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!"

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

Beaujolais Noveau

So, it's that happy day when the first of the new harvest wines are released. I'm sipping a $23 Georges DuBoeuf and it's quite average. But, it's my reward for a week with no hubby around and small children who keep waking up in the night. Perhaps I'll slip the little one some wine with his dinner. (Just kidding, in case anyone feels like reporting me to the Japanese version of DHS.)

My 5 yo is making things out of straws, milk packs, and tape. He just showed me his latest creations: a butterfly, a nebulizer mask, and a nasal aspirator. Can you tell we've spent a lot of time at the local E, N, T doctor's office for an ear infection caused by nasal congestion? I could write a whole blog on how much I hate the doctor's offices here, but I don't want to kill my Nouveau buzz.

My 2 yo is making various scribbles with his crayons on paper (and on the table). So far, no creations or descriptions to note. If he had a larger vocabulary, I'm sure he'd say that one of them is a picture of mommy ripping her hair out at 6:30 in the morning after being up for 2 hours with the insomniac toddler.

I would take pictures and post them, but I can't find the charger for my small digital camera. You know, the one I never use, because my husband is the family photographer with his professional camera and lenses. Oh well.

I'll end this here so I can actually cook the pork cutlets I planned for dinner. Otherwise, my kids will be getting chicken nuggets. Yes, they have them in Japan and yes, they are in the freezer for when all else fails. Hey, I even have Japanese tater tots if I really want to be slack. I wonder if they pair well with a fruity young red wine...