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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.