+09:00

I am writing now because if I weren't I would be telling my children all kinds of terrible things about their father that really, a mother shouldn't tell her children. I would be using words to describe him that the children are not allowed to use and actually, shouldn't even hear and hopefully, don't yet know. So I have stomped off into the tatami mat room (which I find soothing and which also conveniently enough houses our computer) to practice my deep breathing stress relief techniques and to try to discover that well of strength that most mothers appear to possess--the one that allows them to project stability and harmony into their children's lives no matter what maternal tempest is brewing inside.

Failing to find such a maternal well of strength, I have at least put some physical distance between my children and their teeth gritting, colorfully cursing, daddy-bashing-Mommy. Which sometimes is the very best thing that I can do for them.

Living with a workaholic is not so difficult. That part I have gotten used to. He isn't here when I am at the 5:30 p.m. moment of mental melt down. He isn't here when Reno is waving her homework in my face asking for help and Saki is sobbing and screaming because I have once again refused to let her have ice cream for dinner. He misses out on their daily blood curdling screaming fights which often evolve into pinching and hitting bouts.

He isn't here to see me delight the girls with a new dance I've invented to one of Shakira's songs off of her CD, "Laundry Service." We dance in a circle, hands joined--the girls are absolutely glowing. He isn't here to watch me play karuta with Saki or watch as I work side by side with Reno teaching her to read and write in English. I don't know if he even knows about the "relaxing baths" that we sometimes take together where we line up all our scented candles along the ofuro turn off all the lights and play Buble on the portable CD player just outside the ofuro.

He has never been present when I have sat at the kitchen table with electronic dictionary on one side and the DS lite Kanji program on the other laboriously looking up kanji/new vocabulary words in order to help Reno with her homework latter that day. He has never watched me try to simultaneously make dinner, appease a screaming four-year-old who can easily scream for over 40 minutes, relentlessly hound a stubborn nine-year-old into doing her homework while ignoring the hairy shedding cat that nips me on the calves angry over the fact that wet cat food persists in not appearing in its bowl on demand. He has failed to witness how our four-year-old can gag at the mere sight of a vegetable not to mention projectile vomit one an amazing distance.

He doesn't know our after school routines, our pre-dinner routine, our after dinner routine, nor our pre-bed routine. He knows they take piano lessons but he doesn't know where or when. He would not be able to pick out their friends if I put them in a line up right in front of him. Asking him to name their friends would be as futile as asking him to tell me the middle names of the last ten First Ladies of the U.S. His chances of picking out the girls' favorite bedtime stories are also basically null and void.

Living with a workaholic is not so difficult. The thing one has to learn to do, has to work at being able to do, is to live with out the workaholic. And I have worked. Of course I had several years of resentment sculpting, following by anger/aggression management and finally I have reached what I see as the "Aum" plateau. I have finally realized that nothing I do, nothing I feel, will in any way affect the hours my husband chooses to work or not to work. The only person over whom I have any power to affect change is myself. And I don't like being angry. I don't like feeling resentful and I was really really scared this spring when I had a full blown panic attack.

So scared that I uttered my first very little and hesitant "Aum" as I lay hooked up to the heart monitor in the local E.R. And I felt a little bit better.

I tried it again at home when 5:30 p.m. hit me on a school night. "Aum." I felt a tiny bit of a ripple, like the kind you get when someone dives into the pool while you are floating on your back being buoyant. I sucked in some more air to make me more buoyant. The next time that Saki started to scream the house down demanding refined sugar for dinner I fixed her with a "look" while I let my mind gently fade to white and I did a quick breathing exercise. Then I smiled and poked her in the stomach and made it into a joke. She was still giggling even when I put the spaghetti dinner that she had been contorted in rage over, right in front of her. She stopped smiling when the green dinner salad appeared to its left but I didn't. Even when she began the loud piercing lament of the green legumes wail--I just "aumed" my way through it.

When I wake up at night now and sense that Masa still hasn't returned home from work--be it 1 a.m, 3 a.m. or 5 a.m. I just breath in and out and sink back down into the rhythm of sleep. I know from experience that waking up and clock staring won't bring him home any faster. I know that waiting up and picking a fight won't change anything--even if I "win" it. I know that getting up to see if he is home doesn't really matter. It is the middle of the night or the early morning. It is time to sleep. My children will be waking in a few hours and they won't be tired or lethargic. They will be hungry. They will prod me and poke me and sing loud "what's for breakfast? I'm huuuuunngerrrrry!" songs into my ear. They will wake me up by wrapping themselves around me, climbing on top of me and demanding that I too get up to be awake with them. Whether or not I know the exact time of my husband's return home doesn't matter. It is late. It occurs while I am sleeping in between my two cubs, getting ready for another day of pouncing and stalking and hunting and rough housing. I can't afford to let the pride down.

But that doesn't stop me from feeling like roaring on occasion. Tonight when I went to answer the phone me pre-Aum self allowed a single thought to flick through my mind, "Oh! It's probably Masa! He's coming home!"

It was Masa. He wasn't coming home. It's a Sunday today and he left for work at 8 a.m. this morning. He called at 9 p.m. The Sunday event that he went in to work for finished hours earlier. No, he was still there doing other things in the office.

"Will you be working through the night again?"

"Um. Looks likely. Yeah."

" Pity."

"Huh?"

"Well, tomorrow will be wasted then. You'll just sleep all day."

"Uh. . . actually, I have to work tomorrow."

And I suddenly forgot to breath. Instead I could feel the center of my stomach hardening. The savanna grasses began to wave back and forth in front of me and I startled to slink down, settle each steeled muscle into the wave of grass as I looked for the target. I wanted to kill him.

So I passed the phone over to Reno. "It's your Daddy. He's going to go to work tomorrow, on the National holiday. Say hi cause you won't see him tomorrow!"

And I heard the bitter words clipping out across the space of what had been the lovely end to a lovely day spent playing and laughing together. My eldest daughter dragged her feet, literally as she plodded over to take the phone receiver I waved fiercely at her. "Hi Dad" fell in muted tones as I started to struggle against the pressure of the water. Sinking. Must breathe.

But when I opened my mouth instead of sucking in air to buoy me up I hissed out a few choice words describing the depth of my resentment for a man who chooses to stay at work such long hours that he not only sabotages family holidays he jeopardizes his health and the future of his family. Realizing what I was turning into I scuttled off across the sandy floor to retreat to the tatami room, clawing the sliding paper doors shut behind me.

When I sit down at the computer and the first word is formed I push off from the bottom. I start to paddle my way back up onto the shore and as I start to throw my thoughts into sentences and pull them into paragraphs I begin climbing. I am running along a theme, following an image, riding a simile back up to the plateau where I sit down, cross legged and say, "Aum."

And Reno and Saki sense it. First Reno asks hopefully if I don't want to take a shower with her? Saki appears with a sleepy look and her current bedtime favorite "Pakun" (a book about a little worm who eats his way through the seasonal foods of Japan) hugged to her chest, won't I read "Pakun"? As I lay out the futons and breath in the scents of wet hair and fresh soap still clinging to my daughters soft little forms I think about how lucky I am. The view from up here is startling clear and the fresh plaetau air is filling my lungs.

I don't know when he will be home. I even sometimes have to admit that one night he may not come home. With his health condition, the medications he takes, chronic sleep deprevation and his commute. . . the future could hold any combination of scary outcomes for us. But what I do have is right here, right now, sleeping next to me. On my right is Reno, who still even at the age of 9, insists on holding my hand as she falls asleep. On my left is Saki, who will, throughout the night, continously nuzzle and prod me, happiest when she can lay her bare hand on my stomach. And whereas I felt earlier like roaring, I find to my own amazement that I now feel like purring. And although the worries do not dissapear, I simply greet each one with a level "Aum" and the night gets on with its ritual of restoration and renewal.

Of Guppies and 9 Year Old Girls

2007-07-07T14:53:00.000+09:00

Two things are weighing on my mind currently. The first is that my 9 year-old is out on her first long distance foray into the real world with one of her friends. It's not as though they caught the bus to go downtown. They have walked about thirty minutes down the road to a discount candy store. But you know how a maternal mind works. It's a brilliant sunny day out (perfect pervert weather) and they are at a candy store (where would you loiter around looking for helpless little girls if you were a pervert?). When the friend appeared this morning asking if Reno could go to get candy with her I must have looked very forbidding because both girls launched into highly polished speeches on 1. the intended destination, 2. what they would do there, 3. How they would get there (by foot not bicycle as they conceded that perhaps bicycles mightn't be safe) and 4. Their ETR (estimated time of return).

So, after I hung her mobile phone around her neck and secured it by clipping it onto her belt loops as well. . . I waved them off down the road. God I wish I could put homing devices in the kid's molars.

So far I have called her twice. Once to make sure they were on target (still headed to the same location) and now once again to be sure she hasn't forgotten the promised ETR, which she had indeed already forgotten so we have moved it forward by thirty minutes.

If I seem controlling or overprotective, well by Japanese standards I am! One of the kids' favorite T.V. programs is "Hajimette Otsukai" (first time to help MoM) where mothers send off children as young as 5 to go down to the corner store or over to the nearby fish market etc. to buy something and bring it back home. The kids cross busy roads, train tracks, go through tunnels. . . with undercover camera men/women filming the whole escapade of course. One time the program featured two 5 year old boys who took a train all by themselves to another town to go to their former preschool teacher's house to give her a present. And on a day to day basis it is not uncommon for mothers to leave young children home alone while they do the grocery shopping and other neighborhood errands. Latch key kids here can be as young as 6 and no one blinks an eye. (Except for me. I stand around batting them both manically as though someone has poured lemon juice in my eyes.)

In my case, I can not erase the ominous warnings branded on my brain in my early days of motherhood by helpful books like "What to Expect The First Year". There the authors advise you not to leave your baby unattended even to just pop out and check the post because you never know when a fire might break out or an earthquake might hit.

However, as Reno gets older she is starting to chaff at the bit a little and I don't want her to suddenly up and turn into a Harajuku Girl on me in an act of teenage rebellion later so I am trying to learn to stand back a bit and let her get on with this growing up stuff. Safely.

The other issue weighing on my mind at the moment is the reproductive abilities of guppies. Are they like aquatic mice? Little water bunnies? The girls, who deftly went behind my back and wheedled their father into doing this, got two new fish for the ill-fated fish tank. Two guppies: a girl and a boy. Last night at about 11:00 p.m. Reno came down stairs and crept up behind me to announce in a weary yet proud little voice, "Well I have some fantastic news. We have baby fish!" As I was in the middle of brushing my teeth when she made this announcement I spit and replied, "Impossible. You have to get a little breeding side thingy and do all sorts of special things to get fish to reproduce. Must be mildew growing in the tank." She looked crestfallen and retreated upstairs.

As I went up the stairs minutes later I heard the following monologue coming from her room, "oooooohhhh aren't you cute? Don't hide behind the rock!" With a bit of trepidtion I wondered, What? She's talking to mold? My daughter can't tell the difference between slime and a fish? I didn't want that to be true but still just thinking it was wishful thinking.

When I went in and investigated the proud new owner of baby guppies introduced me to the "brood." They are too tiny and dart around so quickly we can't quite get an accurate count. Anywhere between four and six I think.

So now I'm caught up between two fears. The first being that Daddy guppy or Mommy guppy will eat their offspring and thus devastate my two offspring. The second being that the baby guppies will survive and grow up and make more baby guppies. Will I end up having to tie little bags of guppies to go mercilessly throw into the local river?

Who knew. . . so was it a freak of nature or do guppies reproduce at the drop of a hat? Who knew.

Getting Ready for the Onslaught

2007-07-02T10:46:00.000+09:00

So. It's that time of the year again already. Summer vacation will soon be upon us.
The push is on.

I called the dentist this morning to get my teeth cleaned this week and next week (here in Japan they like to clean just a couple of teeth at each visit. It has something to do with insurance payments but it is really irksome for foreigners who come from countries where the dentist can clean ALL your teeth in one sitting!). I'll have to get a hair cut maybe next week. Gotta remember to dye my roots then too.

Oh and mustn't forget to organize my sanity and ponder some universal truths in solitude.

It's time to make a list titled "things I can't do with children underfoot" and try to get through them all before the educational institutions of Japan release my offspring for a month.

I remember the good old days (which were right up until the year 1998 when my first daughter was born) when summer vacations were "mine". I owned them. Summer vacation was for three main activities:
1. Sleep
2. Idling away the day light hours doing things like swimming, then laying in the sun to dry, then getting back in the water, then drying out again, then getting back in the water. . .
3. Social drinking (without having to care whether or not it would impair my ability to be my best on the next day--I mean submerging oneself in water and drying out doesn't require that much mental finesse.) The socializing was the real high light of it anyway--staying out late at clubs or at friends' houses, talking and laughing, being carefree and witty.

And now I'm embarrassed. Did my mother at the age of 40 long for her graduate school day summer vacations as well?

Since the year 1998 however, summers have been changing. The biggest change came when my eldest started elementary school here in Japan. And brought home summer homework. A big pile of it. And a daily schedule. On which she was to record the time of day she woke up, her daily activities and the time she went to bed--for every day of summer vacation.

And then there was the knock at the front door from the representative from the local child's association. She gave us a Morning Exercises card. During summer vacation we were supposed to get Reno up and alert and down to the neighborhood park to do rajio taiso (Radio Exercises). Rajio taiso starts at 7 a.m.

So now here I am, just weeks before the start of another summer vacation and I am panicking. Saki will start going to preschool for mornings only from July 17th. That means both she and I get the joy of getting her up in the morning, fed, dressed and wrestled onto the preschool bus only to have her reappear at our doorstep shortly before noon. I get to make lunches!

Why it is that before every school break the preschool goes to half days the week before I don't know. . . just to increase the mounting tension among the mothers?

July 19th will be her last day of preschool. However, for some horrible reason, Reno's summer break doesn't begin until one week later. What makes a pubescent 9 year old angrier and moodier? Try sending her off to school while her younger sister waves at her from the wadding pool out back!

So, I have the girls signed up for swimming lessons (but it'll only be a 5 day course). My husband Masa spontaneously enrolled them yesterday evening. Later when I thanked him he replied, "I didn't want to hear your whining."

Of course, I get to ride the bus to and from swimming lessons with them and I get to sit up in the second floor glass encased viewing area to peer down at them during their lessons. With about 100 other mom's and their toddlers and babies. At least Japanese women don't smoke in such situations. I recall nearly going ballistic when I went to the "video and picture taking day" at the swim club one year. Apparently, the lure of using photography and video equipment was enough to get the Dad's there because on that day I ended up wedged between two men who chain smoked the entire time. And I was about 8 months pregnant with Saki at the time.

I was so surprised the first time I put Reno in swim lessons to learn that I was expected to stay right there at the club and watch every second of the goings on. In the U.S. Mom dropped us off at the YMCA and sped away, rather happily as I recall. . .

Other than the swimming lessons there will be the rajio taiso, the daily schedule, the summer homework and the dreaded summer art/craft project. Although we never have glued together the miniature log cabin that Masa brought home from a business trip to Canada for Reno. . .

If my husband Masa got a summer holiday than it might be different. But this year instead of time off he actually has conferences to go to out of town on most of the weekends in July and August. If I could drive it would be different. I currently don't hold a drivers license anywhere in the world. . . stupid, stupid, series of events lead to this. . . but bottom line is that I can't drive legally here in Japan. So the girls and I are kinda stuck here in our neighborhood.

I love living in the country side but have realized that the biggest thing I have had to give up by moving to the country side in Japan is a regular, convenient bus service. Here the buses come once every hour or so. In the cities in Japan they come every 10 minutes. Plus most of the bus schedules can be obtained in English. Here it is entirely in Japanese and often, the local stops aren't even listed. . . My neighbors,when I first made inquires about the local bus service, laughed politely and explained that they had never used a city bus. Now when I am on the city bus I look around and sure enough, everyone else on there (both of them) appear to be elderly citizens who either never learned to drive an automobile or have had their license/driving privileges revoked. And me. The clueless foreigner who just "forgot" to renew her U.S. drivers license thus letting it expire and then I waited too long to renew it and now am unable to get an international drivers license and . . . well, there I am, sitting on the bus, perched on the edge of my seat, wondering what the next stop will be as I have no clue how to read the kanji displayed in the "next stop" electronic scroll at the head of the bus.

But I have figured out the bus to the pool/recreation point. A bilingual (and literate in Japanese) foreign friend came and visited us here this past January and she decoded the bus to the pool for me. I am sure we will be busing it many times during the hot summer months.

So soon, my day will be taken over by schedules and lists--the antithesis of my summer vacations from way back when. For Saki, summer vacation is still fun. The problem for Mommy these days though is how to keep Saki happy and safe while forcing Reno to sit and study every day for 1-2 hours or more. Saki can already repeat most of the dialog from nearly every Disney animated feature that there is. (I have to stop relying on the DVD player so much.)

Of course, Saki already has her little stash of "homework" activities--drawing, learning her numbers and her alphabet as well as her hiragana (the Japanese phonetic writing system). But it drives her sister crazy because Saki just flat out has FUN when she studies versus the agonizing pain that Reno appears to have to put herself through to do anything school related. So to make herself feel better Reno likes to tell Saki that her handwriting is messy and that her artwork is pathetic.

And then Saki begins to wail. And over the sounds of her little sister's shrieks will come Reno's admonitions of "don't be such a cry baby, looooser." Sometimes she'll toss in a scathing, "nakimushi" which I translate as "crying worm". I don't know what the real translation is but my own translation works for me. In fact, Saki will begin to writhe very much like a worm as her cries of outrage crescendo, breaking over our household.

And I will feel like crawling away and submersing myself in some water and then crawling out onto a nice lawn chair and drying out. But I won't be able to. Instead I'll have to stay with the taunting elder sibling and the crying worm. If I am inspired and have the energy I will choose that moment to whip out a fun summer time activity that all three of us can participate in. If on the other hand I am tired and uninspired I will calendar gaze--counting down the days until containment.

*Language Note: nakimushi translated into proper English is: cry baby. So older sister is just putting little sister down bilingually--the same insult in two languages. Kind of like my mother's famous, "Cease and desist!" from my childhood. I remember when I realized that both words meant the same thing and came up with the flippant teenager come back, "bit repetitive and redundant aren't you Mom?"

**Language Question: Anyone know the kanji for nakimushi? My original translation came about because I associated "naki" with the Japanese verb "naku" to cry. And I associated "mushi" with the Japanese noun "mushi" which is insect/bug. Then I flipped that bug into a worm, cause, well, picturing a worm crying amused me. With kanji though, you can have the same pronunciation as another word but have an entirely differnt meaning/word on your hands. Wondering how close to/ far off the mark I was on this one. . .

8 Random Facts/Habits Meme

2007-06-20T09:37:00.000+09:00

I've been tagged for a meme by Gina over at Life of an American Mommy in Japan (It's my first, so I hope I do this correctly.)

Here are the rules:

1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.

2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

5. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

Here goes:

1. I grew up in an area of California, so unpopulated that for fun we kids used to hang out on the road and lure and scare turkey vultures. Here's how: lie flat in the center of the road like road kill. Have your brother and his friends scattered livers/kidneys, whatever you could get off the butcher around/on you. Wait. When you get a vulture stand up and scream.

2. If my husband weren't on medication that prevents us from having more children, I probably would have had at least one more child. However, this would not have been the case if we were living in the U.S. Why? When I was pregnant with DD#2 I realized that pregnancy focuses everything inwards. All my thoughts were tilted away from external forces. My creativity, empathy, sensitivity all seemed to increase. I lived centered, on my pregnancy, on my elder daughter, on our family. This is not a bad way to exist when living in a foreign culture that often sticks out hurdles in front of you. Even hurdles over silly stupid things like reading a memo from your kid's school. Or figuring out on which day you can put out the empty tin cans for disposal. Then when you have a newborn, a one-year old and later a toddler--you are so busy! The physical momentum required to keep up with a young child propels you into each day. In a foreign country--this again, is a good thing. It is through the sheer force of parental responsibility that you find yourself hurled into social gatherings and community events.

Now, in the U.S., my native country, I wouldn't need any extra impetus to get out and involved in my community. I also wouldn't be thinking about banging my head against the wall for amusement (less daily stress). I think I would feel pretty much that I had life in hand, things under control, the lid on. Here I often feel exactly the opposite: my life is whipping away out of control, we're walking where there is no path and I often don't even know where the hell we are headed.

Being a mother is the hardest job I have ever had. It is also the most awesome. I mean, I still can't get over the fact that these fascinating, wonderful little people came OUT of me! And while I was just as scared and nervous as any other first time Mom or second time Mom for that matter--caring for your child/children, nurturing them physically and mentally and emotionally and seeing them grow and bloom--that is a confidence builder. Of course, I still maniacally purchase parenting books, fret over my mistakes (a whole 'nother post in the making), and am far, far, far from the perfect parent: but it gives me something to strive for.

I guess what I am trying to say is that being a mother is meaningful. And while I would have had access to many different areas in which to find meaning in the U.S., here in Japan I often feel a bit diminished. I am diminished when I have to use my hands to communicate at the post office. I am diminished when the water delivery man speaks to me so slowly that I nearly nod off in between words. But I have never once felt diminished in the face of my motherhood.

Also my husband comes from a large family. He has two brothers and one sister. He always wanted more than two children. As it turns out, life has dealt us a different hand and I am good as a mother of two.

3. I currently have two musical passions: Shakira and Michael Buble. If you know these two artists than you're probably snickering behind your hand thinking, "manic depressive!" Because yes, you just can't listen to Shakira without getting up and dancing! And Buble? Well, did you ever have your wisdom teeth extracted? Did they give you some Demerol? Did you feel completely relaxed and more like a liquid than a solid? Did you sort of sway and smile and close your eyes? I love listening to my daily dose of Buble.

4. I loved Disney films even before I had kids (and after I had already hit the age of 30). In graduate school I once went out and celebrated getting my student loan by buying Disney's "Aladdin" and "Robin Hood" videos. I've been in love with the fox that plays Robin Hood since I was in first grade. And did you realize that in "Sleeping Beauty" prince Phillip doesn't utter one word after Maleficent captures him? Not one. Not during the big break out scene, not during the climatic fight scene and not at the end, not even a single syllable when he is reunited with Aurora. I haven't figured out what this signifies. Or even if it is important at all--but it is interesting, isn't it?

5. I didn't get the joke behind A.A. Milne's naming the mother "Kanga" and the baby "Roo" in Winnie the Pooh until I was in graduate school. Honestly. And I wasn't even drunk or stoned or anything. I was just sitting around with friends when it came to me, "Kanga and Roo. . . Kanga and Roo. . . KANGAROO!"

6. I was an early reader. I was reading at high school level by the time that I was in second grade. Because of this, I still mispronounce some words. I say them the way that I "read" them in my mind. Like Parmesan. I say it "pare-me-sion." Or the FF button on VCRs? I call it a "forward fast" button.

7. I am not a morning person. I will never be a morning person. I hate the morning. The dawn is an affront. In college I once had a roommate who actually woke up every morning with a "smile" on her face. Honestly. A couple of times when I pulled all nighters I saw it. She'd start to move a bit, and this sickening grin would splay across her face THEN her eyes would open. Even when the first thing she saw was hyped on too much coffee, chewing roasted coffee beans, chain smoking, sleep deprived ME glaring at her she'd smile and chirp, "Good Morning!" I recall asking her to help me get to my morning lectures by making sure that I went to the showers when she did. She'd get up, wake me up and I'd mumble something about "meet you in the showers in a sec" and then I'd stump over to the door, lock it and go back to bed. And she STILL was sweet, even when she had to get the RA to let her back into the room as she was only wearing a towel.

8. I love to sleep. I LOVE to sleep. I love everything associated with sleep. I like comfy p.j.'s and high thread count sheets. I like aromatherapy and soft music. Enya is a good one. I especially enjoy: waking up and then going back to sleep. Even when I am not sick or exhausted, if I can, I love to just sleep. My mother used to get so angry at me when I would come home from university on break and sleep--all day. My Japanese Mother-in-law was horrified to learn that I will happily sleep until my children absolutely demand that I wake up. I remember the look on all my in-laws faces when I woke up at about 10:30 a.m. once when we were down at my parents-in-law place. In Japan mothers/wives and especially daughter-in-laws should be fully dressed (including makeup) have the laundry washed and hung out, the butsudan attended to (family shrine) and breakfast well underway by the time the sun rises. Or at least, that is how the women in my husband's family are. My own mother, bless her heart, often wore her night gown until noon. And still does I think. She still drinks a cup of coffee or tea in the morning that she doesn't actually finish until just before mid day. I remember being trained not to interrupt mother's morning "ritual." Now that I am a mother I have to admit she was good. I mean, my mother's morning ritual took up the entire a.m. Maybe she inadvertently influenced my attitude towards getting out of bed, which condensed down to one word is: Why? Right now it is June in Japan and the rainy season is coming. I LOVE the rain. The pitter patter is soothing. The clouds keep that sun at bay and mornings are soft and sleepy.

I am tagging Claire over at Sakura Family

Vicky over at Hyotenka

Lily over at Cafe Yamashita

Trisha over at Mommy Colored Glasses

& finally

Christine over at Wedding Countdown

It's not eight, but that's as many as I can do--too many others are "out of country" reconnecting with family back home!

Crumbs of Creativity

2007-06-11T21:21:00.000+09:00

So, what do you do when you have writer's block?

Sometimes life becomes so predictable that it lulls me into a kind of mental slumber. I've been hard at work trying to be a better parent by keeping my kids on a stricter daily schedule. The scheduling seems to have succeeded in squelching my creativity nearly completely. Here's the most creative thing I've done recently:

The other day I was at the park, unofficially supervising my 4 and a half year old playing with her spirited neighborhood four-year-old friend (it has to be unofficial supervision or the girls demand that I play with them. Or they try to escape from my line of view.) On such occasions I tote along a large mug of ice coffee and a book. Then I sit on a park bench and then, I eventually lay down on the park bench (stomach down) which always causes every single child in the park to stop what they are doing and laugh and point at me. "Ha ha ha Miss 4 1/2's mother is laying down!"

I have this vague idea that mothers aren't generally supposed to relax or take it easy here in Japan. Based on observations conducted at my in-laws dwellings the women/mothers must be in perpetual motion--cooking, cleaning, washing, hanging up laundry, bringing in laundry, dusting, vacuuming, sewing, folding laundry, shopping, scrubbing. It has always disturbed me that the majority of time in which I have observed the male in-laws they have been seated, watching T.V., drinking beer or tea and smoking. Only my very oldest female in laws appear to be allowed to sit in one spot for a decent amount of time.

So I guess the weird gaijin (foreigner) mom who does a belly flop down on the wooden bench in the local park must be funny. I don't care. My back hurts if I try to sit up straight and read. Plus, and here's the purpose of this tale: I have found that I can see the print perfectly and without any kind of resulting headache if I lay the book on the ground and look down at it from my prone position on the bench. Good god am I old now or what? But I am not comfortable holding the book at arm's length away from my face while reading sitting up. This book on the grass and me laying on the bench solution is so much better. Although laying on the bench like a blob of baker's dough left out to raise isn't increasing my productivity much.

Speaking of dough, I got my haircut last week. The results in the salon were amazing. I have no idea how he did that to my hair. No matter what I do I can't get it (my hair) to do anything other than form awful cowlicks all over my head. My husband's comment on the new style was, "it's completely flat on top and frizzy on the sides". Of course he only saw it after I had attempted to style it myself. You got it. I now look like Bozo the overweight, 40-year-old mother clown. You know her? The one that is always passed out on the bench at the park?

Back to the hairdressers though. In Japan there are two things about getting your hair cut that I absolutely love. The first is that when they are shampooing your hair they lay a fine gauze cloth over your face. It's absolutely lovely no longer worrying about whether or not they are looking at my nose hair or worrying that they caught me gazing up in horror at their nose hair.

The second thing I love is that after the shampoo they lead you back to your chair and before your stylist reappears the shampoo girl or boy gives you a shoulder massage. Some places have even given me hand massages too. This last time, either my stylist understood that due to the incredibly baby fine nature of my gaijin hair my head was going to swell up like a loofah gone mad as soon as I left the premises and walked out into the hot humid Japanese June weather and felt guilty about it or he just sensed that in my pathetic uneventful, fairly frustrated existence I needed a massage badly, but the girl gave me the world's best massage for about 15 minutes! It went on and on and at first I worried about why and then I worried that she was going to stop soon and then I just started to think the same thing over and over, "I wish I were a lump of bread so I could be kneaded and kneaded and kneaded."

So I have writer's block. I am enjoying life as a carbohydrate. Eventually I'll have to snap out of it and resume human form. And when I do, maybe I'll be able to write something decent again. What do you do when writing seems like an act too tedious to be attempted?

Offing the Jolly Old Elf

2007-05-25T11:32:00.000+09:00

"Mommy. I'm thinking that I want a drum set." Reno's eyes flash up to meet mine. I am out on the sun porch hanging up some laundry.

"Really? I don't think that will be possible. We don't have room for one anyway--you'd have no where to put it. " I say quickly as I stop in the middle of hanging up socks to make direct eye contact with her. I want to put an end to this pipe dream quickly.

"Hmmm. . . . Asuka-chyan has one and it doesn't take up that much room." My daughter has now wandered all the way out on to the sun porch with me. She is pressing the palms of her hands against the side glass wall and gazing out at the back yard; this will leave two clear smudgy hand prints on the windows.

"Well, don't forget, you also want a bunk bed and a new bicycle. You can't have everything!" I resolutely clip a pair of her socks up on the line. She continues her leisurely turn around the parameters of the sun porch, trailing her fingers across all three large glass walls as she does so. (Later I make her clean the sun porch windows and on Mother's Day I receive a card that lists thanks for, among other things, "cleaning windows for me.")

She pauses to look over her shoulder at me. "That's okay." My stomach clenches as I wait, already knowing what she is about to say. "Santa will get it for me."

Damn that fat jolly elf.

"Reno, you know. . . " and my voice veers up and off in a squeaky kind of self-strangulation. "Never mind Mommy. I'll just ask Santa!" and she quickly pivots on her heels and bounces off the sun porch, back into the house probably to go decide where she will put her new drum set.

In the past five months (it is now May, and she started on the new "Letter to Santa" in January.) Reno has declared an intense need for: a new pair of roller shoes, a new pair of roller blades, a skateboard, a new bicycle, a bunk bed, a scooter, new software for her Nintendo DS lite player, a flute, and now a drum set. I'm sure I have forgotten at least twenty other toys that have flitted into her line of vision that she has espoused lust for but I am hoping that she too has forgotten them.

My nine-year-old is one of the staunchest believers in Kriss Kringle in the entire world. She has successfully debated the existence of Santa Claus with her father since the tender age of three. She can deflect and answer any question directed to her regarding the magical old gentleman and the very existence of "non believers" leaves her with an incredulous look on her face as she sadly laments "how can they not? That's so sad!"

Her father certainly has not had any hand in helping to nurture the magic of Christmas in our household. Being a Japanese business man he is at work on the 25th of December every year and he doesn't get involved in our Christmas decorations and carrying ons, unless it is to poke fun at them. (He particularly enjoys taunting the girls on Christmas Eves that he'll punch out Santa just like he would any other dorobou (thief) that comes calling at our house to which they wail back in unison, "but he isn't stealing things! He's bringing us TOOOOOYYYYSSSS!")

Growing up, my father wrote us long delightful letters from Santa. He faithfully ate all the cookies (and the fresh vegetables that were left for the reindeer) and drank up all the milk. In marrying into another culture, one in which my Buddhist husband has never shown an ounce of enthusiasm for Old Saint Nick impersonations, I have ironically taken over my father's role. I'm sure there must be single moms over there in the U.S. who have also found themselves impersonating an overweight jolly old elf--the hidden roles of motherhood revealed: chauffeur, dietician, personal hygiene consultant, human body pillow (if you co-sleep with your kids), and every December, the North Pole's most famous resident: fat Nick.

I have sat up late every Christmas eve and stuffed myself full of the reindeer's carrot sticks and Santa's sugar cookies, making sure to leave one with a big bite mark in it on the plate. . . quaffed the milk and written letters to the girls. Not to mention done all the gift wrapping, the stocking stuffing and the month's worth of Christmas carol singing, nativity scene viewing, advent wreath lightings and readings . . . can you tell that I am determined to share my cultural/familial traditions with my children?

Our American Christmas in Japan is an odd sort of quilt patched together of my American family's customs and Christian traditions with Japanese substitutes and inspired rifts on a Christmas theme. Often the traditional Christmas dinner fair has to be a bit forged. . . chicken instead of a turkey, potato salad instead of mashed potatoes and since fudge is too sweet for my Japanese raised children's taste the famous light and fluffy (sponge cake topped with whipped cream and strawberries) Japanese Christmas cake! However, I did willfully expend too much money on purchasing imported Candy canes and subjecting my children to them for a good two years before they finally developed a taste for them--Some things I have just been unable to compromise on.

The tree on which we hang our assortment of ornaments (true ornaments gratefully received from family back home mixed with the little free key chain\bag accessories that Japanese drink companies like to give away when you buy a bottle of their tea/soda.) is not a real tree like the kind I grew up with. But it has grown anyway. Frustrated by the knee high imitation trees commonly available here (our first year in Japan) I demanded a four foot tree from the local home goods center (third year in Japan) and finally I went and picked up a six foot artificial tree from Costco when they opened a store in Osaka (our sixth year in Japan).

Come December my house fills with the holiday aromas of fresh pine (essential oil) cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg (a delightful Yankee candle), cranberry and holly (again, Yankee candles) and after five years of living in Japan without an oven the microwave finally died and I was able to get a small convection oven--finally the true scent of freshly baked cookies. The DVD player whirls away and fills our family room with Frosty the Snow Man, the Grinch who Stole Christmas and Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.

While my zeal for preserving/re-creating the holiday spirit for my children comes from the best intentions, I admit it, I have gone overboard. As my nine-year-old struts past me, wondering aloud if she ought to ask Santa for the new Tamagochi DS software or for the Nintendo T.V. taiko drum game I have to admit--I am the person who made Santa what he is.

My own parents kept that jolly old elf right where he belonged. He was one of the most magical parts of Christmas in my childhood but he wasn't IT. He definitely took a back seat to that kid that Mary had. Santa kept a list, he checked it twice, and he apparently checked with my parents before putting anything in his bag for me. My parents kind of "okayed" his thoughtfulness if you know what I mean. "Okay Santa. She's been fairly well behaved. We guess a little something would be okay if you're sure you want to give her something." So Santa always left a small something for me under the tree. A small something. And only ONE thing. I, however, apparently totally whacked out on expatriate mothering hormones allowed the old gent to literally shower Reno with gifts each December the 25th. In fact, in my crazed frenzy I reversed the whole affair and now it was Mom and Dad who left only one small gift under the tree--everything else came from Santa or grandparents, aunts and uncles. Even, gulp, the stockings came from Santa: Everything comes from Santa. (I learned later that in a lot of families, it is traditionally only the stockings that Santa fills up.)

So now, although we weren't burdened with getting gifts for anyone else (I only send Christmas gifts to about five people--mostly my family in the States) December became an incredibly expensive month for us. My Santa liked to give BIG gifts, and my Santa liked to give MANY gifts. And if only I had realized what kind of a monster I was creating I still could have scaled back when Reno was small. . . but then she was an only child until the age of four and I foolishly felt as though we could afford to have a big Christmas each year. . . Then we had child number two. Even that first Christmas when Saki was still not even sitting up on her own and thus, not in the way of needing very many toys, I started to feel the financial pinch. When I went over budget buying them "the matching Christmas outfits" I realized we were in trouble.

Now. How to extricate ourselves from this Holiday tinsel trap? Of course, no one wants to tell their five-year-old that Santa doesn't exist. . . well, okay, maybe I did sorta kinda wanna tell her. . . but I didn't. Instead I thought back to my childhood and remembered that it was in first grade when my friends who had stopped believing started to work on me. "It's your Mom and Dad you know. There is no Santa." The chilling testimonies, "So I snuck downstairs and it was just my Dad and Mom putting stuff in our stockings!" That was the way out! Let her friends at school disillusion her! So I sent Reno off to first grade smugly thinking that by the end of that year we'd be waving bye bye Santa.

Guess what? In Japan, most kids don't believe in Santa to begin with. Guess what else? Since Santa is sort of like a "gaijin" (foreigner) himself, apparently, when Saki told them that he did too exit and that he came to her house every year and left her lots of presents and a stocking--they believed her! In fact, she created a kind of urban legend in our Japanese neighborhood. If you are a gaijin kid, or if you are a hafu (part Japanese/part foreigner) then you get stuff from the gaijin Santa on Christmas. Even now, at the age of nine, her friends kind of step back and shake their head in awe, "ii na? yappari hafu wa lucky desu yo ne!" (cool, yup, hafu's are lucky.)

This last Christmas it just spiraled completely out of control. Reno kept heaping request upon request into Santa's sleigh and it was overloaded, spinning downwards, headed into a nose first collision with the reality of our family finances. The thing that topped it was, "I want a piano. A REAL one."

I tried a couple of different methods to undermine the request: Santa's sleigh couldn't carry such a large object. His magic shrinks things. Santa has so many children world-wide that he has to give gifts to that he has started to limit what he can give to each child. Okay. Then Reno and Saki would accept the piano as a gift for both of them.

One friend suggested that I simply disappoint the girls and on Christmas morning tell them that they must have been on the naughty list.

I entertained the idea.

Then my husband gave in and agreed to get them the piano. But again, we had been talking the entire fall about Santa giving them a piano for Christmas. Now my husband had purchased a piano and arranged for it to be delivered on the 24th. How was I supposed to preserve the childhood magic of their beloved Santa Claus and yet explain the appearance of delivery men on the 24th, from the local music store, with their piano, on the day before Christmas.

Thus was born my literary masterpiece: the Letter from Santa December 2006:

Dear Reno and Saki,
This letter comes special delivery (You should find it in your mail box on Saturday the 23rd, as it should arrive in your mail box via white snowy owl overnight—did you know that I also use White Snowy Owls for mail delivery? Not just Harry Potter!). It was entrusted to “Snow Flake” one of my best owls so I trust it will reach you safely.
I am writing to let you know that your Christmas gift will be arriving early this year. I see on the calendar, cross checking it with the International school calendars, that Reno will be going to school on December the 25th this year! So, I thought it would be nice if you got your gift early so that you could enjoy it over the weekend!
Your gift should be delivered by a local delivery company in Akita. The reindeer have recently asked that heavier items be delivered early by out source companies as they say that carrying such a heavy load on Christmas Eve is leaving them so tired that they are unable to enjoy their spring vacation! Your gift this year is particularly heavy so I have gone ahead and asked a local company there in Akita to deliver it to your home. Plus it would have been impossible to fit through the heating vent without probably causing such a ruckus that your neighbors would have woken up and phoned the police. Then when the police came I would have had to share my cookies with them and as I already have to share with all the Elves back at my workshop. . . well, your cookies in the past have been so delicious I just want to be sure I get a few to myself! You are planning on leaving out a plate of cookies again this year, aren’t you? Although your big gift will come early on Saturday the 23rd, I will still be leaving a little something under the tree for you to enjoy together on Christmas morning.
Have a Merry Christmas and don’t forget that I update the Naughty and Nice list all year round, so keep being good little girls!
Santa Claus

And thus Christmas and Santa were saved in 2006. Reno watched me like a hawk the entire time the piano delivery men were here and when they left I heard her triumphantly telling her little sister, "Mommy didn't give them any money, see! Santa is real! I knew it! He is, he is, he is, he is, he IS!" Saki exploded into little shrieks of delight as they whirled through the house joyfully dancing and jumping in a festive mood that carried us well through the New Year.

But it can't go on, can it? I mean, a teenager who still believed in Santa Claus would be asking for things like cars and trips to Europe, front row concert tickets in Tokyo. . . so the bloody task is left to me: I get to metaphorically speaking, stab Santa, kill Kringle, off the jolly old elf. Leaving the question simmering in my mind, "but how?" How do you dismantle your children's innocence? How do you break down their magical barricade and pour reality into their pure imaginations?

The question left me thinking again on why and how Santa had undergone the metamorphosis from fanciful symbol of Christmas spirit into a materialistic gift getting symbol of the holiday in our family. The answer has three main components:

1. MATERIAL: I overdid all the gifts/stockings in my enthusiasm for providing a bountiful holiday for my children.

2. FAMILIAL: Because we live far from our American family and friends we don't do the normal "Christmas shopping" thing. I remember finding the most beautiful scarf for Aunt Audrey with my mother one summer while on vacation in Monterey, California. And in Reno, Nevada finding the adorable plush Tigger rattles for my cousins' babies who were also born in the Chinese year of the Tiger like my eldest daughter. Back home, Christmas shopping was something that we did year round, and something that I was involved in from a very young age. Thinking about our friends and families, looking for a gift for each person to show them how much they meant to us, how special they were and how much they enriched our lives by being part of them. December didn't only herald the arrival of huge cardboard boxes packed with gifts from the relatives, it also meant trips to the P.O. with my parents to ship off our huge package stuffed boxes to Aunts, Uncles and cousins living in the Mid West. My mother and father annually stayed in the kitchen for one weekend every December making batches of fudge and cookies to wrap up in bows and distribute among the neighbors, our teachers (Sunday school, piano, school) the mail delivery guy, the garbage collections guys, the newspaper boy, the babysitter, our hairstylist.

We don't do any of that here. My Christmas shopping for relatives and friends back home is done on line. Or I buy things all on one day, at the shops here on New Year's day when Japan has it's best sales of the year. And my kids don't really know their U.S. relatives all that well. They have seen their American Grandparents less than five times each. In fact, Saki has only seen them once and she was only a year old at the time! My kids have missed out on perhaps the most important part of Christmas: giving.

3. SPIRITUAL: We don't go to Church. I try to read the Christmas story to them every year. We have a creche that we set out each year. We have gone to Church here in Japan a handful of times but it has been difficult. Now we live in an area where the closest Church is a forty dollar taxi ride away from our home. My husband is working even on Sundays so he is unable to drive us to the Church.

So. I have after much thought, decided that rather than an out right hit on the old guy, Santa will be better handled through a transformation process. I want to get rid of the guy in the sleigh lugging them booty and instead resurrect the spirit of Christmas giving.

I started in 2006. Even in the midst of my elaborate shenanigans to have Santa deliver them a piano, I began by making the weekly advent wreath readings a bigger feature in our holiday celebrations. I had the girls make the advent wreath with me and we made our own candle holders from paper clay and then they painted them themselves. Each week we had our own Advent service here at home. I would read them a bit from the Bible and then some readings for children during the advent season (that I found on line). Then we would take out the creche and set it up one piece at a time. As we took out each figurine we would talk about it. Each week I tried to approach the theme of giving from a different angle. The shepherds giving the Christ child gifts, God giving us the gift of his only son, made man. We looked for gifts that weren't obvious, like how useful the manger was--meant to feed horses and cows, transformed into a snug little bed for the baby Jesus!

We talked about how today we celebrate that spirit of giving at Christmas by giving gifts to one another, and by helping those in need. (Charities aren't big head liners here in Japan, but recently these days UNICEF donation boxes can be found in more and more department stores so I try to have the girls contribute whenever we see one.) Of course, I held up Santa as a heroic figure: of giving.

We ended our services by singing Christmas carols--very out of tune, off key and with great exuberance.

And just so no one thinks that I am anything other than the stumbling, rambling, unorganized and at best always half way prepared mommy I am--I'll admit it. Both girls got the biggest thrill out of singing "Happy Birthday" to baby Jesus and then blowing out the advent candles. Well, I don't remember that from any Advent services growing up, but if it keeps them happy and interested.

Of course, Reno obviously, is still pinning her hopes on a Santa that will deliver the goods. But I am hoping that if I continue to try to emphasis the areas in our lives where we are given the opportunity to give and if I just stop throwing kindling on the "Santa's a great guy, just ask Santa for it!" bon fire that the flames will naturally die down. I don't want to kill off Santa I just want Christmas to mean more than getting toys for my children. I also can't afford to keep subsidizing the old guy. These days when Reno asks questions about Santa I just throw them back at her, "what do you think?" She patches together pretty reasonable arguments to keep him going. . . but I'm encouraged by the fact that her questions keep coming and they are getting more artful. I'm encouraged that she is asking questions. While her friends have accepted the "only gaijin kids get lots of gifts from Santa" theories, I'm happy to see that she is dissatissfied with it. "If Santa really exists, then why wouldn't he bring more toys for Asuka-chyan? She is a really good girl! And Kaide -chyan said that she didn't get anything! Why would he do that?"

Of course, I don't want Reno to discover "the truth" and brutally disappate the pain of being disallusioned by disallusioning her little sister. (I can see this picture so clearly in my mind. Maybe because it was my brother who forced me to accept the fact that the Easter bunny was really only my father? I kept refusing to say it outloud, "there is no Easter Bunny" and my brother kept me there tears streaming down my face until I finally said it. ) But I think that if Santa isn't out right murdered and done away with Reno will be at peace with letting him arrive by reindeer drawn flying sleigh for her little sister for a few more years. Even is she does begin to realize that he lives more in our hearts and in childhood imagination than in the North Pole. And hopefully, that will free me from having to off the jolly old elf myself!

Dignity's Down the Drain

2007-05-24T11:30:00.000+09:00

This morning I woke up and drank a pot of coffee. While drinking the pot of coffee I got my eldest daughter out the door and down the road (actually I had to go with her for as far as four blocks) off to school. I also managed to convince her to "join in the trash fun" and drag a large bag of gomi (trash) to the collection point with me. While continuing to drink the pot of coffee I got the bento (boxed Japanese style lunch) ready for my youngest daughter and thought up at least ten good solid answers to "I don't want to go to youchien (pre school) today!" At 8:40 I held on tightly to the title of "the mum who waves the most vigorously and looks the most delighted as her child gets on the pre school bus and goes off for a day of fun: songs, arts and crafts at the dreaded pre school."

My husband was still present when I drained the final cup. Once he was out the door I sat at the computer and wrote for a while. Nothing extraordinary came of it so I gave up and decided to (dramatic pause) do some housework. While vacuuming I got to thinking about why I have to vacuum everyday. Kids and cats. The kids I can't do much about beyond my normal admonitions to please NOT crumble up the popcorn or senbei (Japanese rice crackers) before eating them no matter how much tastier the crumbs are and to please eat AT THE TABLE and not as they wander from room to room. The cats: I can brush 'em and bathe them.

Hence, I dragged the grey cat into the ofuro first. The Japanese bath or ofuro, is incredibly useful when it comes to bathing small children and cats. Because you are allowed (you're supposed to actually) to do all your lathering and rinsing outside the tub standing on the floor. Water everywhere! No problem. Grey cat (christened Happy) came out of the ofuro clean but looking more like she should have been christened, "Pissed Off". Next I went and grabbed the calmer older cat, Melon. Scrubbed her like a dirty carrot and then deposited both unhappy felines on our sun porch to dry.

And I feel so incredibly satisfied. Later this afternoon I'll have two fluffy and squeaky clean kitties! At least all this shedded fur free floating around the house will be luxuriously soft and brilliant shiny (according to the pet shampoo bottle). I love watching the desperate self-grooming that results too. They look up occasionally to glare at me, whether it is for looking or for laughing I'm not sure. But cat bath days just put me in such a good mood. Sure, their dignity is down the drain for a bit, but by tomorrow with a little wet cat food, some loving brushing sessions and lots of praise they'll be back to thinking that they are better than all of us.

Feeling at a loss as to what to do today? Yearning for a sense of achievement? Wash a kitty.

Independent Emi: Dennis the Menace Japanese style

2007-05-09T13:48:00.000+09:00

My first impression of this child was that she must be about five or six years old. Reasons for this assumption were: she was to be found at nearly any time of day, outside, in the streets, roaming the neighborhood on her own. She also towered over my three-year-old.

However, upon closer inspection I deduced that she was simply tall for her age. Reasons for the revision in my initial assumptions were: she spoke more like a three or four year old, she often was to be found without any shoes on and she didn't appear to dress according to the weather.

She also liked to come up and tell me in the park that she needed to pee. And she needed someone to push her on the swing set.

It was finally revealed after a chance encounter with her mother that this little girl was in fact younger than my daughter--by a good four months. She was about twice as heavy and a good foot taller, but she was my daughter's chronological junior. Her mother confided to me that Emi-chyan was the fourth of four children and a bit of a handful. Her mother and father both worked and she was often entrusted to the care of her eight-year-old brother or her older (High school and college aged) sisters. How hard her siblings worked to keep her in sight however was another matter. Her brother, with whom she was left most often, would basically circle back around the neighbor every few hours, find her and yell at her to go home. She never paid him any heed.

As fate would have it (or perhaps luck?) my daughter Saki ended up going to a different pre-school so for the first year here we managed to contain our interactions with independent Emi to the local park. Except for the time that she got into our back yard and got into the large inflatable swimming pool we had set up. And of course, after she discovered that we kept all the outside toys in the tool shed in the back yard I started to find the door left open and various toys strewn around our property. . . She was a definite presence, even with out being obviously present. She was almost a kind of physical manifestation of a poltergeist. When I would accuse the girls of forgetting to shut the gate to the back yard, or forgetting to put away all their toys in the shed they would answer with cries of "We didn't do it! Emi did!"

Then, after the spring thaw this year all that changed. Now an independent four-year-old--whose her mother confided to me one afternoon has them concerned as she has started to cross the nearby heavily trafficked roads and has been found as far as several traffic lights away--Emi has planted herself firmly, physically at our house. It started with the unexplained, mysterious ability of our two house cats to get outside.

At first I marveled at the cats' strength, dexterity and cunning. They must have found a way to open the sliding glass doors off the back sun porch! How? I bemused. Then Reno, my eldest daughter said, "I betchya Emi is letting them out." I scoffed. No, no, no. . . then one day I heard the pearl of our front door bell. Upon opening the door I saw Emi, a big smile on her face. She looked particularily pleased. "Emi-chyan? Saki isn't home from pre school yee.....t. Melon! Happy! Bad Cats!" and I took a flying leap off the front porch to try to tackle our two house cats who had just streaked by. After scaring both cats back inside I mused out loud, "how did they get out? " and out of the corner of my eye I saw Emi's grin radiating at me. "Emi-chyan. They are house cats and are not allowed outside." She beamed at me, waved at me and meandered back out into the road in her signature bare feet. Later that afternoon I discovered a pair of Emi's shoes carefully lined up in the back yard just outside our sun porch.

Next came the mail fiasco. For several weeks I kept finding a neighbor's mail in our mail box. Every day I would summon Reno and instruct her to deliver the mail to the correct address. When I asked if she found the right houses okay she always said, "Yeah. no problem." I figured that we must have a particularly ambitious mailman who was just going along on his scooter so fast that he was tossing some of the other neighbors' mail in with ours. . . until one day when I decided to take the mail to the correct addresses myself. Walking along our road, squinting at each door plaque trying to match the Chinese characters on the envelopes to the family names etched on the plaques I finally realized that all the mail belonged to Emi's family. Sure enough, when her mother opened the door and saw me there holding a bunch of letters she grimaced and said, "Oh, I'm so sorry. Emi likes to put our mail in other people's mail boxes! Emi?" a barefoot and muddy faced Emi appeared from their side yard. "Did you put these letters in Saki's mail box?" "uh-uh. " and she grinned expansively at both her mother and me. Her mother frowned. Then she turned and bowed very formally to me, "I am so sorry. Really I am."

The week before our family came down with the influenza this spring, I found Emi at the park wearing only nylons and a t-shirt in 6 degree Celsius weather. By now, smart to her ways, I looked around the expansive park quickly and saw, tucked under a tree at the far end what looked like a small brown bundle. "Emi? Where are your pants?" She shrugged her shoulders and gave me an expansive smile. "Are those your pants under that tree over there?" She looked down at her by now very, very dirty nylon covered toes. "Let's go put them on, shall we?" It was to be our last day in the park with Independent Emi for a week or so as just a few days later my husband came home with the flu which he gave to Reno which she in turn gave to her little sister Saki. No one gave it to me so that I could stay inside and take care of them all.

That's when the assault began. Starting as soon as she was home from pre school and then on the weekends from about 9 a.m. in the morning, Emi began appearing at the front door asking if my girls could come out to play. "No. Not today. They have the flu." Emi's eyes never left my face. "Can I come in then? I want to see what's inside." "No Emi-chyan, sorry. Goodbye."

She would wait anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour in between ringing the bell but she kept it up all day, every day until darkness fell. Sometimes she would vary her request changing the plea for human play mates to, "Can I take one of your cats outside?" At first I went to the front door every time. Then I started to just pick up the interphone and say, "Kyou asobanai. Byoki dakara" (They can't play today, they are sick.) and finally, I found myself, a full grown 40 year-old woman, a wife and a mother. . . turning down the volume of the front bell as far down as it would go and turning up the T.V. volume.

Then, at the beginning of this week she got in. Everyone was back up and running so Saki had just returned home from pre-school and I was busy making her a snack in the kitchen when I heard giggling. Coming out of the kitchen I found Saki and Emi sitting on the floor with a cat in between them giggling. The cat looked a little nervous and green snot was trailing out of Emi's nose so I handed her a tissue and said, "Remember to be gentle with the cat!" She took the proffered Kleenex and tossed it on the ground behind her. I picked it up and held it up to her nose. "Blow." She blew and then looked up at me. "I want a snack."

And so it began. That afternoon, after I had had Reno escort Emi-chyan home a total of no less than 5 times, it was already 6 o'clock by the time our household was Emi-free.
Today, I swear to God, that child must not have even stepped foot in her house after hopping off her pre school bus and she was pounding on the front door and leaning on the door bell (although I've turned the volume down as low as it can go, we can, unfortunately, still hear it).

I was behind in making prep for dinner so I let her in and she and Saki played up stairs for a while. . . which was OKAY, until I found them jumping all over the futons (after they had been expressly forbidden entrance to the bed room to begin with!) so then they moved downstairs where I had to tell Emi every 5 minutes or less to stop teasing and tormenting the cats. When cautioned that they would bite and scratch her, she pulled herself up to her full height and declared, "But I won't cry ." So I said, "Okay. But you will bleed so stop it."

Then she decided to try to climb up on our stove top provoking a rather loud and stern "Dame!" (NO) from me. Then she filched my house keys! I only noticed by accident--lucky that!--and again told her DAME. In fact, I looked deeply into big wide brown eyes and said in a low, even and deadly serious tone of voice, "Zetai ni dame" (absolutely NO!). She blinked which I took to be a sign that my authority was starting to be recognized.

The next time she entered the kitchen it was with her eyes focused on the bottle of syrup sitting on the kitchen counter. She demanded rather authoritatively that I make her pancakes. I laughed and said "no." Then she leaned dramatically against the kitchen cupboards, sighed and said, "Boy would pancakes taste good. I could really go for some pancakes about now." I pretended not to hear. But I did offer her some Nabisco chocolate chip cookies and a vegetable/fruit drink. It's what my four-year-old drinks. She accepted both and then promptly pronounced the juice "yucky" and went and pulled open our refrigerator door and attempted to climb in. Japanese refrigerators are a little different than typical American refrigerators. Our refrigerator for example has a large cool box on the bottom for vegetables, then two small freezer drawers and then the upper half is normal refrigerator. For a four-year-old, this makes sneaking things from the fridge a bit of a height challenge. When I realized that she had pulled out the vegetable drawer to climb up on it I intercepted her and poured out a glass of milk. She continued to open every refrigerator drawer she could reach however, her curiosity apparently having been piqued by the glimpse of our vegetables.

She took the glass of milk and promptly spilled about a 1/4 of it on the floor. And then stuck her feet out and smeared it across the wooden floor in an attempt to hide it. I commented that the milk had spilled and bent down with a cleaning cloth to wipe it up. Then I guided her to a chair at the table and told her the eating and drinking rule again: only at the table.

She was up and out of the chair, cookie in hand within seconds. I pretended not to notice as I was actually quite relieved to have her further from the kitchen no matter how many crumbs I'd discover around the family room later.

Then, the rice finally having binged and the ingredients for dinner all chopped up and waiting for a quick cook up later I announced that Saki and Emi should clean up before leaving with me to the park. Emi loudly announced that she would wait for us in the genkan. So I asked her if she had played with the toys? Yes, she had. "Then you are going to clean them up with us." But she bolted down the stairs where she put on a pair of high heels (taken from the genkan-front entrance) and proceeded to stomp about the house in them scratching the wood floor in two areas where she slipped in them! I wanted to. . . . grrrrrrr. . . .but I just dragged her back up stairs and said flatly, "if you don't pick up after playing here than you won't play here again." For which I earned two blinks and one doll put in the toy chest.

Then it was off to the park! Reprieve! Much less stressful. Until it was time to head home. She followed us although I said clearly and directly: "Saki-chyan wa ima kaerimasu yo. Kyou mo asobanai. Mata ashita ne? BYE BYE." ("Saki has to go home now she can't play anymore. See you tomorrow. Good bye.") I got to say the same thing and variations on it about 5 times. . . then luckily her mother appeared and ushered her home. About 5 minutes later I found her in our genkan (front entrance area). When I told her that we were having dinner and she had to leave she looked up and said, "Okashii chyoudai!" ("Give me snacks please!") I told her that soon her mother would be serving her dinner too so I would not give her any snacks just before dinner. Then I took her by the arm and put her out the front door. And put the chain on.

She struck next at the back of our house--pounding on the glass and opening the doors to the sun porch. I went out on the porch and told her it was time for her to go home. Shut and locked the doors, explaining that the cats are indoor cats and can not be let outside. She kept pounding on the glass windows/doors. I popped my head out and told her "Dame, go home." and shut the curtains.

She finally went home. But this afternoon I am sure she will be back.

And having gotten this all out of my system it reminds me to prey fiercely just before bed tonight that no local Japanese mother is blogging about, has ever blogged about or will ever blog about one of my children. And I just know that they have inevitably done some things that'd make them good blogging material. . . a little worrisome actually. It also has raised the specter of my own precocious childhood and reintroduced me to the four-year-old me that used to ask to use people's bathrooms so I could look through all their cupboards and take off my underpants. I hated wearing underpants. And I had a habit of publicly and loudly announcing to people who didn't like children that they didn't like children. It has made me thankful that I have learned over the years how to better control my own impulses.

Even though Reno continues to roll her eyes at the very mention of Emi-chyan (for the older girls on the block she is seen as the quintessential tag-along irritating "little kid") and asks me, "You don't really like her, do you Mommy?" I have to grin at her expansively and confess, "No, you know, I really do like her! She's a sweet little girl." She's just as sticky as gum on hot asphalt and as stubborn as an 80 year-old-man! but I don't say that part out loud, because really, I do like her.

Cry Baby

2007-05-08T22:26:00.000+09:00

You will never see me cry. Unless you kick me really hard in the shin. Or poke me in the eye. Or slam my hand in your car door.

In this regard I closely resemble "Donkey" from the movie Shrek II. Sold for beans, used as a pinata even as Donkey recounts the horrible emotional traumas he has been put through not so much as a glitter of a tear appears in his eye: it is only when Puss in Boots the cat scratches him that the tear falls. At least, I used to be like Donkey.

Then I had children. Actually it only took the first pregnancy to throw my signature stoic nature out of whack. Disturbingly, for some reason pregnancy has left me with a strange tear imbalance. While it was somewhat distressing, crying at T.V. commercials was just part of the side effects of the state of things when I was pregnant but now, far past pregnancy (my last one is now four-years-old) why am I still getting all choked up by things like Animal Planet? I was watching a show on real live animal rescues with my daughters the other week and a segment came on about the gorilla who saved the little boy who fell into the gorilla enclosure at a zoo. I steeled myself. I've gotten all watery eyed over that one too many times not to put my guard up. But then they followed it with a clip in which a man jumped into a moat at a zoo and rescued a chimpanzee who had been knocked unconscious and fallen into it. Watery eyes, squeaky voice--yup, all choked up.

I also frequently find myself blinking back tears over even less emotionally significant things. When I was teaching Communicative English at University here in Japan, I often found that a correct student response took on the heroic hues of key moments in scenes from movies like "Glory", "Brave Heart" and "The Last of the Mohican's." If a student voluntarily added a follow up comment . . . well, I took in a mug of coffee to each class with me so I could hold it up in front of my face in emergencies.

When I left the university to teach at a preschool--and it came time to hold the first parent-teacher conferences. . . Well really. How could anyone, even someone whose crying mechanism hasn't been all screwed up keep their voice from squeaking and cracking, their eyes misting over with un-shed tears, their hands shaking as they described the accomplishments of fiercely free, exuberant and unshakably confident small children? At least parent-teacher conferences always coincided with the hay fever seasons. . . so I could blame my watery eyes on either cedar or ragweed pollen in the air. Oh, and I sometimes had to pause during story time because valiant tales like "The Little Engine Who Could" had the propensity to choke me up.

But back now to slamming my hand in your car door. Here's the weirdest part of this tear imbalance. While trivial moments in daily life can trigger tears, I still don't cry over the big things. Evidence: I've been married ten years and dated the poor man for ten years before we wed and he has only seen me cry. . . once. And that was when I was having an emotional breakdown from sleep deprivation due to the fact that my first born NEVER slept for the first year of her life. Otherwise, all arguments have been conducted tear free.

Even when my husband let it slip early in our relationship how relieved he was that I wasn't one of those girls who "cried" to get her way as he couldn't withstand a woman's tears. . . I still couldn't work up to tears even during our most intense disputes. I mean, the man gave me a "pass go, collect 200 dollars" card and I still couldn't bring myself to use it!

Of course I do cry. But no one ever sees me do it. When something of crying magnitude occurs I first seemingly shut down. Hence, my signature "stoic" nature. And by the way, thank you Dean of Student Affairs at my undergraduate university for officially giving me this title by including it in your report. I did a Freshman type thing and got blindingly drunk one weekend. However, I made the mistake of telling my RA that she was a "whore" when I was found puking in the dormitory lavatories. . . I woke up with the notice of being written up (put on report) practically taped to my forehead. My roommate was the one who faithfully recounted my verbal abuse of the RA to me as I had no recollection of either that or the previous 24 hours for the most part. (The verbal abuse was completely out of character by the way and the RA was the farthest thing from a whore. My drunken mind mirrored Othello's in transforming me into a beast.) Interestingly enough, despite being an English literature major, when the report from the Deans office arrived in my on campus mail box and I read, "student appeared stoic and showed no remorse for her actions." I had no idea what "stoic" meant. After consulting a dictionary I walked around for the rest of the day in a daze, repeating over and over again, "I wasn't stoic, I was scared!" But being too afraid of the Dean of Students I never went and explained my emotionless, frozen countenance to him. So stoic stuck on my student records.

I do remember being a little cry baby when I was very young. I remember crying over the nightly news a lot. When I was in the fourth grade I remember bursting into tears in the back seat of the family car--hysterical. When my father pulled the car over to investigate why I was crying and it came out that I was heartbroken over my older brother's intentionally callous treatment of my parents (he was giving them some "attitude" that morning on the way to church as going to church on that Sunday morning was the last thing that my then Junior High school aged brother wanted to do), I still remember the look of confusion on Dad's face. "whaaa?" Then Mom's confused face popped up over the back of her seat. "Honey. . . "

When I read parenting books about the difficulties of raising highly sensitive children I see those two befuddled faces peering at me over the back of the car seat on that Sunday morning.

I remember shortly after that, or maybe it was even at that moment, deciding NOT to cry over everything anymore. Apparently I succeeded, but at the same time I seem to have jammed the tear gate a bit. Pregnancy seems to have gone in and fiddled with it. So what do we have left? A 40 year old woman who still must be completely isolated in order to cry but who gets all choked up about. . . the two ravens who are trying to build a nest in the power cables in front of our house? (It is really sad to watch, no matter how many times the winds knock their efforts down they persist in trying to build the thing. Then last week when they had enough sticks up there to stay in place even during high winds the people next door called the utility people who came out and ruthlessly knocked the toaster sized stack of sticks down.)

I've taken to renting out right tear jerkers. Like the "Joy Luck Club" and "Steel Magnolias." Catharsis, catharsis, catharsis--I figure that if I can siphon off enough of these sentimental feelings maybe I can find my equilibrium again. Or do pregnancy hormones usually mess with women for this long? It couldn't be menopause could it? I recall acquaintances I knew who were menopausal sweating and fanning their faces in the dead of winter but I don't recall them breaking into squeaky voices and blinking back tears. . .

If this is a "female" thing than I'm going to add it to my list of things to do to punish bad male politicians: number 21--hormone shots. That will go right below number 20--forcing them to live together with political opponents and share the cooking and household duties between them. Which is just below number 19--attending Japanese PTA meetings with a cranky toddler in tow.

Cheers!