Monday, August 31, 2009

Sudden Death

We took the boys to another over-sized playground on Sunday to burn off some of their energy. As usual, the husband took photos and I kept tabs on one boy and then the other.

And I was watching DS2 climb up the jungle gym, my husband's cellphone rang. It was a friend telling him that a mutual childhood friend had just died from a heart attack. He was 44, had high cholesterol, and was playing softball when it happened.

My husband was stunned but didn't have time to analyze that piece of information before DS2, who is in the throes of potty training, had a giant poo accident. As is always the case in life, you have to clean up the mess closest to you before you can deal with the mess made by a sudden death.

So last night, my husband got home from work, changed into a suit, went to the wake. His mom made sure that he had the correct gift envelope in which to put the 500o yen for the funeral offering. His dad told him to make sure to leave it on the altar at the temple and to NOT hand it directly to his friend's widow. I told him to kiss his kids good-night because I figured he would not be home any time soon.

I was thankful that his friend had married his high school sweetheart, had had their kids early and had had a grandchild at his age. His life was in some ways the complete opposite of my husband's. And I felt sorry for his adult kids who are in their early twenties. It sucks to lose a parent, even when you are an adult yourself. But I felt sorriest for his wife, whom I met once 17 years ago when I was newly married. I remembered her husband as a big bull of a man, but she was invisible to me and I don't remember her at all. This is no way to come out of someone's shadow.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Inspiration vs. self-criticism


My youngest son received a mid-Summer postcard in the mail today from the playgroup that I take him to. The grandmas who run the group did a watercolor rendering of Anpanman and wrote a note in beautiful calligraphy. I'm always so impressed by the effort that people put into making things in Japan. I tend to slap things together and the effect is not always what I want to achieve.

Which leads me to my title, inspiration vs. self-criticism. I've had a lot of time to think this week. Both boys are back in preschool and I don't start teaching again until next week. I've launched myself into full self-loathing mode. Why can't I motivate myself to blah, blah, blah... The blank in that sentence alternates every 10 or 20 minutes. Keep a clean house, plan better meals, be a better parent, find a decent paying job, go to bed earlier, learn more Japanese, stop being so negative...

I'm inspired by people who have the self-discipline to create. I try to blog, but even that tends to get sucked into other non-creative activities. I read three beach novels this week. Every Japanese woman I told this to gave me permission to goof off. Funny how I can't seem to give myself permission to do that. I read them, but I felt like crap for ignoring the piles of clutter on my desk and the dishes in my sink.

I have to volunteer at my sons' summer festival tomorrow. I have a stack of papers telling me what I need to do. They remain mostly unread. I will decipher them later. Oh, did I mention it's DS1s birthday today? The only reason I can procrastinate on that is because Daddy has a working dinner tonight, so we postponed cake until Sunday.

So I've set the timer and done a few things, but honestly, I'm so uninspired. But since self-criticism isn't working, I need to find a better way of doing things. And yes, I know about Flylady.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

A bit of bliss...

I wish I had a picture of the riverside park we stumbled upon yesterday. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and we decided to drive around so DS2 would take a nap. 45 minutes into the drive and DS1 is sound asleep, but DS2 is still fighting it.

We looped around a rural area north of Kudamatsu. Lots of dams and reservoirs and finally DS2's eyes shut and the older one opens his. He and daddy get out to look at one dam while I stay in the car. We drive down the mountain and wind our way past the Nakasu Grand Hotel which looks like the haunted resort in the anime Spirited Away.

It's at a bend in the road that we notice kids playing in the river. A small driveway leads down to a six car parking lot. We park and, once again, I stay in the car with the sleeping toddler while Daddy and DS1 go exploring the park. I savor the quiet, the gentle breeze, the tall evergreens climbing up the far bank of the river. The river chatters down the little valley and children splash in the shallows. I'm totally in a zen moment. I don't think about dinner or dirty diapers or yesterday's disasters. I savor the beauty of this area.

Of course, a whiny child and his father come tromping through the parking lot moments later and the child's shrill voice wakes up my sleeping toddler. But I'm even okay with that. We climb out of the car and go exploring. We see snails and irises and big brother's soggy shoes. We find little waterfalls and stepping stones across a man-made pond.

Our trip is a success and capped off with soft-serve ice cream on the way home.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Nietzsche for kids

Kids playgrounds in Japan remind me of my own childhood. As a child growing up in the 70s, we had playground equipment that was installed over asphalt, was ridiculously tall, made of rusting iron, and generally, a lawsuit waiting to happen. Things like see-saws were common. Of course, with see-saws, you also had broken tailbones, legs, pinched fingers and other injuries. When's the last time you saw a see-saw in America?

Japan seems to have embraced the "Nietzsche for Kids" theory. That which does not kill or maim your child, makes him stronger. Witness the playground from Murozumi Elementary School that we visited on our way back from a festival this past week. That's me standing on the blue staircase. I'm 5' 8", so I'm guessing the slide is 10 feet tall or about 3 meters high. DS1, going down the slide, is only slighter younger than the average 1st grader. Those green things in the background are standing see-saws; you hang on one side, your friend hangs on the other and when he lets go, you fall to the hard packed sand beneath you.

Asae Elementary has even scarier equipment. They have the Jungle Gym of Death. It's one of those iron cube things that we used to climb on, only theirs is 15 feet tall with 3 feet spacing on the squares and slides going off the ends. I don't have any pictures of my 5 year old on it, since I was busy trying to keep the 2 year old off it, while Daddy kept the older one from falling to his death.

I do love the fact that Japan is less over-protective than America. Every kid here walks or bikes to school. They cross over busy streets, down narrow lanes, and they leave the house at 7:15 in the morning to do it. And, no, the parents do not accompany them. There are volunteers on some of the busier corners, but otherwise the bigger kids are supposed to look after the little kids. The kids have large backpacks and look like a herd of turtles lumbering off to school. I love it. I also think it makes them stronger. Maybe Nietzsche for Kids isn't so bad.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Emptyish nest


DS2 started hoikuen/daycare today. I only have him there until noon, so I'm frantically doing all those things I'd promised myself I'd do. I've done 2o minutes of a Pilates DVD, taken a shower, had a late breakfast, and now I'm blogging.

What I still need to do is: prep for my class this evening, email the schedule for English storytime to the library, start (!) my taxes for 2008, and clean out the entrance hall of the ten million shoes that have accumulated there.

Which segues nicely into why my genkan (entrance hall) is so cluttered. We went clamming for Asari (Manila) clams on Saturday. It was a total bust. DS2 kept slipping on the very rocky beach, DS1 kept putting empty clams in our bucket. Actually, it wasn't a total bust. They had fun and we got them away from the evil influence of the TV, which is all they want to do on the weekends these days. So now my genkan has clam digging trowels and buckets and beach shoes and sandy pants that need to be emptied outside.

And I now have 1 hour and 40 minutes before DS2 needs to be picked up.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Children's Day

It's Golden Week in Japan, which means 3 consecutive holidays and one of those is Children's Day. Where most folks in the U.S. are sucking down margaritas and celebrating Cinco de Mayo, here we are eating sushi, flying carp streamers and taking our kids for some kind of outing.

We made the trip to Iwakuni Marine Base for Friendship Day today. We took the train to avoid the traffic, but instead had two wiggly boys in a packed local train. Add a reaaaaallly long walk to the event along with some whining, lots of sticky beverages, a hot dog and a hamburger and it was almost like being back in the U.S.

On the way home, DS1 who was asked nicely if he needed to use the bathroom before we took a bus to the train station, decided 20 minutes into the train ride that he needed to pee. We happened to be on the one local train that had no bathrooms. So we all got off at Obatake station in the middle of nowhere, DS1 used the bathroom and we waited 40 minutes for the next train. It was the longest 40 minutes of my life. I was sunburned, tired and cranky and the boys decided to see how much they could beat each other up on the train platform. Grrrrrr....

And now I'm drinking a Chu-hi, blogging and looking at the chirashi sushi that Grandma made for Children's Day. DS2 is eating bites of it and DS1 is watching Pokemon and asking for pasta. I'm breaking all of my parenting rules by letting them eat and watch TV, but after a whole day devoted to them, I just want a little time for me.

Time to scrub the bath tub and get them to bed really early tonight.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

The remote remote


We have an absurd quantity of remotes that litter our family room. There is the DVD player remote, the home theater remote, the Wii-mote, two remotes for the DVR, the HikariTV remote, and finally, the actual TV remote. Invariably, one will go MIA under the cushions and toys, but it usually shows up before Ampanman. Not so, this week.

The actual TV remote (from hereafter referred to as ATVR) has been missing since maybe Tuesday or Wednesday. We're not sure because the other remotes can turn the tv on, so if we aren't watching regular tv, there is no need for the ATVR. I have turned the house upside down looking for it. It is in none of the usual hiding places; between the stacks of teaching material on my desk, wedged between toys placed on the counter, in a basket on my fridge because the boys have lost tv privileges.

I have to believe that it went out in the raw garbage on Friday. DS1 was threatening to throw it away when I refused to let him watch tv at one point this past week. Usually, those threats are empty, but who knows? Of course, questioning a 5 year old is a lot like reading a Zen koan. It leaves you with more questions than answers.

The upside to all of this is that I've sorted and thrown away more stuff in the last 4 days than in the previous 3 months. It's amazing how many milk carton creations one small boy can bring home from hoikuen. And yet, none of them had a remote in them...

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

And April arrived

DS1 started the new school year last week. He's in the Wisteria class and gets to wear a green hat to school this year, instead of a purple one. He's officially a Nen-chou, which means getting him ready for 1st grade next year. The hiragana practice (Japanese syllabary, instead of alphabet) has commenced. We are slacker parents and have never encouraged him to learn how to write in any language. Though occasionally, I dig out the alphabet books and hope he will want to practice.

DS2 is a holy terror. He is too big and too strong for his 4'11" grandma to handle when he has a tantrum. I spend most of my days planning outings so that he doesn't watch more than the recommended daily allowance of TV. Having said that, I'm filling out the paperwork to enroll him in the 2 yo class at big brother's daycare/preschool. I wasn't going to do it, but a temper tantrum at our local Jusco involving Grandma and resulting in a hurried trip by me to the supercenter, convinced me to enroll him at least two days a week.

Anywho, the cherry blossoms are out. Our house in Seattle is sold pending inspection. And I'm still contemplating who I am, what I'm doing (or not doing) and how much chocolate a person can eat before she explodes.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

End of the school year

It's the end of the school year here in Japan. The new school year starts next week for my son. Gotta love that long spring break. Ha ha ha.

DS1 is in hoikuen, or day-care preschool. He is currently a nen-chuu, which is the 4-5 year old class. Next week he will be a nen-cho, which is the the equivalent of American kindergarten or 5-6 year olds. Here the nen-cho year is attached to either hoikuen or youchien (regular preschool), not to the elementary school. It always blows my Japanese friends' minds when I tell them that DS1 would already be an elementary school student if we were still in Seattle.

I have one more year of leisurely mornings and getting him to preschool by 9:00 a.m. Next year at this time, he will have to be out the door by 7:15 and I'm dreading that.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

How I spent my morning.

This is not some fabulous blog about an outing with my 2yo. It's not even a rant about the everyday problems that I face as a foreign mom in Japan. No, it's about a "time suck" and how you can look up and realize that you've gotten nothing done and your 2yo is still watching the Japanese Disney channel which you meant to turn off after a reasonable 30 minutes of English language preschool programs.

Let me back up. I have iGoogle as my home page. I have various RSS feeds which include the Washington Post, Weather Underground, and People magazine. People is my secret addiction. I used to only read it at the dentist's office in Seattle, but I have yet to find a Japanese dentist that I trust, and even if I did, I doubt they would have People in their waiting room. So, I click through an innocent enough link to a blurb about Charlie Sheen's new twin sons.

I scan the article, and I remembered that he had two daughters a few years back with ex-wife Denise. But he has a 23 year-old daughter? Huh. I google her name and find an article about her and it leads me to Wikipedia about Charlie Sheen. I scan that article and find a link to a controversy he had about 9/11. I click on the footnotes and find a video of Charlie's dad Martin Sheen talking about how WTC building #7 was brought down using explosives and how it had to be planned in advance.

Up until this point, I was just curious and thinking, "Wow, crackpot Hollywood actors and their messed up lives." And that's when I get sucked into a website called http://www.ae911truth.org/
And I start reading. And I realize that it may not be so crazy after all. And when you realize what organizations had operations in WTC7 you think, I really hope that there is no truth to it, because it would mean the painful 8 years under Bush were even more horrible than I thought.

And so, I closed the browser window and took my 2yo out for a walk and to the supermarket to buy stuff for dinner. I fed him his lunch. I put him down for his nap. And I sat down to blog. And part of me is a little worried that someone is tracking my ip address and putting my name in a file somewhere. And the other part of me is worried that I've watched too many conspiracy theory movies.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Values at the Max Valu


I'm still buying the bruised produce in the discount bin at Max Valu Supermarket, but the vegetables and fruits have changed with the season. These days, I score Chinese cabbage, carrots, potatoes, long onions, tangerines, and strawberries.

Strawberries? Yes! The winter strawberry season is in full swing, since all the greenhouses start growing berries for the Christmas cake rush and it continues on until April or so. The varieties are amazing. I'm used to the hard, tart berries that came from California when we were in Seattle. These berries are fab. Especially when I buy them at half price because they've been sitting for a day.

I'm now one of the regular's scavenging for values at my supermarket. There's Skunk Woman, a portly woman with a head of short black hair except for the white landing strip down the center. I think she runs a savory pancake shop since she hoards cabbage if it shows up in the bin. There's also Crow Woman, a short, frail, elderly lady dressed all in black. She looks malnourished and I hesitate to buy something that she might want. I figure she needs the cheap vegetables more than I do.

There are others, but none that have earned a nickname. I call them the shark pack. At 11:30, we start circling the produce, tofu, refrigerated noodle section waiting for the produce person to wheel out the blue bins. Some of us go as far as the sashimi and seafood section before we turn back looking to make the kill. My mother-in-law might laugh at my hunting instincts, but she is the beneficiary when I buy cheap lettuce and turnips. A gal's got to get her thrills where she can...

Thursday, February 12, 2009

The winds they are a-blowin'


I'm at my desk after frantically securing everything not tied down on my balcony. To understand this, you have to realize that my balcony is where I hang the laundry, store the 4+ trash cans needed for sorting garbage, grow a few scraggly plants, and let my boys play when the weather is nice. We are having gale force winds and the infamous "kousa" or yellow sands of China blow through. The air is gray and I used my dryer today to avoid polluted clothes. Just as well, since any clothes on the line would have blown off by now and some perv would be fondling my underpants.

The weather matches my mood. Blustery, gray and irritated. Wednesday was a national holiday, Constitution Memorial Day, but I had the same stomach bug that my boys had last week. Hubby was in a foul mood and not very helpful. Grandma also caught the bug at the exact same time, so I was getting no help from my usual sources. It was a very long day and by the end of it, I just wanted to crawl in my bed and never come out. Of course, hubby catches it the next day and I'm all sympathetic, but what I really wanted to do was ignore him and make him figure out meals for small hungry children.

I'm still in a foul mood and I know that I will get nothing for Valentine's day since this is Japan and women give the chocolate to the men here. That's another post. I did remind the master of my house, that I am American and he better produce something. Not exactly romantic, but at least he can't claim that he forgot.

And now I must end this here and get some lunch. I also need to plan my Friday English class for the preschool set. Yippee. At least they can practice, "It's windy!"

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Max 9 kg


My 2yo has had a stomach bug since Tuesday evening. While we should have been celebrating Setsubun (a midwinter festival) and throwing beans at ogres, we were throwing sheets and towels and pajamas in the washer. Which brings me to my favorite topic of late: Japanese appliances.

My combo washer/dryer is the latest high tech appliance in Japan. It's a front loader with more functions and buttons than a 1990s VCR. I have the ability to siphon my bath water and use it for the first wash. (Which I don't do, because that kind of eeks me out.) I have the ability to "hot mist" my clothes. I have the ability to wash and dry all in one extremely long cycle. What it doesn't have is capacity. It's the largest washer on the market, but it freaks out if I put in two bath towels at the same time. It weighs the laundry in the drum and tells me how much detergent to put in, so I know if I've hit max weight of 9 kgs or 20 lbs.

9 kgs is not a lot when your 2 yo has gone through 3 sets of PJs, two comforter covers, two sheets, 4 pillowcases, numerous towels and also got Mom's polarfleece and Dad's sweatshirt. I spent Wednesday doing 4 loads of laundry and hanging them on my laundry pole. Fortunately, it was a nice day. Why didn't I use the dryer? Well, another fabulous Japanese design feature. Since my combo W/D runs on 100 volts, it takes over two hours to dry a 6 kg load. Yes, you can wash 9 kgs, but it can only dry 6 kgs at a time. And while this tiny load is drying, the rest of the stinky laundry is piled high waiting for a turn.

Lest you think I am ungrateful, I do appreciate that I have a washer and it is a fully automatic one. My first washer in Japan was a pink twin drum outside on my balcony. You had to load the washer and turn on the tap to get the water in the wash drum. When it was done, you had to transfer the wash to the spinner drum and turn on the tap to rinse and spin it. This was fabulous in February when it was snowing. Of course, at that time I was single, so I could avoid laundry for several days.

So, instead of "Oni wa soto, Fuku wa uchi" (Ogres out, Happiness in), I am "Sentakumono wa soto, Fuku wa uchi" (Laundry out, Happiness in). Happy Belated Setsubun.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Grumpy Gaijin

Anyone who has ever lived in Japan and whose face is not Asian has experienced the familiar cry of "Gaijin," literally, outside person. This is not a post about some 6 year-old pointing a finger at me and crying out that word. Though, god knows, I've had enough times where that has happened. No, this post is about being a discontented outside person.

I teach two classes of 3 to 6 year olds every Friday afternoon. I spend 2 to 3 hours prepping for these classes. I make decent money, but it's not my life's calling. For the last two weeks, my student numbers have been dropping. Some of it is sickness, some of it is new interests. I combined my two classes into one so I could actually earn my per class rate. Now, the moms who help me organize it are saying that one class is going to be the norm. Considering that I never really wanted to teach preschoolers, I'm at the point where I want to quit. So, I'm grumpy.

It's these kinds of stupid everyday, "how many people will the resident alien alienate?" problems that make my head hurt. I already have another English teaching job lined up for Tuesday nights, so it's not like I need the money. It's just that I know that half the moms will apologize to me for their kids not showing up and the other half will dismiss the effort that I put into this in the first place.

And all of this just underscores how little I actually use my brain in this country. Or for that matter, how marginalized women are in this country. Most of the moms of my 5yo son's classmates work in low-paying jobs as sales clerks, drink yogurt sales, or as office temps. Women are always amazed that I used to be a computer programmer. The bar is set very low in Japan, but especially in my own Southern paradise of Hikari.

I need to leave here in another 30 minutes to go teach my one class. My heart is not in it. I do not want to go. I just want to eat cookies, read people.com, weep, and lash myself for the underachieving outsider that I am. Instead, I will play games, read books, sing songs and put on the Alex dog and pony show.

Monday, January 26, 2009

My dishwasher


I got a dishwasher last week. A bonafide, under-the-counter, overpriced, undersized drawer-type dishwasher. We paid more for the dishwasher than we paid for our one-way tickets to Japan, for all four of us.

It was almost a joke. How many Japanese does it take to install a dishwasher? Apparently, four. It was the electrician and his helper, along with the plumber and the contractor who set it all up. And while I appreciate my sparkly clean dishes, I can't help but think that the butt-cleavage Sears installer would have done it for way less. And as my loving husband reminded me, this isn't Seattle.

Alas, my Japanese dishwasher falls prey to the same problems that many Japanese fall prey to: a confusion about what to do with large foreign things. My 11" dinner plates fit in, but then you can't use the area next to it for salad plates or small bowls. My American-sized, Japanese-designed, made in Malaysia coffee mugs fit on the small top rack, but there is no way that 12 drinking vessels will fit if I use them.

So every night, I play a game of "Will it fit?" And every night, I attempt to make my combination of Japanese and American tableware fit harmoniously into one small-drawer type dishwasher. And I wind up washing a few odd pieces by hand. I kind of empathize with those few odd pieces.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Art or torment...

My 5yo saw a picture in the local free advertising rag showing a silver-plated jungle gym at the Shuunan Art Museum. He wanted to go. Not being the best reader of Japanese, I told him I thought it was art, but we'd ask Daddy when he got home. Well, Daddy read the article and not only is it ART, but it's small art, the size of a pizza box.

Have you ever tried to reason with a 5yo who is filled with disappointment? I tried humor, "Hey, we'll shrink you to two inches tall and you'll be the perfect size." I tried empathy, "Gosh, it's really a bummer that the cool looking playground is really just some twisted artist's way of tormenting small children."

In the end, my son took the article and ripped it up into confetti sized pieces. In the process, he also destroyed the article about the fire station festival in the next town over. And the ads for beauty clinics and laser skin resurfacing. And where to pawn your silver, gold or platinum. I guess if you are an artist and want to stir your viewer's emotions, you'd count this as a success. Otherwise, it's just another lesson in "things ain't always what they seem."

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Happy Moo Year


It's 2009 and the New Year's postcards have been delivered and, once again, I've managed to not send out a single one. Damn. I was so looking forward to sending out a cow-themed, year of the cow, postcard to all of my friends. Alas, the picture postcard website I was using refused to display the text that I input. So, no postcards. No Christmas cards either. Zero for two on holiday correspondence.

So Happy New Year! I resolve to write more, eat fewer bean paste sweets, and maybe get the rest of our moving boxes from 2007 unpacked.