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...

On two year-olds and deja vu

Tak took his nap early today and woke up around 2 p.m. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt that had been his brother's and woke up with that scrunchy baby stretch that is a rarity these days. Do you remember that stretch? You hold them under their arms and they scrunch their face and yawn while stretching out to remove the remainders of the fetal position. But they always forget their legs, still curled tightly under themselves.

I'm holding this 30 lb toddler and only half of him is awake and he's looking at me with a dazed expression. He lets me cuddle with him on the couch and sniff the back of his neck. It's a rare thing these days. Usually he's swatting my face like a demented leopard cub or climbing over my shoulders and ripping out my hair in the process. He's so boy-like, that I forget he was a new babe only two years ago.

And the sweatshirt. Big brother loved that sweatshirt, rarely took it off. It's weird seeing him in Kai's clothes knowing that they fit completely differently. Tak is a sumo wrestler, not fat, but strong and solid. Kai is a long distance runner, lithe and lean. Every parenting book says not to compare your kids, but it is so hard not to do that, especially when you have two of the same gender. Comparisons burst out without even trying. Every article of clothing has a memory attached to it and those memories refuse to be suppressed.

And life is so bittersweet these days. I want for my boys to have the childhood I had, but at the same time, I'm so happy that they have this opportunity to be in Japan and be with their grandparents. I'm still working on staying in this moment, but there are too many days when I get sucked into the past.

Random thoughts on summer in Japan

How do you know you are living in Japan? Well, besides the heat and humidity, it's usually the things that you scratch your head over that makes you think, "Damn, I'm living in a foreign country." Here's a list of random thoughts:

1. Oldest son's preschool/daycare sent him home with a big bag of fireworks and the admonition that fireworks should only be done with an adult present. Gee, you think 1000 degree sparklers are a good idea for a 5 year old? What's next, send him home with a machete and instructions that it should only be used on weeds?

2. I know it's hot, but does everyone need to wear long sleeves and ugly hats? Of course, this only applies to adults. My oldest is the color of leather since his preschool has a wading pool and doesn't believe in sunscreen.

3. Why are vegetables so cheap and why is fruit so g-damn expensive? I've taken to shopping the discount bin for lightly bruised fruit. I've scored apples, peaches, nectarines, grapes, cherries, and kiwi with this method. Thank god for the Japanese obsession with perfect, unblemished fruit. I'll take the cheap, ugly ones any day.

4. Speaking of fruit, there is only one thing worse than a fruit fly infestation. That would be a fruit fly MAGGOT infestation. Truly disgusting. I'm now emptying the raw trash more often.

5. Ah yes, trash. I'm so sick and f-king tired of sorting my trash by the ten thousand inscrutable rules. Example, plastic goes in a yellow trash bag, unless it's blue bag OTHER PLASTIC. And what is other plastic? Well..... Toothbrushes, tupperware, plastic models. Clear as mud, eh? Oh, but don't put PET plastic bottles (coke bottles, etc.) in either of those, they go in a separate green bag. Same green bag is used for glass bottles, but you can't mix them. But you can mix glass and steel cans. Now you know why my husband puts plastic things in the raw garbage (clear bag) and says, "I lived in America, screw this."

6. Cicada. Most annoying noisy bug on earth. Why do Japanese children like to catch them? Oh wait, it's to make them screech even more. Now there's a hobby guaranteed to set a parent on edge. (See picture of oldest son with cicada on soccer ball above. Cicada died a ball-related death only minutes later...)

Okay, I should make a list of ten, but BeanPasteHead Man is over and my boys will start beating themselves up any moment now.

Hotter than the hinges of Hades...

I really don't enjoy the summers in Japan. It's currently 89 outside and the humidity is something like 85%. There is a nice smog-filled breeze blowing from the inland sea, but it still doesn't solve things like my mildewing leather shoes in our shoe cabinet. (Yes, I know there are dehumidifier packs, I'm just too lazy to buy them.)

Combine the heat and humidity with a cranky 21 month old who has a sprained ankle, and you'll realize why Spike Lee made a movie about a heat wave sending people to the edges of insanity. Tak not only can't walk, but he also had a fever and herpangina earlier this week, so it's been a really restful week in our house.

Did I mention that Monday was a holiday here, but my husband's company makes everyone work the following Saturday after a Monday holiday? Bastards. Oh well, at least he comes home around 6:00 p.m. when he works Saturdays. Yippee.

In an effort not to be 100% negative, I will end my post with one positive about Japan. Japanese tomatoes are fabulous and really inexpensive. The cucumbers are pretty good too.

Screw-top wine

I'm drinking a glass of Chilean screw-top wine purchased from Max Value supermarket. It's almost 7:00 p.m., my mother-in-law is making dinner, the kids are watching Anpanman and the hubby is still trapped at work for at least another hour.

What does this have to do with anything? Nothing really, but I'm listening to the bread truck outside our building with its catchy jingle of "come buy delicious bread from the yellow truck" and I'm not rushing outside. Although part of me is curious and I just want to buy a loaf for the hell of it. Instead, I savor my slightly astringent 680 yen bottle of wine and try to remember that screw-top is not synonymous with bad wine. It's apparently all the vogue these days. Except that in Japan, it serves a more practical purpose since most people don't own a corkscrew.

I'm not really a wine snob, but it's rather sad that I drink my wine alone these days. My in-laws won't drink any wine unless it's sickly sweet. My husband doesn't drink at all since he's usually too tired to drink. And none of my friends can come over for a glass of wine since they can't drive afterward. Besides that, none of my Japanese friends are really the wine drinking kind. They are more of the grain alcohol spritzer type.

I drank the three bottles of decent wine that I bought at Costco last month, so now I'm stuck with screw-tops. Yeah, in this case, screw-top means mediocre wine.

Pinworms

My 4 year-old's preschool sent everyone home with a pinworm collection kit. Oh joy. I realize that preschoolers are not the cleanliest of creatures, but does the school really have to make all the parents check their child's intestinal tract for microscopic parasites?

I don't really mind the fact that they check my child's weight and height once a month. I actually welcome the visit from the dentist, since I'm hoping it will convince some of the snaggly-toothed kids to brush their teeth. But I rather resent having to collect samples of fecal matter. Over two days, no less. Ugh.

I think this is where I hand the kit to my husband and tell him that I can't read the instructions. I know, it's really not fair to play the "dumb gaijin"card, but if I screw it up, I will have to do it all over again. Better to let the native speaker do it right the first time.

Life at a different angle.

One of the few incontrovertible facts of life is that the sun sets in the west. Having lived in Seattle, with its convenient grid of N-S-E-W streets, I was used to the sun rising in my bedroom and setting in my family room.

That is not the case here in St. Honore Nibankan condominiums. The condo faces the sea, but dammit, the sun seems to set in the southwest. By the end of the day, it's beyond my in-laws balcony and I'm feeling the laundry to see if it actually dried in the pre-rainy season sunshine.

It bothers me, the sun's lack of respect for my sense of order. Instead of a diagonal sliver of sun coming across my bedroom, I want the full-on retina burn that only direct sunlight can give. (Oh, and our bedroom is a BED Room now. We have a bed! Woo hoo!) Also, I resent the perpetually hazy, indirect sunlight that never makes it into my family room. Perhaps I will change my mind during the long, hot days of Japanese summer.

I'm not sure why Japan is the land of the rising sun and why the flag reflects that. Maybe no one could figure out where it sets in the this curvaceous mountainous country, so that's why it's always rising...