Lena's First Swimming Lesson

More Used Shopping

I got Kanji to look up some places in the phone book, and set off to further my quest to find cheap furniture. The first place I went to was a big, quality place, selling lots of character toys, used clothes (with price tags as high as new clothes in a budget store!) and some furniture. I scoped out a superb wee box - hard to explain, it's a a three-drawer set of drawers about 40cm high, with an attached, fold-out desk, made to fit in a Japanese tatami room. I am thinking about it...it would make a nice writing table for me...could keep my nice pens and paper, envelopes and stamps in it...hmm...

I also saw two chests of drawers for 15,800yen each - same price as the new ones in the Nissen catalog, but much better quality, more solid wood. But no beds. I also bought some Kitties, gulp, some McDonald's collector's item kitties. I'll send them home in time to sell for Christmas.

Finally I went to another store, as far removed from the first bright and clean shop as you can imagine! A cluttered yard on a country road, with a dog tied up. A house and several sheds packed to the rafters with dusty junk. I squeezed through one shed, and just said in passing as I walked out, 'You don't have any bunks, do you'. 'Yes, I have' he answered, and took me to another shed, where there was a bunk set, in pieces, but with all the screws and quite clearly better quality wood than the ones in the furniture store. 7000yen.

So, all I need now is to get the truck and pick the stuff up! From 120,000 yen to 51,000. I will send photos as soon as the room is done! Now, back to getting that spare room cleared out - again!

A Night Out

Well, Rich had said, just go to Troppies anytime if you want to catch up with Marcus. There was a good chance Rich himself would be there too, so I braved it and went by myself. Okay, I chickened out a little and made sure Kanji would come after work, but I went a little earlier. Funny thing was, I didn't really feel like going. I had a tummy ache again, was feeling a bit tired and yucky. But I had the chance, and since I have been feeling that way for two months now I have long passed the point of letting it keep me home. And I was also thinking, just my luck tonight there'll be no-one there.

Sure enough, there was not a soul I knew there. Now, usually I can walk in there and know some one. Often staff from Keio are there. But tonight was a DJ night with a cover charge - that would keep some of them away. So I propped up the bar and chatted to Raoul, who is also coming up ten years in Japan. So we're gonna have a combined party. I called Marcus - the whole idea was to catch up with him so as to arrange a Lord of the Rings and The Young Ones viewing party. We settled on next Sunday night. Hope Rich can come! Hope I can stay awake for nine hours of LOTR...

Used furniture

After asking for advice on my foreign wives' club email group, someone suggested looking in second-hand stores for the furniture I need for the girls' very-long-time-coming new bedroom. I had already looked in, and selected from, the Nissen catalog - kind of like Japan's ezibuy, but a little more extensive. The total for two bunk beds, two chests of drawers, and two study desks (an absolutely essential item for the Japanese child's bedroom) came to 120,000 yen, or about $1500. That's pretty much the cheapest option, and like the cheapest, will not last, I was warned. Then another lady suggested the second hand stores. Of course, I thought - and I was off.

As you may well know, second-hand items in Japan are much better quality than what you find in NZ, for much cheaper prices, since the market is not strong - people like new things, and most of them have the money to get nice new things. Which means good stuff left over for me. I remembered the location of one place that I have driven past numerous times, and stopped in there after lunch. Lo and behold, I walk straight in the door, and there on the left are two study desks, 6000 yen each - or a tenth of the price of a new one. They are in pretty good condition too, so I will go back with Kanji's van sometime and get them. What a good start!

The Great Muta

OIT Starts Again

First day of the new semester at OIT. Again. This is the 9th year I have taught there, and I thought as I sat through the orientation this morning, while recalling the first year, ‘I never imagined then that I would still be here now! Or did I? I had already met Kanji by then...' Then I got bored with that train of thought as I considered the possibility that I was thinking the exact same thing last year...

Kanji is out meeting a famous wrestler. The Great Muto. I’ve never heard of him of course, but Kanji is quite excited about it. He came home at 9:30am to start getting ready! To make sure the camera was working, to find the actual camera, to figure out what to wear. He’s still out now, and I am wondering if I should wait up so he has someone to tell it all to when he gets home.

Buzen Festival

Okay, so I should have attended the meeting on Friday, but I knew that it would be so mindnumbingly boring that my mind would wander and I would not catch what was being said, as I do need to concentrate to pick up details. Okay, and also because I just couldn't be bothered. Oh, and cos I forgot.

So I guess it really is my fault that I didn't know about the festival. It's on October 22, which sounds like lots of time, but in reality it's only one more class. I was handed a sign-up sheet for our English class skit, and the barbecue, as well as four each of tickets buying tea and coffee. I did succeed in coming up with something to do in the skit in half an hour, but did not succeed in getting anyone to sign up! Maybe next time. Or I will be doing the skit myself. Worst luck - it's on the same day as a flea market!

Takumi Transferred

Takumi is going to Fukuoka! Today may well have been his last English lesson here. His mother only just found out today, but even so, she found the time to stop and buy a farewell present for Amy, Lena and Maia – lunch boxes for school.

His Dad has been transferred to Fukuoka. We heard last week that there was a chance they may go, then they heard today for sure that they are going, and they will be moving next week! It’s a stunningly fast move, and completely unexpected. Unlike foreign companies, Japanese companies move their staff around between job descriptions, departments and locations without even asking them if they want to move, let alone allowing them to apply for available transfers. So off they go, seven years of settling in wiped out in a decision handed down from above. She doesn’t really want to go, and settle in again, and in a big city, and right in the middle of the city as well. But they will, and they won’t protest and the system will thus never change. At least Kanji is family/self-employed, no sudden shifts to unwanted locations for us.

French chocolate, German sweets and Italian perfume

So, apparently I didn’t work today, but you could have fooled me! There’s always one more thing to do… three meals, loads of laundry, tidiying up, picking up and dropping off…I got the bedroom cleaned today, and the dolls sorted out and into one box, leaving a spare box for the craft items Amy finds so indispensible. Today’s offering was a canopy bed for her doll.

I also sent money to NZ, enrolled Lena in swimming, and collected a parcel from Germany – the presents from Birgit finally arrived. They had been held up in customs, opened and inspected, but they somehow managed to miss the envelope of money, how very clever of them. I think they were looking for drugs – last year a foreign woman was sprung here for receiving drugs from the Netherlands through the mail.
Birgit sent us (me, and Kanji’s Auntie Toyoko, who drew the characters on the wall hanging I bought and sent) French chocolate, German sweets and Italian perfume. Enough to make a customs agent very jealous – but all completely legal

To the Doc's

Amy had a follow-up appointment for her asthma attack today. We saw our usual doctor Kinoshita, who asked us to finish the Theodur, continue the flixotide twice daily, and continued the onon. Amy complained of sore ears and being sore under her arms, but she was fine. She seems to be getting used to thinking of anything that might be wrong to add to the list of ailments when we get in to the doctor. I suppose that’s kind of necessary, but I worry that she’s becoming a hypochondriac! I don’t want her to *feel* like an ‘ill person’.

Best news, maybe, is that her allergy test was back, and she showed no allergy to dust, dust mites or cedar pollen (a HUGE problem in Japan every spring). Good in that I can clear my conscience and reassure myself that I am not causing her attacks with my sloppy housekeeping. But bad because if it WAS that, at least there would be something I could do about it!
But it turns out that she is sensitive to the turn of seasons, to the air pressure changes that herald a typhoon, and also reacts badly to colds. But I can’t stop the weather and I have very little chance of stopping her exposure to colds too, despite how Baachan says ‘do everything to prevent colds’ as her version of ‘goodbye’.

Lena's Kindy Field Trip

Luckily the typhoon blew over, so the field trip was on, although the wind was blowing so hard last night, and the news reports so scary that I swore I would keep her home – I could not trust either the roads or the bus. But the day dawned bright and calm, so off she went with her kindy class. They went to Kokura, to an indoor playground near where Keio have their classrooms there. 90 minute bus drive, lunch, an hour or so play, and 90 minutes on the bus back home. Seems a long way to go for such a small amount of fun, but no doubt they’ll love it – being on a bus with their friends is half the fun. Lena and her best friend Maia played on a piece of equipment that sounded, from the descriptions, like one of those rotary ladders you put in a hamster’s cage. Lena the hamster!
Meanwhile me and Amy went to Takitas house for the monthly lesson. For the first time, the baby Shige-chan was bold enough to not run away when he saw me, so he joined in, which was just delightful, if a little chaotic. He even knows a word! ‘Ba’, meaning ball. 18months old, and he can already kick better than me. Four-year-old Rikako kept complaining that she couldn’t speak English, so we still had to favor her in games. 8 year old Machiko mostly pays attention, but sometimes it’s all too dull for her. Mostly the lesson is now focussed on 6 year old Yuto.

Typhoon 13

Yes, I know, a terribly dull name for a typhoon, but that’s how they do it here. Apparently somewhere else it’s called Shanshan. Maybe I’ll remember that. It was a biggie, but not huge. It was very different though – much noisier, and had very strong gusts alternating with quiet spots. We all slept downstairs, as usual in a big typhoon, so we could close the storm doors. We are very safe from debris in our living room, with storm doors on the main outside doors, and rooms on all other sides. But it was still really scary, with some weird noises – a huge metallic grinding that I think was the satellite dish straining to escape, or maybe the kitchen’s lean-to type steel sheet roof trying to peel off. There’s another on its way, so I hope something out there hasn’t been weakened structurally.

Keio Dinner

A night out with the bosses and co-workers. I was feeling a bit ill, so I was tossing up all day whether I would actually go or not. In the end, I decided it would be easier than making my own dinner, and I thought I’d give the beer cure a try. It worked, and pretty soon I was relaxed, and having a nice chat and a good time. We played a math game, guessing length, weight, volume and seconds, and I got fourth and received a drink container.

Dinner in Japan always comes to an end at one time, and all the guests leave together. It would be rude to leave early unless you have a really good excuse, so, in order to cater for those who want to go home early, dinners usually wind up after 2-3 hours, with those who wish to continue going on to a ‘nijikai’ or second party. The nijikai was karaoke, of course, which I was looking forward to as I hadn’t been in quite a while.

On the way though, we passed the Again bar, so I decided on the spur of the moment to pop in. I am very glad I did so, because I found not only Kenchan and Katchan, as I had expected, but also Jinjin, who has recovered somewhat from his illness, and Uto-chan, who has moved back to Nakatsu. Gosh time flies – I remember commiserating with him when he was asked to move up north for a work placement, and saying that two years is not so long, it’ll fly by – but oh my, flew it did! Is it really two years?

I stayed for a drink, then rushed on to catch up with the rest at karaoke. I’m afraid I was a terrible karaoke hog, and probably did quite awfully as well, I remember my voice cracking, but who cares? Not in Japan anyhow, where everyone claps you politely no matter how badly you do. I sang Puffy, Madonna, Namie Amuro and To Sir With Love. For the teachers, ha ha ha.

I ended up in Tropicoco, no surprises there, where Eoin bought me a drink, and I pecked at Rich’s chips before giving up and riding home. Last thing I remember is sitting dejected on the front doorstep unable to find my key, but too ashamed to call out to Kanij because I KNEW it was in my bag. Must have found it, as I woke up in my bed.

New Student Aoi

I nearly forgot she was coming, but I remembered in time to rally the kids, get dinner done and over in time and tidy up beautifully before she arrived. That is, tidied up beautifully as far as she could see – I put the doors in between the two rooms to hide the crap in the other half!

Asthma Again

After a weekend of coughing that I thought was a cold, I took Amy to Inoue Pediatric clinic. I never know where to take her! If I take her to the hospital, and I am wrong and it is a cold and not asthma, then I pay about $30, because it’s a ‘new illness’ not a return visit. But I really need to visit the same doctor to care for her asthma follow-ups. But the staff at Inoue seemed to understand my dilemma, as I said outright that I just did not know where to go, but I thought it was a cold, so I came here. No, he said, it’s asthma, but he gave them a recommendation phone call so at least I would not be paying the off-the-street fee! (I shouldn’t complain – health care cover here is extensive and cheap).

I was very surprised at how bad it was – the doctor – not our usual doctor, said she would think about admitting her if she did not show considerable improvement after two sessions on the nebulizer, with IV steriods inbetween. Once more, I insisted on being there for the insertion of the drip. The doctor was the same one who admitted her last time, so she had experienced my recalcitrance before, and did not argue. I hope she is beginning to see that not all mothers are panicky idiots, and sometimes children are better off with us there! (Yes, I heard the study that a TV does an even better job, but there are no TVs in the treatment room, so that was moot)

Then I went to the bathroom and wiped up the tears. On me, that is, because of the frustration at my inability to stop this disease! I always live in hope that this time, she’ll come right and she’ll grow out of it and it will all be a nasy memory. And it is always such a blow when it comes back. She’s been on meds since last April. Every time she seems to be coming right, something, like a cold, or the next seasonal change, comes up and there she goes again. The only time she seems to come right is in NZ, with its mild climate, making me wonder if she would not benefit from a longer stay.

But she came right, and the doctor wrote us out a prescription instead of sending us upstairs. She was a bit medicine-happy – she gave us theodur, which I had requested my other doctor last year to take us off, after my student Yoriko told me about a conference she went to in Kyoto where a doctor spoke out against it because of the side-effects, particularly on the heart – and Amy had had that heart flutter and ECG only a few weeks before. Okay, the ECG showed her to be in the normal range, but it can’t help but make a mother worry! She also gave us antibiotics, onon for allergies and musosyne for mucus.
So we went home, or rather to Baachan’s, and I went to work! Feeling stroppy and ready to bite anyone who dared call me on my lateness or lack of proper business-like attire (I still had my jeans and t-shirt on from the morning – I had not been home all day).

Sea Bream, Caves and a Buzzing Bra

Yes, it's been a pretty interesting day!

This morning Kanji and I went to a fish filleting class. It was just one of many free classes put on by the city council (I teach an English lesson for another council as part of a similar scheme). We saw it in the town magazine, and signed up for it. It was actually a men's cooking class, but me and one other wife were there. For some time, Kanji and I have been tantalized by the huge variety of whole fish in the supermarket, and at a loss for what to do with it. We have tried, and made an awful mess. So this class was ideal for us (Kanji likes cooking, but doesn’t have much time for it. We often cook together on his days off, and constantly get under each other's feet!)

We learned to cut sashimi! I'm quite excited about that, but after trying it ourselves after watching the Pro make it look easy, we realized we have a lot of practice to do! So beware, Kiwis, I will be buying a rod and catching my own damn snapper if I can't find a fresh one to chop up next time I come home! Next we learned how to bone and fillet a Pacific saury, a fairly small fish that NZers don't bother with, although we probably have it, or something similar teeming in the oceans around us. We pan-fried the saury. And finally we learned how to cut mackerel. This was the easiest, as it was not boned, but cut into quarters. Mackerel bones are strong and hard, so you can easily pick the fish off the bones, and if you get one in your mouth, you're not going to mistakenly swallow it. The mackerel was boiled with miso flavoured with soy sauce, mirin, sugar, and ginger.

After all that cutting and cooking, yes, we did get to eat it! Here is our midday feast:


Clockwise from left: miso soup, tai (sea bream) sashimi, saba (mackerel) miso, green tea, rice and pan-fried sanma (Pacific saury)

(Interestingly, the four lady cooks who taught us the recipes – the professional sashimi chef was a man – put on an anti-sexism video, with actors chatting in a café, talking about things like, is a mother’s life or a businessman’s harder, non-traditional jobs, like male nurse and lady truck-driver and wanting a boy or girl baby to follow the parents in a job – their little contribution to dismantling gender stereotypes in Japan).


After lunch I had coffee in a café in Youme Town with Hiro-chan and a friend of hers, who is going to New Zealand in January, and wants to quickly learn English before then. I will teach her on Friday nights. That makes a nice replacement for Shu, who quit after getting into a little moody with me after two weeks of mix-ups. I am not without fault, but only a man as insecure as Shu would assume I was trying to snub him, as I think he believes. Two weeks ago, at our Wednesday lesson, I told him I was not free the following Wednesday, and could we change to Tuesday. He agreed, and I turned up at the café on Tuesday, but he didn’t. I didn’t have my phone with me however, so I could not call him. I tried several times to contact him after that, with no reply, and he also tried to contact me – I often do not hear my phone, but I saw that he had called. I needed to contact him to change the following week’s lesson to Tuesday as well, because of my filling in at Shoyokan in Kokura for Keio. But I did not get in touch before the day, and he must have turned up by himself (which would be for the second time). I think he thought all this not turning up and not contacting means I don’t like him and don’t want to teach him anymore, because when I finally got in contact with him, he was very abrupt and said he would not have any more lessons. Well, I will email him and let him know he can email me if he gets into trouble during his big trip to NZ and Australia!

After coffee I went to the CD shop and bought The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe for the kids, to keep them happy all afternoon while I (groan) cleaned. And to bribe them to actually come home. They tend to get stuck when they go to Baachan’s.

After the movie ended, we went to Kanairo Onsen (hot spring) in Sanko village near Mount Hachimen. We have been there several times, but this was the first time I have been to the public bath – we usually get a private family bath. Well, it was every bit as gorgeous as Birgit told me! It truly is special and anyone I know who sets foot in Japan will be taken straight there by me to relax after your plane ride. There is a big, very hot pool indoors, but it’s the outdoor section that’s really cool – it’s hot!

When you first go outside, there is a large pool set into rocks, with a huge rock in the centre. At the back to the left, up some stone steps, is a smaller pool set into a little grotto, with two waterfalls – hot water falling from pipes in a narrow and very fast jet, so that it’s like getting a shiatsu massage to stand underneath them. To the right of the main pool, up some more stone steps, is a shallow pool with logs set in the centre to rest your head on to lay down flat in the water. Behind the main pool in the centre are more stone steps leading up to a thatched-roof bay, with another, smaller, rock pool to the right, and a fantastic cave to the left. You enter the cave, and it turns through rocks round a corner to open out into a final hot pool at the top. It was a fantastic place, and the kids had a marvelous time. I got exhausted with the hot water and all that climbing, and never sitting down long enough to relax in a pool because you wanted to get up and see what else there was!

We finished up our day at a family restaurant in Jusco. The kids were almost too tired to eat, but Lena ordered a Hello Kitty kids’ set and Amy a Bullet Train set. Kanji had soba noodles, and I had a special dinner set menu with a little bit of steak, chicken, a scallop, and pasta. Yep, diet starts tomorrow. Again.

If I am not too busy at the doctor’s! Amy has a cold again. Her immune system is weak, from her asthma and from the drugs that keep it under control. So she never gets a simple cold, she gets it bad. She’s complaining of a sore throat, and sore chest, so it’s off to the doctor’s for us. I hope to get her a new allergy test, or view the previous one, as I want to see if animals were on there. I’m thinking pets.
Oh, and that buzzing bra? Today while I was still in the shopping centre, looking at a Star Trek magazine of all things, I felt a vibration in the underwire of my new bra (thank you very much Jolene!). How odd, but I soon recognized the pattern as that of my mobile phone, which I could not hear in the busy store. It travelled from my handbag, up to the shoulder strap,and somehow into the underwire, where I FELT my phone ring under my right boob.

Alien Card

I am officially an alien, it says so on the card I have to carry as a foreigner in Japan. You’d think they’d drop such a silly word and switch to ‘foreigner’, but no. Foreigners in Japan mostly call it the ‘gaijin’ card – gaijin is short for gaikokujin, which means foreigner, or literally, outside-country-person. Some people therefore dislike the short version, because it would follow that ‘gaijin’ therefore means ‘outsider’. Personally, I’m not fussed – Japanese often abbreviate things like this, by chopping off the last part of a word. Brad Pitt, for example, is known as Bra-Pi. Odd, but I don’t think any offense is intended. Slightly better than alien anway!

This card is one of the three bits of red tape Japan has that I think of as totally unecessary, simply because we don’t have such things in NZ and we do pretty well without them. The other two are the Family Register and the Residency Register. The Family Register records all citizens, together in family groups. There are two problems – you can only be on one register, and you must have the name on that register – so women can’t keep their name after marriage, they must change it. Both can go on the woman’s register, but that is uncommon. Also, only citizens can go on it, so I am not listed there with the rest of the family, except in a ‘comments’ section. The same problem exists with the Residency Register – I am not listed there either as a member of this household, except in the comments section (and then only if I ask for the comment to be added when I request a copy of the Reigster for official purposes). This can be a problem as it means my husband appears to be a single father. Where am I then? On the alien register of course! I hate this system because it just seems so completely pointless to me. Why not just list us with the Japanese? Another problem is that every household must have a ‘Head of Household’, who is, of course, the man. I cannot be the Head of Household because I am not Japanese, therefore, if Kanji and I had to establish different addresses for any reason, Amy would become the Head of Household!

Anyway, I had to renew my alienity today and get carded for my out-of-spaceness. It was a pretty simple affair for Japanese bureaucracy. The guy at the city office actually seemed to know what he was doing, which is not as common as it should be, due to the practice here in the public sector to swap staff around between sections every two years, so in April you might well get ‘helped’ by someone who has been doing the job for all of two weeks. At least my guy today was not like this, and was able to also help me get the card changed to list my ‘nickname’ or Japanese name, so I can use Yokomatsu, written in Japanese, for official purposes. I needed to do this as I am listed on our health insurance as Yokomatsu Rachel. I tried to tell the insurance broker that my name was Greenwood, but it just did not compute. In her world, that would be impossible, so how could I be right? But my name must be as listed on my passport, which is still Greenwood. I hope this nickname business sorts that out.

Being Japan, the job could not possibly be done in one day, it needs to sit around, gather dust, and be checked and looked at several more times before they okay it, so I am due to come back in two weeks to pick up the new card. So I can get sick now and know I will get that extra $50 a day!

Shoyokan

I got a free trip to Kokura today, in exchange for doing a few lessons, for which I conveniently also got paid. The new teacher is coming in the middle of the month, and I am filling in in the mean time. Part of that filling in includes these classes at a High School. They are only 45 minutes long, which seems to fly by after my 90 minute lessons, but the classes are much bigger – 30-40 students! It’s a challenge to just keep them focussed. I’m not bad at doing it now – I can generally keep them in line, stay cheerful and never lose my temper, and think of ways to teach them that don’t involve me standing at the front of the classroom nattering on and asking questions that are greeted by a huge silence. But it’s not my chosen teaching setting. At least I only have to do it once more, then the new teacher gets it, bless her. Poor thing.

I finished at 2pm, so I went shopping. I walked three blocks to my favorite bookstore – to find it closed. What a disappointment! But on the bright side, I undoubtedly saved bucketloads of money.

Next stop was a wee store tucked into the side of a restaurant disovered by my mother of all people! Hello Mum, I remembered about the tea set. I called her from the store, which intrigued the shop lady almost as much as it pleased mum, who got to kind-of- second-hand-choose the feature beads I bought there. The nice shop lady, who also serves her customers tiny cups of tea and chunks of black sugar, added in about six extra beads, including a dragon and a snake, when I told her that I was on the phone to my mother in New Zealand who had come to the shop two years ago and never forgot it. She asked me when I was going back to NZ, and when I replied that I would be sending the beads, she added another little present! It’s not beads, and Mum will find out soon enough what it is!

Finally, I found another book store, with one English magazine (which I bought) and a very tiny English book section, where I found nothing for me, but a Mr Tumnus book for Amy. She can read her Level 2 Narnia book!

Back in the Pool, again

Yup, back in the ole pool again. I had all of August off, keeping busy with the kids, who spent so much time at Baachan’s that I felt like I was imposing to drop them off for yet another hour every day. Besides, I’m having trouble getting them back home from there! Amy, who is still a ‘naki-mushi’ (cry-bug), often gets teary-eyed upon leaving, and begs to stay. Lena just declares she’s not going home and bikes off in the opposite direction.

But that was summer, and now it’s autumn, and swimming must start again. I was slow – I felt tired, and forced myself to go, but that was not a good enough excuse for one of the other regular swimmers, who insisted I had slowed down, and that’s what you get for taking a month off!

Dazaifu Flea Market

Today was the first Dazaifu flea market of the season. I met up with Frances, the kimono collector who lives locally, the same lady who told me about the flea market and took me to it the first time.

I got some good stuff, including a couple of surprises for Mum! I got two obis, a white silk under-kimono that will make someone a luxurious summer robe! I got several pieces of real lacquer-ware, including a tray, two lunch boxes and four small plates. I got a copper tea caddy, a gorgeous wooden mask, another beautiful lacquer vase, more sake/shot glasses, a purse, two antique geisha hair ornaments, a tortoiseshell comb, some old coins, and some folding fans!

I had a superb lunch in a restaurant behind the shrine. The restaurant is called 0-ishi – 'ishi' means stone, and the ‘o’ is honorific. But Oishi also means delicious, so it’s a clever pun. I had the ‘O-ishi bento’ or lunch box, but this was NOT a lunch box! It was a superb, seven dish vegetarian platter:

Indian dinner in Kokura

I decided my birthday present to me would be a night out in another city. Some other members of my foreign wives’ club had arranged a dinner at an Indian restaurant owned by the friend of one of them. I stubbornly stuck to my plan, despite some potential child-care issues (they eventually stayed with Baachan), and a massive downpour.

I drove. I briefly considered taking the train, but I didn’t want to be stuck having to come home early to catch the last train. So I persisted with the car. I left late, and then tried to take what looked like a short-cut on the map, but which just got me lost. I found where I was again, and had just decided that I was running out of time, the traffic was too busy, and to head for the main station instead of my friend’s house, (where I had been promised a bed for the night), when I took a wrong turn, and ended up heading towards her house anyway. I decided fate had laid its hand, and I should go there. The road was wide and not as crowded anyway.

I got to her house about half an hour later than I thought would be the latest time I would get there. A little late, but still doable. She was already on a train – we had arranged that I would just park in front of her house, then take the train from her station into town. So I walked to the station, easy. I got my ticket, no problem there, I’m good at that. I heard a train come in – I rushed through the ticket gate, but it was not my train. I found my track, and headed through a tunnel towards it. As I came through it, I saw a train waiting, and heard the whistle, so I rushed up the stairs, ran towards the train and got on it just before it left the station. I was feeling pretty proud of my train-catching skills, until I passed a few stations and started to get a little nagging suscpision that I was going the wrong way…

It took me about twenty minutes to admit I was on the wrong train, after twice falsely reassuring myself that I was going in the right direction, once with a slightly glimpsed road sign, once with a river. I hopped off and called my friends, and waited on another track for the train coming back the other direction. At least I didn’t have to pay for my mistake (I bought a ticket from point A to point B, so as long as I entered the system at point A and exited at point B, it doesn't matter where the hell I went in the meantime). By now I was 90 minutes later than my initial expected arrival time. My night was shrinking horribly. Thank God for the iPod – listening to a few songs kept my mood up. I listened to ‘Don’t you forget about me’. And a BeeGees song from Saturday Night Fever that made me think of John Travolta on a subway train on the way to a disco in New York. Not me on the wrong train in Kitakyushu.

Well I finally met my friends at the restaurant, and ordered a long-wished-for cold beer, and my dinner – chicken and naan. Well, what a disappointment! It was over-cooked and tasteless, and the naan was doughy and underdone. The others had curries that consisted of curry-flavoured tomato soup with a chicken leg in it. At least the beer was good. We followed up with a visit to a ‘gaijin bar’ (where foreigners hang out, main difference is that drinks are paid one by one, rather than the vague total passed to customers in ‘snack’ bars). I had a Black Russian and a glass of wine. We had to go home early, to catch the last train, but we had a few more drinks when we got back, while we fiddled with our iPods, and I petted my hostess's two fat ginger cats.

35

Today is my birthday, but it’s not a big deal because I have officially doled it out to other days, including dinner with Kanji on the 18th, a home party yesterday, and a night out tommorrow night.

I’m fond of saying that I’m half way to dead, if it’s true about your three score years and ten. It remains to be seen if the best half has been or is yet to be.

I worked – Mrs Fukuda, who is, now that Again have finished, my longest lasting student, came this morning. I actually did housework in the afternoon. And I taught at Keio this evening, one kids’ class and one adult beginner’s class. All I did there was games, however. Alphabug soup for the kids, The game of Life for the adult (only one came to the class).

And I got a present – Kanji came home with a necklace for me, a silver key with pink stones on a leather chain.

Birthday cake

Well I kept myself busy today organising and holding a day-long family party, to make up for anticipating a rather dull work day tomorrow.

I baked the cake last night, and we went to the supermarket this morning to shop for lunch and dinner and witch's eyes. We iced the cake, had chicken pie and egg sandwiches for lunch, then watched a DVD and ate popcorn and drank coke. It was Anne of Green Gables - and it was long so I had to start dinner while it was still on.

Everything was ready by 7pm. First course was fried camambert with an apricot sauce. Then I had stuffed chicken breast with gravy, mashed potato, peas and cauliflower with cheese sauce. For dessert we had bananas dipped in chocolate and nuts. And the cake of course!

Tsuru-Ichi Jinja Matsuri

Damned Right Turn

I got pulled up by the Police today. It buggged the hell out me because this is my birthday week, and things like this are just not supposed to happen! It didn’t help that I did it, I was in the wrong, so I could not even get righteously defensive. It was an illegal right turn – on an intersection where I always turn right to get home from the main road. Policemen in Japan are so kind and nice and polite that you can’t even get mad at them for being bastards when you are looking for someone to blame while trying to avoid blaming yourself – the worst thing they did was call me 35 four days before my actual birthday. So, that’s another black spot on my license and 7000yen to the state coffers. Maybe it’ll go towards the next Great Nakatsu Bicycle Theft Stake-out.*



* We really do live in a low-crime area – a friend had her bicycle stolen. She reported the theft to the police, and then when she thought she saw someone riding her bike, the police cooperated with her on a stake-out to catch the thief. They really have nothing better (or worse) to do around here. Did I tell you that ELEVEN policemen responded within ten minutes when I thought I had an intruder in my house?

Fairy Wands and Crowns

That silly tooth fairy didn’t come the first night – maybe she forgot, maybe she was busy, maybe it was because Amy put the tooth under the wrong pillow or in the wrong packaging...

But she came the second night, good on her! She left Amy two 100yen coins, and not soon after she woke up, Amy knew what she wanted. But she also wanted to get a fairy crown and wand for her baby sister too, so Mummy helped her out. Amy bought a crown and wand for Lena with her tooth money – and Mummy bought the same for Amy.

The Tooth Comes Out!

Early Birthday Dinner

Kanji took me out to a wonderful dinner at the French restaurant down the road from our place.












Thiord, fourth and fifth courses













Desseert, and a Singapore sling at a cocktail bar.

Origami Chess Set

Of all the dumb things to do on a boring summer’s day. The kids are spending whole days at Baachan’s. My student Yoriko brought a Science magazine with an article about intelligence and chess. She had never played chess before, so I said I would teach her. It was the day of her class, and we were going to continue the article, so I wanted a chess set. I didn’t have one, so I figured that I could make one out of paper, that there must be directions for making origami chess somewhere on the internet. We had origami paper to burn – I bought tons of it at the 100 yen shop for Amy and Lena to make thing during their summer holidays. I found origami chess set instructions on the internet – and gave up after step three. Turns out those instructions are for committed amateurs, full-time hobbyists. Really, REALLY hard. So I made up my own, based on a simple box for the pawns, and the same box plus either a modified box or a modified crane stuck on top of the box for the main pieces. I sat and watched DVDs and folded all day and did not finish in time for my lesson. Never mind – she didn’t come. So why did I continue and finish the set the next day? Never mind, I did it. By the time she came the following week, I had found my magnetic chess set, and now my cacky drippy folded box chess set (I also wove paper like a Maori kete for the chessboard) sits gathering dust in a box and for what? Cos these are the things you do on a boring summer’ s day.

…
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To the river in Usa and Bon Dancing in Yabakei

More river swimming and more Obon events today!

This time we went with friends to another river, with a more ambitious concrete treatment consisting of two large, deep pools with slides. The water was diverted from the river, which had been left in its prisitine condition, with pools and waterfalls much like, but much prettier than, the fake ones at Hachimenzan. The water was REALLY cold, which was a super treat for us. We had a picnic lunch, and hopped back in again. Amy, Emily and Masaki enjoyed the big slide, while Lena discovered a wonderful game in the upper, shallower pool, in which I was the car? seahorse? something? that she rode to the deep end. She would call on me to stop, then get off and go 'shopping' or 'to work'.

In the evening, we went to Baachan's childhood home for dinner and Bon dancing. It was a little more small and intimate than I was expecting - I was expecting something like our local 'Toro Matsuri' with food stalls and a massive circle and troupes of dancers in matching yukata. Instead it was just the neighbors in a small parking lot outside the local community hall. We didn't stay long, but it was interesting to watch the dancing which had been celebrated here for who knows how many centuries by generations of ancestors of the people there that day, including Amy and Lena!

Hachimenzan and Obon

We went up the local mountain today for a paddle in the creek. Never content to leave any bit of nature alone, they have lined the creek with concrete steps and artfully arranged stones to create a series of pools and waterfalls in the style of the famous Japanese garden, which so cleverly mimics the grandeur of nature on a miniature scale. Why they couldn't leave nature to nature, we will never know. I suppose it can't be trusted, to either be safe enough, or ironically, beautiful enough.

Anyway, the end result is a convenient and easy walk up or downstream, splashing through the pools and climbing the small waterfalls. It was a cool way to spend a hot summer day.

Keio Summer Camp

Keio held their summer camp at Ookie lake again, although with the unique detail this year that there was actually no camp, because no-one stayed the night. Except the kindy kids and their moms, who, once again, hired a bungalow by the lake, had a barbecue, attended Keio's bonfire, got the kids to sleep then stayed up sipping wine and chatting.


Baby Sachi, Suzuna, Lena, and her classmates Tatsuki (Suzuna's little brother) and Kyosuke (Sahci's big brother) in a baby pool by the lake.


Our bungalow is one on the right. They are all two floors, with a main room, bathroom and kitchen on the lower floor, and a small bedroom on the upper floor.















Me and Keito's mum. The fire was a little too strong at first, and we were all running around and getting things while they cooked, hence the black sausages in need of a trim.
Maia's Mum cooking lamb chops and beef and vegetable kebabs - not your usual Japanese barbecure fare, but the others let me and her decide what to cook, and I'm a kiwi and she's a gourmet so we came up with some interesting new stuff!


The kids tuck in. They decided to arrange their chairs overlooking the lake. From right Amy, Keito, Maia, Lena, Tatsuki. Mums from left, Tatsuki's mum, Yuuto's mum, Kyousuke's mum and Koushi's mum.
From the bungalow overlooking the lake.


Keio's campfire. We toasted marshmallows and had smores (toasted marshmallow with a hunk of chocolate between two biscuits)

Public Pool

We finally made it to the public pool today, after several years of worry and not bothering! As expected, there was not a lick of shade, and you had to shower before getting in, so sunblock was probably not allowed. I didn't dare, I was so afraid of being told off for doing something wrong! No-one got in with t-shirts on, but it seemed that wading parents were allowed to wear hats and shirts. I got in with them for a little bit. I wanted to teach Lena to put her face in the water. She managed 1 second, and by the end of the session was quite proudly showing off her new skill. Tomorrow, 2 seconds, and by the time she starts swimming lessons next month, she should be happy to do the whole 5 seconds underwater!

Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Memorial Day

Just got back from the memorial event at Amy's kindy. Boy was it hot! There is no air conditioning at her kindy, which gives you some small appreciation of what it was like for those people that day - one of the recurring themes of the atomic bomb stories is the incredible thirst felt by the victims who had basically had their body's moisture sucked out of them by the heat of the blast. And on such a wickedly hot August day!

We gathered in the small kindergarten hall, and first up, the teacher gave the children a brief summary of what happened that day, showing them some drawings from a book.















Next, we came down and sat on the floor with the kids, and made an origami crane, a potent symbol of peace and healing in Japan.








Next was a talk by an elderly man who served on an aircraft carrier that was sunk by American planes. He explained how he had survived, and how of his kindy group of six boys, only he came back. Note the little plane on the end of one stick and the hot sun on the other. He used to be a teacher, and was a very good speaker. The kids were rapt.



Although I was disappointed that no mention was made of the current wars and conflicts going on in the world, the emphasis and focus was on not doing this again, creating and maintaining peace, not 'this is what the bastards did to us', which is what so many memorials can become.

A No-Show

Her name was Akiko Era. She was a student who did not turn up for the free English lesson in Buzen that I am teaching. (I get paid, the students don’t pay, the council makes up the difference). She called me, explained that she cannot make it to the free lesson, and arranged to meet me. She came to my house, and we decided on times – three lessons a month – and payment. Then the time came…but she didn’t. And she didn’t call.

They say Japanese are polite, and it’s true, they are. But they are also timid, with a tendendy to hide their head in the sand when it comes to problems. So polite that they don’t have the guts to say something bad. I would prefer a phone call.

Practicing Barbie

Barbecue at home, we have a go at doing it ourselves

Summer Vacation

Gion Fireworks

Summer Heat

Well, we are finally getting some of it! After days, weeks, of rain, today is a scorcher. My little house, with its long row of windows facing the sun all day, struggles mightily to keep cool, with the help of one hard-working air-conditioner. I didn't get to the pool today, though it would have been nice. Lena went swimming at kindy. Joanne and Emily and Masaki came to visit today. They went upstairs at one point, and though they opened the windows, they all came back in ten minutes sweating. It is SO hot up there!

Mike gave me a pile of sketchpads for Amy today. Here is the picture she drew - I call it an allegory of weather. She calls it The Whole World:

Summer Hols

Which actually started for Amy last Friday. All of August, and the last 10 days of July. You know the summer holidays! Days spent rattling around home, trying to think of what to do next. Here are some of the things my two thought of today:

Amy modelling a ribbon choker of her own devising:

Lena was being the baby sleeping:

Tooth and bruise

Amy has another wiggly tooth! My baby gets bigger every day. This time, it got wiggly by itself, no kicks in the teeth to help it along.

Meanwhile I had a stupid accident. I was carrying two large rubbish bags of laundry from the car to the house (after visiting the laundromat to get three days of laundry dry) when I tripped. The bags messed up my balance, and I fell, hitting my knee and whacking my left arm into the porch's corner post. I managed to meet with two angles of it somehow, and ended up with a right-angle bruise, that, typically for me, blew up out of all proportion, despite being iced.

Mike and Katy

It's pouring with rain and threatening floods but we went for a drive today anyway. First stop was Oita city, where we went to an art gallery. A New Zealander from New Plymouth who has been working for Keio Academy for a year had an exhibition there. He does pencil drawings, very skilled and imaginative. I thought it would be nice for Amy to see some work done by someone she knows. We bought a few postcards, and I have my eye on another picture that I might have to hint to Kanji about for my birthday...

Next, we went into town and visitied Starbucks, and the bookstore. I grabbed a couple of books and the kids got a magazine each - then I realized I had left my money in the car. Rain notwithstanding, I did not want to give up my books, so we trooped back to the car - down from the 6th floor, cross the road, go down the street, through the pachinko parlour and up to the third floor parking. Down again through the pachinko parlour and snap - my sandal broke. I tied it together, still not willing to give up and we rushed back to the bookstore in the rain, me limping and dragging my sandal, over the road, up the elevator and I got my books and was very happy.

Next we visited another Kiwi, living around the coast in Kunimi. Katy just had a baby boy, Shou, and he is a lovely plump and sweet-smelling baby. We were running late and couldn't stay late, but hopefully we'll see them again on a sunny summer day, when we head out to one of the peninsula beaches.

Amy and Lena at Starbucks:

Kodomo Kai Barbecue

I hated the fact that Kanji had to work and couldn't come! I had met the mothers before at the meeting, but I was still walking into a barbecue with a bunch of people I didn't know. It just would have been nice to have Kanji there too, he is so much friendlier than me! I sit there wondering what to say next, but Kanji always knows what to say! And that's not just a language issue either, he's just better at making friends, fullstop.

But I had the kids, and I brought my video camera so I would have something to do. We all stood around awkwardly for the first half hour or so, while four guys fired up their barbies. Lena and Amy found it a bit awkward at first, as there was one stupid girl who gasped and cried out 'Eigo da!' (English!) whenever we said something in English, and if we spoke in Japanese, she laughed and repeated it. It took a while for her to calm down, but once she did, the girls made friends as quickly as kids always do. Soon they were playing hide and seek, which was extra fun, as we were at a temple with gravestones out the back!

Then the barbecue officially started with a mini-speech from the Kodomo-Kai president, and we finally opened a beer and began to relax. We all fed the kids first - it was scary how fast the teenage boys ate! I thought there wouldn't be a scrap left for us! So we mums started digging in too. I hardly saw the kids - one minute they were in the temple's main hall with all the kids playing musical instruments, next they were scaring themselves in the graveyard, then jumping on the sofa. They each got adopted for the night by a kind older girl, Amy had a high school girl called Madoka and Lena had a junior high school girl.

Kanji dropped by at about 8pm, and greeted everyone with mini-speech. He had to leave again soon though. But by then I had relaxed, ate, and started to chat. I met a couple whose son works at Kanji's father's gasoline stand. I met my neighbor, a woman from the Phillipines, whose son Amy walks to school with. I ended up having fun. At the end of the night, all the children together, then all the adults together, played rock, paper, scissors for the leftovers. Amy got a packet of snacks, and I got a can of beer, which made a nice nightcap.

Rajio Taiso

What do you think of getting up at 7am, heading down to the bank parking lot near your home, and doing exercises in public to a tinny tune played on a tape-deck? Not your idea of summer holiday fun? Well, 'rajio taiso' or 'radio exercises' are a time-honoured tradition in Japan. You've probably seen whole parks-full of Chinese doing it on TV.

It's not done here to such a large extent, but some companies do it, and school kids on holidays (and their long-suffering mothers) are encouraged to join in, to maintain a regular schedule. It is organized by the 'Kodomo Kai' (see July 11), and the children are furnished with a postcard with the dates of the holiday, and one child takes care of the stamp pad and stamps each child's postcard.

Today was the first rajio taiso of the summer break, and our first experience ever. I set the alarm to a killing 6:40 - until Amy got sick I was waking up happily at this hour, but it only took two weeks of her being off for my natural slug-a-bed state to take over. Lena was even harder to shift than myself, although Amy leapt out of bed with her usual early-bird exuberance. Lena was still sleeping, in my arms, as I joined the circle at 7:02, much to the amusement of the others.

I got her on her feet in time for the end - it turned out to be only one song! So much for the 'exercise' component. Aerobics it is not. Amy also didn't join in, she saw her friends and suddenly went shy.

I'm not sure if it'll do the trick yet in fixing my schedule - I went back to sleep on the sofa for half an hour!

Shu and Groovy and a New Lesson

My old boss Yoshida Shu, from way back when I first came to Japan, called me before I went to New Zealand, to ask if I could teach him English. Odd, I thought, but agreed. We are having the lessons at Groovy, the cafe where I taught lessons when I first came here. It's a jazz club, with a tennis court and the best ice chocolate!

Shu is planning a trip to New Zealand, where he has all sorts of amazing things planned. Sometimes I think my job is not to teach him English, but to teach him common sense - No, you can't walk the Milford Track alone, in the middle of winter. You must start training now. You cannot take fossils out of New Zealand. We do know the value of dinosaur bones, you're not going to be able to find one sitting around in the dust that no-one had any idea of the value of, and take it back to Japan and become a millionnaire selling it. No-one is going to give you a bed and food in exchange for teaching them geological and palaontological Japanese. Nobody on Stewart Island wants to learn Japanese. And please, please come back to Japan to your long-suffering wife and daughter!

Meanwhile I picked up a new lesson. A private, about three times a month, on various days according to her schedule. I hope I don't get too annoyed with this one, I suppose if I do, I can always declare myself 'busy' on the days she chooses. How did I get into this? I am just not very good at negotiating in Japanese yet, plus I am hamstrung by my desire for the cash! I went into it intending fully to offer her ONLY Wednesday nights and Monday mornings, but she got me to offer Friday mornings too. I suppose I should put more little squiggles in my diary, if I really want to bargain hard!

At the hospital again

Amy complained of chest pains on Monday night. She said she'd had them on Saturday night after the Kindergarten Festival, and again on Sunday night at the barbecue, and that it was worse tonight. She said it felt tight, and her heart was beating too hard. I was pretty sure it was asthma, but as ventolin affects the heart, I was not sure about giving it to her. My doctor student was due to come for her lesson, she's a cardiac/thoracic specialist! Ironically, she chose that day to not turn up. I gave Amy the ventolin, and then checked the internet, where I read that chest pain is indeed a symptom of asthma. And that chest pain in children is almost never related to the heart, and is usually symptomatic of relatively minor, self-limiting complaints.

Next day though, I took her to the hospital, as a relapse of asthma needed to be looked into. She had stopped the flixotide about three weeks earlier. After being reassured by the five or so pediatric websites that started out with the reassurance that chest pain in children is almost never the heart, I almost had a heart-attack when the doctor kept checking her heart, then said he was ordering a chest x-ray and electro-cardiogram. That she had arrythmia.

So, I spend another nasty awful hour in that place, wondering why my little girl has to be so ill, over and over again. I was optimistic, but you can't help but worry. But I held it together enough to make her laugh during her electro-cardiogram - I told her she looked like a sheet on the clothes line, because the huge pegs they used on her arms and legs looked like the pegs we use on our clothes poles. Ask Jo about our pegs!

Her lungs are clear, and she has a small arrhythmia, but within normal range. She is back on flixotide, but since her lungs are quite clear, only one puff a day, just to stop it getting worse over summer.