Random, Randomer, and Randomest Reflections

I'm trying to clean out my blog Drafts folder so that we can make this into our "Family's First Year in Japan" Scrapbook.  So please excuse the randomness of the next few posts... and my apologies if I've already written about these topics at some point over the past year...

Kid Quotes from the beginning of our adventure

• Way way back in the Fall of 2011, when we first told the kids we were moving to Japan, Ethan's first comment was "We should bring a GPS." [Ryan's first comment, on the other hand, was "Are there vegetables there?"]  Ethan couldn't have been more correct.  We would be lost without the GPS on our phones, and the Japanese system of addresses doesn't make it any easier.  More on that later.

• While walking down the street in our first week in Tokyo, Ryan spots an anime poster and says "Look! It's a Japanese Chuck E. Cheese."  Made Kevin and me laugh.  

• And Ethan quite astutely asked "why is it so quiet here even though there are so many people?"  I had the exact same question and no good answer. We were astounded by the silence.

• How could a city of 13 million people be so incredibly quiet?  On the trains, on the streets, and get this - even on the playgrounds.  How is it that only OUR kids were making noise?  Seemed like "normal" kid noise to us, but apparently we are the only "normal" ones.  Ahhhh yes, our new "normal" in which we are forever telling the kids to not talk so loud.  We try to limit that to trains and quiet streets, but playgrounds are fair game.  You just can't expect me to ask my kids to be quiet at a playground, for pete's sake...

• As Ryan reached out to try a new button on the toilet in our hotel, Ethan said "Going potty should not be like playing a video game." 

• Below is a short video from August 2012 that Ethan recorded while we were goofing around and reflecting on our first 6 months in Japan.  Enjoy! [Note:  I am having some problems uploading the video, but I will keep trying.]

The "interesting" system of Japanese addresses

Apparently, house numbers in Tokyo are determined in chronological order of WHEN the house or building was BUILT.  Why, of course!  That makes perfect sense and makes it soooo easy to find places - all you need to know is the year that every house on a particular city block was built, order them chronologically, and then you should be able to find the right house number.  Good luck with that!

So, breaking down a hypothetical address in our neighborhood (because I don't want to post our real address on-line for fear of more fan mail than we can handle - and again, I jest): 6-14-9 Kakinokizaka.

Kakinokizaka, which means "Persimmon Tree Hill," is the name of our neighborhood (not our street, which, like most streets in Japan, has no street name).  The "6" is that we live in the sixth section of the Kakinokizaka neighborhood (or 6-chome).  The "14" is the block number, and the "9" is the 9th house built on our block.  Our block, like most, encompasses 4 different streets and includes houses (like ours) that are actually set in the middle of the block and don't actually face any street at all.

We are still puzzled by the fact that our next-door neighbor has the EXACT same address as we do and that seems perfectly fine to everyone else but somewhat confusing to us.  We received a letter once from someone in the US who had written the address correctly but had forgotten to write our names on the envelope, so the mailman rang the bell and had to check that it belonged to us (since our neighbors have the same address) before he could deliver it.

More Toilet Talk

So, you've heard about the super-duper fancy toilets that the kids liken to video games and the traditional Japanese squat toilets, but here are 3 more toilet tidbits for the record books.

See the "music note" button - that's for the flushing sound...

1.  Apparently, Japanese women are so uncomfortable with others hearing them while in a public restroom that there are "noise machines" in many women's stalls to mask personal bathroom sounds.  You simply press a button on the wall - so far, I've seen options for music and also the sound of the flush (but with no real flushing action).

2.  I looooooove the toilet instruction signs.  They crack me up every time.  I'm pretty sure I have the funny bone of a 10 year old boy...

The buttons: Cleanse, Bidet, Flushing SOUND,
Adjusting the volume, Adjusting the water pressure, Power deodorizing (!)

Proper foot and oshiri placement using a Western toilet

Proper foot and oshiri placement using a Japanese toilet

"Lavatory - It has separated to the male and the woman.  Don't mistake."

3.  Now this next one is TTB (Total Toilet Brilliance).  Prepare yourself to be astounded.  Almost as good as the heated toilet seats, but not quite.  We have this at our house, so don't all rush over at once.  When you flush the toilet, before the clean water fills the toilet tank, it comes through a faucet on the back of the toilet, so that you can wash your hands in the clean water before it goes into the toilet tank.  Now, that's some smart water usage... way to go, Japan!

Personal Victories... and ummmm, well, the opposite of that...

Some of these go way back to start of our Tokyo Adventure, while others are more recent .... here goes:

• I continue to be proud that we have not yet had recycling or trash returned to our front porch for not doing it right.  It's the small victories that must be celebrated - simple as that.  For the first several months, I lived in fear of returning home to find our recycling sitting in front of the door.  That said, I did get "politely informed" by a neighbor that all the labels must be removed from the bottles first (to be fair, the labels were marked with the recycling symbol so I thought I was doing it the right way, but apparently, the labels must be removed and recycled separately).  

• One of my greatest personal victories thus far was, only a few weeks into our life here, figuring out how to open a bank account at the post office to pay for Ethan's school lunch.  Woo-hoo for me!

• Though I miss breakfast cereal, I downright crave hot rice with seaweed sometimes.  It's like an addiction.  And I sooooo look forward to the lunch break during my 4 hour Japanese class on Tuesdays because I get to buy onigiri (rice balls wrapped in seaweed) at the corner convenience store.  Then again, I also have to stand there in the middle of the store with my dictionary looking stuff up so I know what kind of onigiri I'm getting...

• Ahhh, the irony of it all.  After all my smart-aleck comments about the Japanese uber-love of jan-ken-po (rock, paper, scissors), I ended up winning the jan-ken-po TOURNAMENT in Ethan's school - in front of everyone, in the gym, it was embarrassing.  [For the record, I can actually see the value of it for kids on the playground or something, but I have yet to see why adults use it so often - seems like conflict resolution or basic communication skills are missed in grade school such that rock-paper-scissors becomes a tool used even by adults?  Or something like that...]

• A humorous visit to the local koban (small police outposts that are scattered throughout the city) to ask if anyone had turned in a stuffed animal leopard that fell out of Ryan's backpack as we walked home from the train station.  We noticed it as soon as we got home so it could not have been missing for more than 15 minutes, because we retraced our steps immediately several times.  So that was fun - trying to tell a Japanese policeman that we lost a leopard and not being able to tell him where we lost it because there are no bloody street names, even though I knew our exact route where it was lost.  Fabulous fun that was.  Buuuut, it's Ryan's favorite toy and I felt so guilty because I told him to put it in his backpack so he wouldn't lose it and then well, somehow his backpack came unzipped and it fell out (because of course it can't be zipped all the way because Baby Leopard has to be able to breathe and see out).  Ryan took it pretty well - he keeps calling Leopard on the phone (and saying Moshi moshi which is how you answer the phone in Japanese - it's pretty cute) and apparently Leopard explained to him that he jumped out of the backpack to play with a white cat and now he he can't find his way home and he's trying to use his friend's GPS to get home.  Anyway - waaaay more details than you needed about our missing stuffed animal in Tokyo!  I did lose a little faith in Japanese humanity on this one - everyone says how honest the Japanese are and you often see "lost items" displayed on a bush or fence for the owner to come back and claim.  But, in our case..... this was a rather large stuffed animal, it could not have been on the sidewalk more than 15 minutes, it was clearly a much-loved child's toy, and yet, someone may have decided to take it home.  Alas...

• The Red Slippers of Shame, sort of like the Scarlet Letter, Japanese style.  Ryan's yochien has a whole cabinet filled with red slippers for visitors to wear inside the yochien.  But let it be known, this is the tell-tale sign that a mom either a ) didn't actually know or understand about this most "important" yochien parent meeting, or b) has forgotten her own special, cute, sparkly slippers.  Ummm, let's just say that these red slippers and I have a close relationship.  

• Summer Olympics 2012:  Let's just say that it was a different experience to watch the olympic broadcast in a foreign country. I swear there was more judo and table tennis than I thought could EVER be possible.  But once again, as a non-Japanese in Japan, I was wrong.   It was indeed possible.  

• Not to mention our opening ceremonies debacle. Goes something like this. We finally bought a TV a few weeks before the opening ceremonies for the express purpose of watching the Olympics.  Anyway, the Friday night before the Olympics started, we watched (read:endured) the BBC countdown to the Opening ceremonies.  If I had to see that silly 3 minutes of bell-ringing again, I might swat someone on the behind with a big ol' brass bell.  I looked up the start time on-line, 5 AM Saturday morning Japan time.  So, I wake the kids up at 4:45 AM on a Saturday in the middle of the summer, turn on BBC, and what are they broadcasting?  Well.....they ARE broadcasting live from London, but all they are showing is people in London watching the opening ceremonies on big-screen TVs.  Add to the irony that they report about 759 times that "over ONE BILLION people are watching the opening ceremonies live on TV around the world."  And guess what?  I am not one of them!  I was so freakin' annoyed with BBC.  I mean, seriously, what the freak?  Now, I'm sure there are tons of places in the Japanese media where it tells people (who can read Japanese) exactly what time the Opening Ceremonies are being broadcast on the Japanese channels.  Too bad for me.  And I feel waaaay too guilty to ask my kind Japanese friends for help with the TV - school stuff, yes - how to get somewhere, sure - if what I've just bought is bug spray or am I about to slather my kids with rat poison or something, ok... but I tried to draw the line at TV.  Until this most frustrating opening ceremonies experience, after which I asked 3 different sources about when the US-Japan women's soccer would be broadcast - I had learned my lesson and I was NOT going to get up at 3:45 AM to watch it live.  Well, I should have, because somehow all my information was not correct... I planned my day around an 8:15 AM soccer game - only to find a) that the game wasn't on and b) while trying to find the game, I accidentally see a report of who won.  ARRRGGGHHHHH!

• Telling Kevin that I liked my stomach, when I was trying to say I'm hungry.  We have an ongoing debate about who is/was right, but either way, I spent several weeks racking my brain trying to remember if I had said that to anyone else...

• Despite my pre-conceived notions of Japan, efficiency and logic do not always seem to be particularly important elements of life here...Here is an example of the beginning of the school year for yochien:  
• On Monday, yochien started at 9:15 am.  
• On Tuesday, yochien started at 9:15 am.  
• It's now Wednesday morning: I've written in my calendar that, on Wednesday, yochien starts at 8:50 and a parent meeting starts at 9:15 am.  
• On Thursday, I've written in my calendar that yochien starts at 8:50 am.  
• On Friday, I've written in my calendar that yochien starts at 8:50 am. 
• I double-check my calendar.  Clearly, my calendar must be wrong.  Clearly I must have misunderstood.  Why would they start school at 8:50 am only to have all the parents (read:moms) wait around for 25 minutes for a parent meeting to start at 9:15, when every other day of school started at 9:15?  That makes no sense.  So I check my calendar again and conclude that I must be wrong as that makes no sense.  I'm pretty confident about my own mistake so on Wednesday, I drop Ryan off at school at 9:15 am and I'm prepared (read: I remembered to bring my indoor slippers) for my parent meeting to start at 9:15 as well.  Except that when we get there, all of the other kids have been there for 25 minutes and all the moms are waiting around for the meeting to start.  Uhhhh.... I was a tad annoyed, to say the least, that I had been outwitted by my own logic and lack of confidence.
• See picture below.  Ummm, why would you bother writing "Information" in English when all the information is actually in Japanese?  Am I missing something here?  I see this kind of sign ALL the time...

The Beauty in the Everyday 

Japan is a place where beauty is paramount, even in everyday life.  

Bento boxes (not mine, mind you) are amazingly vibrant in color, texture, and arrangement.  

Restaurant meals are ornate, multi-dimensional, and exquisite.

Joggers look like they just stepped out of a fitness fashion magazine.

And my personal favorite, manhole covers that could be considered art...

At Lake Yamanaka, at the base of Mt. Fuji

In Nara, the town of temples, shrines, and deer

In our own little neighborhood...

How we get around....

At the beginning, everyone asked us when we were going to get a car.  Most of our friends here seem to have them, but from what we can tell, people only use them occasionally on weekends.  So, we've remained car-free and are quite happy about it.  It would be nice to have a car to make the occasional trip to Costco (yes, there's Costco in Japan, but not very close to us), but we've survived just fine!

Ethan walks the 1 km to and from school by himself (along with every other Japanese first-grader - the kids walk to school by themselves and many, many even take the train solo).  Blows my mind, but seems to work just fine.  

Trains and Buses

We can get just about anywhere we need to go by train or bus.  Thank goodness for English signs, yet we still somehow manage to be on the wrong train every once in a while! Much of the problem seems to stem from the different types of trains - there are rapid express, commuter express, limited express, express, and local.  Only express and local trains stop at our stop, so when you're running onto the platform to try and catch the train before the doors close and you don't have time to wait for the signs to switch to English to see what kind of train it is, there's only a 40% chance that it's the train we want... we play the odds quite often and rarely win.

Our train-travelling boys...

Taking the bus to yochien on a rainy day...

The Mamachari Bike

This is our main ride - the mamachari bike, translated as the mother's chariot.  The Japanese are downright brilliant when it comes to their bike accessories.  First of all, almost all the moms have "electric assist" bikes.  When we're huffing and puffing up the big hills and these tiny little Japanese moms blow right past us, while carrying multiple kids and about 17 bags, I'm jealous - I'll admit it.  Luckily, Ryan has learned to spot the electric batteries and he always has a kind comment that makes me feel better when we're the slowest one going up the hill.

Oh yeah, not to mention, that I get only about 70% leg extension.  And this was the biggest bike we could find (though we didn't look that hard and we didn't want to spend much money - we'd do that differently if we had to do it over again).

The Japanese also "pimp their rides" with such things as umbrella holders that is mounted on the handlebar so as to keep the rider dry in the rain (I really need to get one of these) and built-in gloves (which may be as much for sun protection as for cold weather, because I see people using them in all seasons) or super-slick rain covers that protect the front basket and/or the child seat.   It is not uncommon to see a mom on a bike with THREE kids - one in a child seat on the back, one in a child seat on the front, and one in an ergo on the mom's back.  Wowza.  They also have built-in locks; when the bike is unlocked, the key is inserted and when you lock the bike, you take the key out and take it with you.  How convenient is that...

I will say this, bike parking can be a problem, especially near the shopping areas and the train stations.

Child seat on the front and child seat on the back.  Both child
seats also convert into baskets...

Electric assist bike with the built-in gloves...

Tight bike parking...

Catalogue of Kindness

People have been so incredibly kind to us.  Beyond kind.  There is simply no way for me to capture in a blog post all of the kindness we have received from our new friends in Japan.  But, here are a few that stand out over the past year...

• One morning, as the neighborhood moms stood on the street corner to send our first graders off to school, I asked if anyone knew about any nearby judo classes.  I was just curious if someone knew anything off the top of their heads.  That same afternoon, a mere 4 or 5 hours later, one of the moms hands me a plastic folder filled with printed information about the only judo class she could find.  She had printed out a map showing me how to get there, she had written some English translation in the margins, and she explained it all to me.  After asking a seemingly innocent question, this friend took it upon herself to research the topic for me within a few hours.
• I was having lunch with some of the neighborhood moms one day, and they asked me how Ethan was doing in school.  It had been a difficult past few weeks in terms of Ethan feeling like kids were teasing him because he's American.  Ethan and I had talked through it over and over, he was doing all the "right" things, and I didn't have any other answers.  So, at that moment, during lunch, my eyes welled up with tears.  Not my proudest moment, for sure.  But, the lunch ended, I had to go pick up Ryan from yochien, and all was over, or so I thought. I had no idea that one of the moms left the lunch, went home, called Ethan's teacher to tell her that she was on her way to school to talk to her, and was at the school 30 minutes later, explaining to Ethan's teacher the issue that I had mentioned at lunch.  I had no idea she would be so proactive with her kindness.  We are good friends now.
• One day, I made the "mistake" of asking a friend if she had any hotel recommendations in Kyoto.  She didn't but instead she offered us use of her parents' time-share type hotel near Mt. Fuji.  Seriously, all I asked for was a hotel recommendation - not access to a 5 star hotel with great views of Mt. Fuji.
• On my birthday, I came home to find a beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers from one friend and homemade birthday cookies from another friend.  And the thing is - I don't even remember telling them when my birthday was.
• A friend wanted to explain something about the kids at school, but she knew that I probably wouldn't understand in Japanese and she was not able to explain in English.  Soooo, she wrote me a letter in Japanese, had a friend in Singapore translate her letter into English, and then she gave me the translated letter for me to read on the street corner one morning to make sure I understood.  That was a lot of work on her part to make sure I understood a relatively small issue.  
• On Halloween night, our neighbor rang the bell at 7 pm and said to us "I just got home.  Please come trick or treat at my house."  From what we could see, there is NO trick or treating in Japan, and yet this neighbor knew of the tradition and went out of her way to make sure the kids got to go trick-or-treating to at least one house. 
• We have other friends whose kindness is felt every single day that I can't even begin to write it all down.  But I feel it.  

My fancy dancy birthday cookies that appeared on my doorstep...the pink hearts spell out my name.