Twenty years ago

Random pics

2011-08-13T20:45:00.005+09:00

Here is big son, age 22 mos.:

Here is little son, about age 12 mos.:

And here they are both together, this May, with Toby!

The earthquake

2011-08-04T19:25:00.006+09:00

I have wanted to write about our earthquake experience, though we were so safe up here in Hokkaido. I will try to write briefly. This is just to record what it was like for us up here in Hokkaido, far from the disaster. I will write in bullet form to try and stay brief!

I was at work, sitting at my desk in the teacher's room of a public Jr. High School in Sapporo. Many kids were in their classrooms getting ready to go, or out in the hallways cleaning. The earthquake started at 2:46 p.m., but for us in Hokkaido it would have been slightly later.
The shaking was very large and side-to-side, clearly a very powerful earthquake, and it went on for approx. 5 minutes. It seemed to just go on and on. I was on the 2nd floor of the 3-story school building. I was not afraid for my health as such, since the shaking was not violent - but it was clearly a "big event" and there was a lot of worry, consternation, shouting, etc.
Kids in their classrooms went under their desks, but those in the hallways could be heard reacting, and the school nurse was shouting down the hallway for them not to move.
One cute 8th grade boy was at the door of the teacher's room, and I was shouting to him to get back away from the doorway, since there are large plate-glass windows right above the doorway.
Almost before the shaking had stopped, someone had turned on the TV and we saw it was in Miyagi. I was so worried as that is very far away, and as I mentioned, it was clearly a very powerful earthquake, even as we felt it in Hokkaido. I said to another teacher, "Oh no, that came all the way from Miyagi??? It will have been very bad there..." but he didn't seem as concerned.
Right away I sent the following message to my parents by email, from my iPhone (I had been just about to answer their previous email, anyway) : "Hi, the pics came through great! Don't worry about us from the earthquake just now. Sapporo is fine, though it was very long and enough to scare us all at the school. My heart is still beating fast and it seems the news from Miyagi will be bad... But don't worry, we are fine!" (This was before the tsunami had even started, and I was just aiming to reassure them as I knew the earthquake was big enough to make the news in the U.S., and these things are usually reported as "Northern Japan", which we are).
My dad told me later that it was an hour or so after receiving this email that they first saw news about the earthquake and tsunami on TV. I know from other relatives that coverage lasted into the night there, in the U.S.
After sending that email, I immediately posted on my facebook status (about 3 p.m.), mainly to get the message to my husband's family in England: "Very big earthquake in another part of Japan (Miyagi again) but we are fine in Sapporo. Very worried about Miyagi, and a tsunami is expected there...". We still had no idea of just how big it would be, but I knew it would make the news overseas in any case.
At this point the general expectation was that a "bad tsunami" might be, for example, as bad as the 1993 Okushiri tsunami, which badly damaged an island and killed 239 people.
In the teacher's room, teachers began crowding around the TV as the first videos of the tsunami were broadcast. Again, absolutely NO expectation that hundreds of miles of coast would be similarly affected. The video was shocking and scary, nonetheless.
Students were milling around worriedly, and they began hearing about the tsunami. A student told me that her family actually lives in Tomakomai, on the Pacific Coast, and that she stays with her grandmother in our city. She was worried about her family. I mentioned it to a couple of teachers, but they didn't seem to have any advice. I finally told her not to worry if she couldn't get through to them by phone right away. This turned out to be good advice, as she was not able to talk to them until the next morning.
There was a large aftershock. The students were very concerned, again. I was in the hallway this time and held hands with a girl who had started crying. We heard that this one was centered in Aomori (about half-way between Miyagi and us). I heard students worrying that we would be next. The students began to go home.
I came out of my daze and wondered how my children were doing. I got a text message from my older son (age 16) saying he was fine. The students at his school had taken refuge in the hallway. I tried to call my younger son (then age 11) but couldn't get through. I began worrying that he might be really scared, as he might be home alone and had been pretty scared in the past by a smaller earthquake, when he was home alone. I began wandering about the school distractedly, holding my phone. A teacher asked me if I was okay.
I kept checking my iPhone Japanese earthquake news app, and at first it had told me that the main earthquake was a 7 on the Shindo scale, but around the time I was trying to contact my younger son, I looked at the app again, and it had apparently broken down. It told me "there have been no earthquakes today". That was pretty scary in itself, and really unsettling for me.
I got a call from my clever younger son, who cleverly thought to call me!! He asked me, "Did you notice the giant earthquake?" He had been at school (Japanese school, 5th grade) with about 6-7 other stragglers (and no teacher), when the first earthquake hit. He felt it first and said, "Earthquake! Get under your desks!". Then the "smart boy" in class said, "No! You're more likely to die if you get under your desks!" (???) He was known to be smart, so a few got under their desks and a few didn't. The teacher came up to the classroom and when it was over, told them to go home. My son went home and had another friend with him. The big aftershock hit, and they hid under our big dining table, playing their DS's. I'm glad he had a friend with him, as he was less scared. He was also able to handle a call from my husband's sister in England, who had seen the news. Though he hadn't had contact with us yet, he told her Sapporo was fine and not to worry. Good boy!
I was also wondering about my older son's plans to go straight downtown for a voice-recording thing that had been arranged by an acquaintance who was making a CD for her English school. I had trouble thinking straight, but had finally decided that, if the subways were running, he could go as normal.
I left school and got on the subway. It was running normally. I was still kind of in a daze, and people seemed strangely quiet. I went downtown, checked in on my older son at the recording studio for about 10 minutes, then got back on the subway and went straight home.
I was also wondering about plans for that night. The 5th grade moms and teacher (from my younger son's Japanese elem. school) were scheduled to have their big end-of-school-year dinner with drinks. We had all paid our 3,500 yen each (about 40 dollars) the previous day.
I stopped by the supermarket, and it seemed normal-ish. Things felt very weird and kind of quiet, though. I was relieved that there was no panic at the supermarket.
I decided to go ahead and go to the party, and as it turned out everyone else went, too. We still had no idea just how bad the disaster was. Japan is a country of earthquakes and for the most part, things have to go on as normal. No-one expected or knew yet that this would be a "once in 1000 years" earthquake.
Once home from the party (after 9 p.m.), I was glued to the news for several hours. We all watched, with horror. I posted this on facebook, around 11 p.m.: "Emotions all over the place today... I was laughing and crying with 9th gr girls at lunchtime (they will graduate next Tues). Later we were all scared during the earthquake. I was busy all evening (Sapporo was okay so most things are continuing as planned). Now all at home watching the news... :( "
I went to bed sometime about 1 a.m., I guess. As dark had fallen just a few hours after the earthquake, there was only so much they could say about the situation, and they were mainly repeating what had become known by nightfall. We would have to wait for morning to find out more. We still had no idea just how bad it was, but it was bad and shocking enough already.
More later...

Garden Flowers and Fruits 2010

2011-05-02T00:13:00.005+09:00

I am making preparations to start covering more topics from my hobby, family history! In the meantime, here is another project I've been working on...

Nearly all the flowers and other plants of note that appeared in our garden during the previous year, in a slide show:

http://s1128.photobucket.com/albums/m498/KDixit/Garden%20flowers%20and%20fruits%202010/?albumview=slideshow

The slide show is arranged from spring (April, here in Hokkaido) to the beginning of winter (December). I don't know many flower names, and enjoyed looking them up for the slide show! Please comment if you know any flower names that I missed - I would like to learn more :)

Most of them were planted by our landlords, and appear year after year!! A few are wild, and I planted the annual vegetable plants (potato, tomato, green chili). Also, a few things did not get photographed (by mistake), like asparagus and edamame (beans), and in other cases the photo quality was too poor (a few flowers, but not major ones). Our garden does get very overgrown each summer, since I don't have time to weed much, but anyway, what work I do manage to do is very enjoyable and educational (for me as well as our children, though the education for them comes mainly at the dinner table, as they don't like to help with gardening)!!

Nearly 5 years on...

2011-04-17T16:56:00.003+09:00

Was thinking about this old post today:

http://twentyyrs2.blogspot.com/2006/08/komadai.html

That was the legendary face-off in Koushien between two high school pitchers, Yuuki Saito and Masahiro Tanaka. 12th graders in high school at the time, Tanaka (Maa-kun) went straight to the pros, and Saito (though he could easily have gone pro then) decided to go on to college baseball at Waseda Univ.

Now, nearly 5 years later...

Maa-kun has been (and still is) an extremely popular and successful young pitcher for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. We still love him up here in Hokkaido, and Fighters fans enjoy seeing him as the opposing pitcher when the Fighters play the Eagles.

Yuuki Saito kind of disappeared from the public eye for a while while he played college baseball (it is not followed here on the scale that pro baseball and the Koushien high school tournament are). He recently finished college, and was signed to our team, the Fighters, over the winter!! Although he was the pitcher opposing the Hokkaido team in Koushien 5 years ago, Fighters fans have been very excited to get him on our team. He is getting a lot of interest and press. He is still referred to as the Handkerchief Prince, although I think he has grown out of that stage of his life and probably wishes he had a different nickname. However, he puts up with it gracefully.

My husband took one of our neighbors to see him pitch in a Fighters game today, and we won. :) Today's game wasn't against Rakuten, but at some point we will be sure to see another Maa-kun vs. Yuuki Saito face-off!!

Here's to Maa-kun and Yuuki Saito, two nice young pitchers -- glad they are both doing great, 5 years after they were catapulted to national fame in Koushien! :)

Weird coincidences

2011-04-02T18:09:00.005+09:00

I seem to get these kinds of word coincidences a lot lately... it's kind of freaky, but maybe it's normal (?). This is a good example, so I thought I'd write about it.

Right now, I am playing on the computer, doing my favorite hobby, family history research. I was just researching my great-great-grandfather's older brother, Thomas Henry Darley, who was a blacksmith in England. He was shown as a blacksmith in the 1851, 1871, and 1881 censuses, living on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, England. This is where his wife Fanny was from - he and his brother (my ancestor William Frederick Dunn Darley), were from Devon, over on the other side of England. I just now found big brother Thomas in the 1891 census, and, expecting to see the occupation blacksmith, was very surprised to see that he was a "Bird & Animal Stuffer". I thought this was pretty funny, and made my kids pause the video so I could tell them about this sudden and funny change of occupation. He had also moved to the town of Gillingham, Kent (on the mainland of England, near the Isle of Sheppey).

[By the way, I am planning to change this blog to a more hobby-centered blog, probably next week. I haven't been using this blog much, and might find more use for it in connection with my favorite hobby! :) ]

Back to the coincidence -- my kids are watching the movie Jumper in the next room right now, and my husband is half-dozing on the sofa near them. Soon after I told my kids about the blacksmith-turned-bird & animal-stuffer, my husband perked up enough to criticize the accent of one of the characters in Jumper, called Griffin: "What a crap accent. Sometimes it sounds Irish, sometimes Mancunian, sometimes Scottish, now it sounds Cockney. I bet he's American." (My husband is from England). I thought I would be of some use... I went to imdb and looked up the character. "Oh, he's from Billingham, England." My husband said, "That's in Kent. He's from the south but he's trying to sound northern. (grumble)" I said, "Wait, it says Stockton on Tees, where is that?" "That's in the north. Hmmm.. (grumble grumble)." Me: "Oh, wait, when you said you thought it was in Kent, were you thinking of *Gillingham*?" "Yeah."

Me: "That's so weird!! You know that blacksmith bird & animal stuffer I was *just* telling the kids about, well he lived in *Gillingham, Kent*!!!"

Husband: "Hm, very good.. " (doesn't sound impressed)

Ha ha, I had never heard of either town until today. I won't forget them now!!

Fine

2011-03-19T14:10:00.004+09:00

We are fine, and safe up here in Hokkaido.

Still very worried and stressed out about people down south, esp. in Iwaki-shi which it seems is being overlooked still. Last night on the news they said they have many faxes from people in Iwaki, and read out several, including one from a mother of a 1-year-old with a 40 degree fever, and a 2-month-old whose life many be in danger from lack of milk. Sekkaku iki-nokotta no ni.

As far as our lives up here in Hokkaido, we are conserving kerosene (heating fuel) and gasoline, and while I noticed a few blank spots on the supermarket shelves, they appeared to be mainly very random items - probably just certain specific items whose production or supply chain has been disrupted. Similar items right next to them were still fully stocked.

Biology creative story by unnamed 10th grader

2010-11-23T15:20:00.001+09:00

(the topic was fixed - no choice in that matter, but he did the best he could!!)

Do you know anyone who grew up for 16 years without moving or talking to anyone at all, when there were thousands of others around him/her? Of course not right? Well now you do. Hi, I’m an egg. I live in my mom’s Ovum. I’ve been in this sand bag for over 15 years now, growing up, maturing, and waiting for my chance at life. Now, thank god, I am at the front of the line, waiting for my escape. There are a whole lot of others bunched up behind me, but if everything works out fine, I wont have any of them bothering me while I’m on the move. Very soon, I’ll be making my way to the outside world, where all the walls are full of nutrition, and I can have a chance at mating. I just hope that the guys are strong enough to make the journey at least.

Oh! My protective sack, the Ovum, has just ripped open and all of my nutrition is leaking out. Aaah! Here I go! Ah! I’m out. Surrounded by my Ovum’s contents, I stick around for a little while, before being pulled toward the fallopian tube. It looks like a giant hand grabbing for me. I am engulfed, and pulled along by the walls of the tube, which look like they have hairs pushing me along. I know I have not much time to live, because my lifespan is fairly short, so if there are any males anywhere near here they’d better start getting a move on.

I’m beginning to remember, what I was told by my teacher as I was growing up, all the troubles they have to go through just in order to see me. First of all, thousands and thousands of sperm enter through the vagina at one time. Then their numbers are first diminished by the acidic environment. After that, many of them are caught in the gateway to the Urethra, also where I am now headed. The few hundred that do survive and move on still have to swim against the current to reach where I lie in wait. Next after that… Whoa! There they are! There are about 50 sperm swimming toward me. They start ramming at my outside shell, trying to break through. I can feel that a few of them are almost to me now. Using their enzyme-tipped heads, they struggle to enter. Yes! One of them is in. I don’t want anymore of them to come, so I make my shell impenetrable to the remaining bunch of sperm. Very soon my mind will combine with the mind of the sperm, Sam. I can now have my chance at building yet more life. I wish for he/she to become a successful person. Sam’s tail has just fallen off. This is my time. See you in another life.

Studious children

2010-08-18T22:16:00.002+09:00

I was riding my bike to the pool today, and while walking my bike up a narrow sidewalk (with woods on one side and a guard rail on the other), I came across three small children (around age 7, two girls and a boy).

As I walked past them, they gathered around me as though they expected me to talk to them. Two of them were holding simple study materials, like kids' math workbooks from the 100 yen shop. I said, "Oh, have you all been studying?" (it was a weird place to study - just along this random road, not near any houses... they brandished the workbooks as though they were taking a survey and wanted to ask me something!)

girls: "... could we ask you a question? blahblahblah.... (unintelligible)" (this was all in Japanese btw)

I leaned down closer, to hear their question. "What?"

girls: "How do you say 'uta' (song) in English??"

me: "What? Buta? (pig)?"

girls: "No, no, how do you say 'uta'?"

me: "What??? Futa?? (lid)?" I was not trying to be funny... just couldn't hear them so well!!

girls: "No, no, UTA. UTA."

me: "Oh! *Song*" (I said it with my real accent, not katakana)

girls: "*Song* Song... song... (they copied my accent as best they could) ... (one girl pointed to the other) She was trying to sing an English song just now, but she couldn't remember it."

me: "Oh - Was it... Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream? (singing)"

girls: "No, no... "

me: "Hmmm... was it... Twinkle, twinkle, little star? (singing)"

girls: "That one, that one!"

me: "Shall I sing it for you? Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are, ... (etc.) "

girls: "Wow, sugoi!! cool! (etc.)"

me: "Well, bye-bye, good luck with your studying! You are all very studious. Bye-bye!"

The little boy had been standing back a bit throughout all this, and as I started to push my bike away, he started to cheekily and loudly try to sing Twinkle twinkle, as it had sounded to him with his little-boy mind. "CHINKO !, CHINKO !, ..." (chinko is a little-kid's word for Willie, wee-wee, in other words pe n!$ ) (trying to avoid weird googling here...) The little girls started to laugh.

me, stopping and shouting back: "Noooooo!! Aaaaaa!! Not Chinko! Twinkle... *twinkle*!! It means kira-kira!"

girls: "Oh, that's why it's Kira-kira, hikaru!" (the Japanese version of Twinkle twinkle)

me: "Yes, yes!! Twinkle, *twinkle*.. NOT chinko!! Well, bye-bye!"

Rusuban

2010-08-07T23:13:00.005+09:00

Toby and I have been doing Rusuban (home alone, guarding the house) for 2 weeks, while the rest of the family went to England to see Nanny & Dadu (Grandma & Grandpa), aunts, uncles, cousins, 2nd cousins, etc.! They had a great time! They came back today, so I haven't seen their pictures yet, but here are a couple that my husband's cousin put on facebook... from their sightseeing trip to London.

My babies are getting big...

2010-08-01T17:48:00.003+09:00

One is 6 ft. tall now, and the other is 5 ft. tall. Here they are at a school festival this summer, eating kakigori (snowcone/shaved ice).

Twins of the past

2010-07-06T22:21:00.004+09:00

One of my favorite hobbies is family history research. One thing I've found interesting is how, in the past in the U.S., twins were given more similar names than is common now. Here are some pairs I've found (most of these were related to me somehow-or-other):

- girl twins Clarris and Ferris (b. 1916)

- boy twins Morris and Louis (b. 1922)

- girl/boy twins Eva and Evan (b. 1891)

- girl twins Marlyse and Marvel (b. 1904)

- girl twins Margaret and Martha (b. 1855)

- girl twins Elva and Eva (b. 1926)

- girl twins Ann and Hannah (b. 1879)

- girl/boy twins Dona and Donald (b. 1921)

- girl twins Mary and Minnie (b. 1857)

- girl twins Lulu and Lola (b. about 1880?)

...and the most similar ever...

- girl twins Olive and Olivia (b. 1871) !!

In the park

2010-06-14T22:54:00.006+09:00

Walking Toby in the park this morning between 6:20 and 6:30, we met...

1) First, as we left the house, a shock for Toby! Our neighborhood cat, a white cat with a red collar, was hiding under our car. Toby recoiled in fear and disgust! Brother Jiji has named the cat "Somersault" for some reason, so we all call it that in our family. p.s. now he insists that the cat's name be spelled "Summersalt".

2) In the park, the unfriendly man with his amazing and cute frisbee-catching dogs! Two active border collies, both black with white paws and chests.

3) The friendly older lady gathering greens for her rabbit (I used to wonder if she was gathering greens for her own table...)

4) Another friendly old lady with her old dog, Choro. Choro is a raggedy-looking, fairly big, 15-year-old white dog, maybe an Ainu-ken (Hokkaido-ken)? Choro has a very large lump on one side of her neck. Kind of antisocial (Choro, I mean), but at least she is finally used to us now. The lady on the other hand is super friendly!

5) An old man, Choro's friend, who often walks past the park on the sidewalk along the road. This man always carries dog snacks (it would seem), so old Choro perked up when he passed by this morning, and trotted quickly across the park and out to the sidewalk to see her best friend. Her elderly owner followed slowly behind (Choro is usually off her leash).

6) The sporty-looking professor who lives across from the park, brushing his dog Bau. Bau is a Corgi and is an outside dog (lives in a doghouse) - he used to get alarmed when we walked by his house, and would bark at us. For a year or more he has not barked, and recently we met Bau up close for the first time. He seemed so happy to see us, and rolled onto his back! This morning we met him for the 4th or 5th time since then. Toby completely ignores Bau, and tries to stay away, because Toby is only interested in dogs he doesn't know well. Toby *loves* to meet dogs he doesn't know, but after 2-3 meetings he has no use for them...

7) A girl in Jiji's 5th grade class, getting ready to jog with her father. She is a tall girl, probably just 1-2 cm less than Jiji. Also her kindergarten-aged brother was hanging around with her. They also live across from the park.

All this was just during the 10 minutes we were out (before 6:30 a.m.), in a small park near us!

-- Not seen today, but often seen in this time bracket....

- Mei the police dog. Very big all-black German Shepherd (cross?), looks like a bear or a black wolf. Scary-looking, but very well-behaved, and has a cute name! She is often found training in the park. Toby used to be terrified of her, but has improved recently.

- Boys of various ages practicing basketball, jogging, or pretending to practice soccer. Usually in pairs or singly. The soccer boy is a grade-school kid who is often found at this time with a soccer ball and some mini-cone things, but he just seems to stand around...

Interesting questions

2010-06-10T20:25:00.003+09:00

Yesterday at work (at a jr. high, a new one for me), I visited the school's special education class for the first time. I did my usual self-introduction spiel, with pictures of my family and hometown. Then the teacher opened the floor for questions from the students. Usually when this happens in a regular jr. high school class, there will be either silence, or attempts by friendly students to ask very standard questions, or a class clown or very good student asking a couple of standard or humorous questions - think, "What music do you like?" etc..

The special education students were allowed to ask their questions in Japanese, and I was very surprised by the large number of students who immediately raised their hands. The questions were very different from those in a regular class, too... just off the top of my head, some of the questions I was asked were (here translated into English):

* "How did you feel when Michael Jackson died in America?"

* "Were any of your family members injured in the terrorist attack on America?"

* "Do you know the Gundam character named ---------?"

* "Did you hear about the murder of the ALT L------ H----- in Tokyo?"

* "Did you buy Michael Jackson's Thriller?"

* "Do you think President Obama is a good person?"

* "What was the first tourist area you visited in Japan?"

* "What place do you like most in your home state in America?"

* "Power Rangers are also popular in America. Did you like them when you lived in America?"

Health Topic: Urticaria Pigmentosa

2010-03-26T20:52:00.012+09:00

Don't know why, but I like health topics :)

I've been meaning to write about this one for a while. It may not really be of interest to any casual readers, but could be useful for anyone who visits when googling this term, etc.!

The words "urticaria pigmentosa" literally mean "pigmented hives". However, this skin condition is not hives, but one of the several forms that mastocytosis can take. Mastocytosis is the name for problems involving abnormal clumping of mast cells in the body -- they are the cells that produce histamine, a chemical that is produced by the body during an allergic reaction. As far as I know, though, mastocytosis does not cause allergies -- however if a child has both allergies and mastocytosis, then they will have extra problems. Also, mastocytosis can react to a wide variety of triggers, and can cause problems not normally associated with allergies.

My younger son (now age 10) - here called "Jiji", has/had a mild case of this problem. It is pretty rare, enough that many doctors have not heard of it (except for dermatologists, of course). It may effect somewhere between 1 to 6 /10,000 people (according to the internet - a few sites estimate 1/10,000, and http://www.mastokids.org/ has a video which estimates there are less than 200,000 people with it in the U.S., which would be less than 6.7 people/10,000).

Urticaria Pigmentosa (I'll abbreviate it as UP) is the form of mastocytosis where the mast cells form little clumps here and there in the skin, and for some reason these clumps draw in melanin, leading to the formation of brown spots which are semi-permanent (they take several years to fade, after the problem has subsided). UP is often found in children, and has a good chance of going away by adolescence.

There may be a few brown spots, or many, and they may be fairly stable, or they may itch and blister easily. So, there is a huge range in the severity of this condition. A child may have hundreds of spots which itch and blister easily, and also the release of histamine from many spots at once can cause other serious problems. Many children with UP carry an epi-pen, like sufferers of serious allergies. Some older children can be teased by other kids because of their spots, and even parents of small children with UP will find that other adults mistake the child's spots for chicken pox or some other unwelcome problem. Hardly anyone has ever heard of UP, so parents usually have to just say something simple like, "He has a skin condition, but it's not contagious".

We were lucky in that Jiji had only about 60 spots at the peak (around age 3 or so), and they hardly ever reacted - mainly just to immersion in hot or cold water, and the friction of drying with a towel. So, when swimming or bathing, or drying off, we would often notice that some spots were red.

I won't go into all the other main characteristics of this problem here, as it would take too long. For that, I suggest going back to Google, and also the excellent website, http://www.mastokids.org/ . Anyway, here is something I wrote up when he was 8 years old. I've edited it slightly to bring it up to date.

Our experience

"Funny spots"

Jiji began to get brown spots on one side of his face, near his ear and jaw, when he was 6 months old. I was very surprised when they suddenly appeared. We had just taken a long car drive on a sunny winter's day, to visit relatives for Christmas, and I thought the sun had somehow caused the spots. I also did some research and found that parsnips can cause sensitivity to the sun. We were living in England, and parsnips had been part of our Christmas dinner. So for the next year and a half, I kept him away from the sun and parsnips (needlessly, as it turns out). Not long after the age of 6 mos., spots appeared in a similar position on the other side of his face, too. I became worried that more and more spots would appear, covering my baby, who had been healthy until then. I caught myself looking at other babies to see if any of them had moles or large freckles, like my baby. It just didn't seem normal. I could never find any other babies with spots like his.

I tried asking the doctor and nurse, but they said, "They're just freckles." Meanwhile, people began asking me if my son had chicken pox, and a friend of a friend who was a doctor asked us at a party, "What are those spots?" We were worried, but didn't know how to take things further, since in England you need a referral from your general practitioner, if you want to see a dermatologist. I didn't want to annoy my GP by asking again and again.

The summer Jiji turned one, I kept him in his stroller under a parasol for most of the summer, while his older brother played in the sun as usual! Poor little thing! But I really felt that his skin was very sensitive to the sun. Meanwhile, the number of spots was increasing little by little. He got a few on his legs, arms, and upper chest. That next winter (when he was 1 and 1/2), he started to get spots on his tummy and back, in places where the sun definitely wasn't going through all his winter clothes. This was a puzzle. Occasionally the spots seemed more reddish, for example after a bath. Sometimes I noticed a new spot that was just red, and later it seemed that a permanent brown spot had formed in that place. I tried looking online for "brown spots", "freckles on baby", and so on, but couldn't find anything at all that seemed to fit. Around that time, we moved to a new town and had a new GP. I was worried, but he still seemed otherwise healthy.

"Diagnosis"

Finally, when he was 2, after a year and a half of worrying and taking various precautions, I had a chance to ask our new GP about the spots. He was immediately interested in them, agreed that they didn't look normal, and referred us to a dermatologist. The dermatologist was quick to diagnose urticaria pigmentosa, and said it was uncommon and he wanted to show a couple of medical students who were there that day. He also brought in another doctor to look, and she agreed with his diagnosis. He had tested it by rubbing a spot, and he said that the spot became red and raised, though I couldn't see much difference. (Side note: on the same visit he also felt that Jiji had eczema, but I realized afterwards that, unclothed, his skin had reacted to my wool sweater, and that he must share my allergy to wool/lanolin.)

I got home and of course searched for UP online, and the diagnosis made sense to me. I was so relieved that it wasn't some kind of cancer or blood disorder, and also relieved that he wouldn't have to stay out of the sun for his whole life! I began letting him go in the sun, and this made the spots less noticeable, as he tanned (also, as he is half Indian and half white, he tans easily). After reading about UP online, I was nervous about adverse reactions to bee stings, etc., and began keeping a bottle of antihistamine syrup at home and at school (just for the first 2-3 years or so, until the problem seemed to be subsiding -- I do still inform his school, "just in case", but have not been taking any other precautions).

The dermatologists wanted to see him every year, just to keep tabs on him. The spots were probably at their peak around age 3 or 4, when he had a total of about 60 spots. A few on each side of his face, a few on each leg and arm, and a few on his back and front. Many of them seemed to be quite symmetrical in arrangement, on the left and right side of his body, and I've read that U.P. can appear to be kind of symmetrical. I have always considered that he has a very mild case of U.P. We have never had any problems with the spots (touch wood), except for occasional redness. The triggers for this were temperature extremes and abrasion (towel rubbing, water jets, etc). By the time he got old enough for other kids to notice the spots, they were already starting to fade away, and the other kids don't seem to have noticed them. Ironically, he ended up getting some cute freckles (real freckles, this time) around his cheeks and nose, and for some reason he is sensitive about them, and says that he doesn't like the way he looks, because of his freckles (?). He has never said anything against the U.P. spots, though, which are less visible from the front, and which are now mostly faded, anyway.

By the age of 8, and I could only find a few of the spots left. They were light enough that a stranger wouldn't really notice them.

"Growing pains"

Jiji has always been very healthy, generally speaking, and is very physically active, likes sports, etc., but he does tend to catch things more easily or worse than the rest of our family. For example, he had flu two years in a row at ages 5 and 6, but no-one else in the family caught it from him. One thing is that he had a very bad problem with "growing pains" in his legs, which started before he could speak, so he couldn't even tell us what the problem was. He used to cry from the pain, at night, and since I and my husband both had growing pains as children, eventually we figured out what the problem was (he would quieten down when his legs were massaged).

As he became older, he was able to tell us that the problem was pain in his legs, and we had to give him children's Tylenol and/or massage his legs in the middle of the night, to help him with the pain (we didn't want to get out of bed and would have him get into our bed and then try massaging his legs, while half asleep - but often it wasn't enough and we had to get up for the Tylenol in the end anyway). Sometimes this would happen up to a couple of times a week. By age 8, he only had this problem once every couple of months or so, but still the pain was bad enough to make him cry in his sleep. When he was younger, he also seems to be prone to pains in his stomach, though these have never been bad enough to cause much inconvenience. From looking at the http://www.mastokids.org/ site, it seems that kids with mastocytosis do frequently have leg and stomach pains. The stomach pains were less severe in our case, but the leg pains were often unbearable for Jiji and would not go away until a parent got out of bed to go get the children's Tylenol. They were frequent enough that we had to make sure to pack the children's Tylenol for any overnight trips, even just one night, in case of a problem.

I am curious to know if there could be any relationship between mastocytosis and garden-variety "growing pains". The reason I wonder about this is that there is a strong history of growing pains in my family. I had them, and my mother and grandmother both had bad growing pains. My husband had them, too, and was the only one in a family of 4 children to have them. Jiji had bad leg pains ("growing pains"), but I learn now that leg pains can be a symptom of mastocytosis (which he does have) ... hmmm... so I wonder if there is any connection.

In the top photo (taken at age 2) you can see about 10 spots on his upper body and arms - the ones on his face were not so visible from the front. The spots were not so big, but it was worrying that I didn't know what they were, and they were gradually increasing in number. Luckily they topped out at around 60 total, on his face, front, back, arms and legs. The two spots visible near his collarbone used to get reddish more often - perhaps they were irritated by the edge or collar of his clothing.

In the bottom photo (also age 2, playing with his big brother), you can clearly see about 5 or 6 of the spots on one side of his face (but only if you click the photo to see a larger version). This photo is a couple of months after the first one, and that is the summer I started letting him go in the sun, so he is much more tan in the second photo (plus it's kind of a dark photo, while the first photo is inside, with a flash).

Love, love HONDA!

2009-12-15T21:46:00.004+09:00

Our (beloved) Honda Odyssey had an oil leak, and with new winter tires needed and "shaken" (expensive car check) coming up soon, we decided to find a new car...

My husband looked on Yahoo and found a used car at an official Honda Used Car Dealer, very close to us. We went in and decided on it immediately (that was in late Nov.).

This past Saturday, we went in to pick it up, and say goodbye to our old one. :(

The new one is 10 years old and has about 83,000 km on it, but that is a lot fewer km than our other one had when we bought it. And the dealership fixed it up - it's SO clean and beautiful inside, and they did various work on it, that they say is worth up to about $2,000. We spent less than $4,000 on it anyway, so we thought this was pretty nice of them! It won't need a "shaken" until March of 2011, and it came with winter tires that are still useable for one winter.

Also, they quickly and easily arranged a car loan for us, which is a much better deal than our credit card, and when our insurance decided to get a bit difficult about the age of the car, they easily arranged insurance for us, too! This was all done so naturally and nicely, without any ho-humming or even the slightest weirdness about us being an all-gaijin (foreigner) family.

We came away feeling like we are really valued customers, even though we are just these random people that walked in and took a cheap older car with an accident history off their hands. They have already sent us a postcard with a photo of the whole dealership staff smiling and making peace signs, and also an elegant thank you card with a hand-written letter of thanks. And the car comes with a one-year warranty!

The only slight problem in all of this is that it will be very difficult now to avoid letting them do our "shaken" in Mar. 2011, even though it will probably be about $500 more than our local Idemitsu gas station, with whom we have built up a nice relationship over the last 1.5 years.

Anyway, we really liked doing business with Honda and I am so impressed with how seriously their company takes things like customer service & the reputation of their products. And they have a great attitude towards international communication, too (fitting for a huge international corporation). Yay HONDA!! (p.s. I come from a family of Honda-lovers -- my dad & his brother, both in the U.S., have been driving Hondas exclusively for more than 20 years!)

Health topic: Flagged for health intervention!

2009-11-30T17:38:00.003+09:00

This year was the first time I took advantage of the cheap yearly health check that is available for people age 40 and over (I'm not sure if this and other health benefits vary regionally or not - I will describe the system for the part of Japan I live in, anyway). I'm 42 now.

This health check costs around 1000 yen, or about 10 U.S. dollars, and includes a variety of standard tests & measurements, including a blood test. Also, since I had been having some pains in my chest, I asked for the ECG, for an extra 200 yen or so (2 dollars). My grandfather died suddenly of a heart attack at age 50, so those pains were making me nervous.

Anyway, the doctor said the tests showed no problems (and the chest pains have gone away, too!). That was back in August.

This week, I was surprised to receive a card in the mail telling me that on the basis of that check, I have been flagged for a free health consultation, at our local ward health center! The reason seems to be that my BMI was 25.9...

As you can see, I am a bit overweight... healthy BMI is supposed to be 20-25. In fact, after having that cheap health check in mid-August, I learned that my company was also requiring us to have a health check (at a clinic of their choosing), so I had a second health check in late August. My weight measured slightly higher, and when I got the results sometime in Sept., I had gotten an "A" grade in everything except my weight, which had a "C" grade, and on this basis they had given me a "C" grade overall. :(

This and various other things (like finally getting really fed up with being overweight, a situation which started when I was expecting my second child more than 10 years ago!!) led me to start dieting in Sept. (still dieting now). Mostly just paying attention to what I eat, and not overeating or bingeing on snacks. When I'm full, I just stop eating! One piece of toast, not two, etc. Also, trying to walk most days to and from the subway station and my workplace, etc...

As of yesterday (*before* our Thanksgiving meal!!, which, yes, we had on Sunday evening), my weight was down by 2.3 kg (5 lbs.) and my BMI was 25.3 - yay, almost to healthy range! Although I've only lost 5 lbs., people have been saying I look thinner. My ideal weight would be to lose about 10 more kg (22 lbs.), but I want to just lose 4 more kg (9 lbs.) first and then see if it seems necessary to continue or not. So, about 9 more lbs. to lose in the next few months.

The health intervention card I got this week said I'm at risk for "metabolic syndrome" (something about excess fat, blood pressure problems, etc.), and that I've been flagged for the lower level of intervention ("active"?), not the higher level ("aggressive"?). I'm to go in to the health center in late Dec. or early Jan., to be weighed & measured, and then to have a free consulation about my lifestyle and how to improve my weight & fitness. The total time involved will be about an hour.

By U.S. standards, I am only a little overweight, but I'm definitely not in top condition and at my age it would be easy to keep gaining!! I think it's wonderful that the Japanese health care system is so proactive in trying to keep people in good condition, even people who are not so far over the healthy BMI range, like myself.

I'm definitely planning to go in for the free consultation, and it will be good motivation both beforehand and afterwards. Beforehand, because I will want to maintain and even improve on my current weightloss progress, to show them I am already trying. Afterwards, because the counselor will presumably say some helpful things and get me fired up for more weightloss!!

Health Topic: H1N1 (Swine) flu

2009-11-21T14:46:00.004+09:00

I think our city was one of the first ones in Japan to have a proper outbreak of swine flu. The school where I work had to be closed for 3 days in mid-September, but the teachers still went to work as normal. It was also one of the first schools in the city to be hit. We had a kind of seige atmosphere, with just teachers hanging around in the teachers' room, all of us wondering if we had already contracted swine flu. In the end, only one teacher caught it. The kids returned in due time, in good health and spirits.

Some time later, my younger son's elementary school also had several closed classes and grades. However, 1st and 4th grades had hardly any flu. They decided this was because the 1st and 4th grade classrooms were on the other side of the school from everyone else. Later the 1st grade caught it, but still not the 4th grade (my younger son's grade).

Then it came to my older son's school. My son caught it at the same time as quite a few other people, and the whole school was closed for 3 days. This was around Oct. 21 or so. My son had a positive result on either an Influenza A test or an H1N1 test (I don't know which), and the doctor said he had H1N1. He was prescribed Relenza, which you take by breathing in. Here in Japan they do not give Tamiflu to kids age 10 or over, because they had a worrying number of older kids getting hurt or dying from irrational behavior while on Tamiflu (though it has not been proven that Tamiflu was the cause). Here, Tamiflu had been regularly prescribed to most flu sufferers for some years - my younger son had taken it the two times he caught flu, in 2005 and 2006. Anyway, I was very happy with the Relenza because my older son's stomach is sensitive and he tends to throw up anytime he has a fever (even if it is a fever from an ear infection or some other random thing). I wouldn't like for him to throw up his medicine, so the Relenza (that is breathed in) was just right! He got well soon - he only seemed really under the weather for one night (during which he did indeed throw up, but good boy, didn't wake the rest of us!). By about 10 a.m. the next day he was happily watching TV! His fever didn't go higher than 38.9 (102 degrees F), that I know of. After getting well he had a lingering mild cough, for a week or two.

None of us caught it from him, but approx. one week after he was well, the 4th grade at my younger son's school finally came down with it, all at once! About half the 4th grade was suddenly home from school, and I think the diagnosis was confirmed in about 1/3 of the total number of kids. My younger son got sick at the same time, with the same symptoms as his friends, and the same as my older son. I took him to the doctor 17 hrs. after symptoms had started, but the flu test was negative. I've heard that the test could still show negative even up until symptoms have been there for 24 hrs. Anyway, the doctor thought it was probably H1N1, anyway, and prescribed the Relenza for us (my son is 10 -- it seems that a classmate who is just short of her 10th birthday was prescribed Tamiflu).

As mentioned, younger son's symptoms were very similar to older son's, and the progression of the illness was basically identical. He did not have a lingering cough, however. He also had a highest measured fever of 38.9 C (102 degrees F).

I hope that he did indeed have H1N1, because I would love to be done with it and not have him catch it later!

Both times it did not spread to me or my husband, and I have not heard of any other parents or teachers here having it (besides that one teacher at my workplace) (though I'm sure there are others, of course). Generally speaking, in Japan it seems to not be spreading so much beyond young people, for some reason.

The nice thing for us was that both my kids had it (or hopefully had it) at the same time as many other classmates, so when their classes were closed, they were home sick, too, and they didn't miss anything at school. At my younger son's school, all of the 4th grade missed their school's school performance day (Happyoukai), but they had a special 4th-grade-only Happyoukai the following weekend. The school was so nice, asking all the other kids and as many non-4th-grade parents as possible to attend the 4th grade performance, to duplicate the conditions of the real Happyoukai so the 4th graders wouldn't be sad! It was a good show, and only 2 kids missed performing in it (out of about 62 total 4th graders). It was a space story called Cosmo Rangers Go, Go-go! A cute story about some space rangers who go to two different planets - on one planet they inspire the inhabitants (cute aliens with silver antennae) to clean up their garbage, and on the other planet (an ancient Greek-inspired planet) they help the two fighting queens to become friends again. When I first heard the theme, I thought it sounded a bit kindergartenish, but it was cute and the kids looked happy! My Jiji played one of the rangers (he did the first third of the role of a boy called "Taku", a kind of naughty boy who argues some with the other rangers). He did great! :)

Drawings

2009-09-14T22:06:00.006+09:00

Okay, here are a couple more of the things from Jiji's jiyuuchou:

I couldn't scan Acorn Master in the end, but here are 3 more that did come out. This one is Ten-face.

Autumn Master.

Part of a random color drawing with various characters like SpeedDragon, DrD and UltraDragon.

More Jiji quotes

2009-09-14T19:03:00.005+09:00

We have had a nice summer - with some new "pets", as always seems to happen. We kept a stag beetle for a couple of months, and just released it yesterday. The main reason I wanted to release it is that we have about 30 marine hermit crabs (from the size of a walnut to the size of a small pea), that Jiji and Dio gathered on our camping trip to the Shakotan Peninsula a week ago. They are a lot of work, as I have been trying to make a nice, clean environment for them. So King, the beetle, has been released back into the wild.

Jiji continues to give big brother Dio a run for his money, in the memory department. Dio is smart in his own way, but he is a "visual spatial learner" (I found this on the internet about a year ago, and was so glad to see the source of Dio's sometimes frustratingly slow verbal processing!!!) and is a bit unbalanced on the other learning sides, so he is great at anything mechanical, maps, spatial problems, and math, science, computer, etc., but his processing of verbal input is really slow, and he has a poor sense of time (apparently these are typical weak points of visual spatial learners). Also, whenever he goes head to head with little brother on memory, we figure little brother will win about 4/5 of the time... a bit sad, but anyway he needs to know his weak points! Little brother Jiji's main weakpoints seem to be terrible handwriting, lack of stick-to-itiveness (sp.?) for after school sports or lessons and the like, and a tendency to throw punches at his big brother (but luckily at no-one else).

The other day, cool big brother (now a full-fledged teenager with long, straight-permed hair!) was asked to write "cereal" on the shopping list. He wrote - "cerial - the Greek name for the goddess Demeter" (something they are learning at school). Dad saw the misspelling and called to him to fix it. He erased "cerial", forgot what he had written the first time, got mixed up, and wrote "cerial" again. Dad called Jiji - "Jiji, spell cereal!". "C-E-R-E-A-L - what, Dio, you can't spell cereal?? What is this you wrote here, the Greek word for Demeter?" Dio - "Oh, so I couldn't spell cereal. I can spell lots of words!! How about this - can you spell Aphrodite?????" Jiji - "A...P..H..R..O..D.." (Dio is looking really worried now, and Mom and Dad are looking back and forth laughingly) "Y..T..E?" (Dio looks so relieved, and Mom and Dad are saying, "Ouch, he almost showed you!! Don't underestimate him next time!!" ) Jiji - "Well, I'm only 10 and I go to Japanese school, and I'm not even learning about that in school. Shkamo [and besides], what you wrote [about Demeter] was jiman [bragging] and a waste of space." I had to laugh at that... "jiman and a waste of space." :)

Another funny one recently -

Jiji - "Can I go on the com?" (computer)

Dad - "Kiss my ass!"

Jiji - "... I'll take that as a yes!"

Jiji's summer project (jiyuukenkyu) was a super easy project - his uncle (my husband's big brother) who visited us for 2 weeks had found a piece of driftwood shaped like the head and neck of a swan, so all Jiji did was paint it in white, black and yellow. The kids in his class liked it and started saying, "Aflack!" (with a quacking voice).

But Dio has had a really nice summer as far as projects. His school has no jiyuukenkyu, but he and a neighbor boy/classmate have been visiting our 81-year-old next-door neighbor every Weds. all summer, and are still continuing it now that school has started. He is teaching them how to play "Go", and they really like it!! He has also started trying to teach them various things about life and his own life, etc. (which includes almost having to fight in WWII, but "unfortunately the war ended and I was unable to serve the Emperor"!!) . He is a really nice man, anyway, and they enjoy their Go lessons. Then another neighbor, a lady about 50 years old who is into weaving, had us in her house briefly and Dio was looking with interest at her loom. So she invited just him over one morning for more than 2 hrs., and he wove a wall-hanging for our house! When I came home it was hanging on the wall in the genkan. She said his "souzou" was "juunan" (I think that was it - anyway his imagination is flexible) and he had a lot of ideas so it was fun teaching him. So, he has been having a lot of valuable experiences with our neighbors!

One more thing (since I know I will not be bothered to post for another month or more) - I want to test out my new scanner, to bring you the Acorn Master - a weird drawing by Jiji in his jiyuu-chou. The indispensible "free-drawing notebook", that they are allowed to have in school (for rainy days, I guess), and that he cannot do without. Just a minute while I attempt to work my new scanner...

Hmmm - this is taking way longer than I'd hoped, and I have to go and do some dishes etc. before Za Papa comes back from his evening private lesson (teaching two friendly & cheerful hairdressers :/ ). So instead of the Acorn Master, here are two little characters - a fruit guy and a guy with weird eyes.

Hope this is not all too much "jiman and a waste of space"!!!

poems in typing

2009-07-11T16:50:00.006+09:00

Jiji has been doing some typing practice recently. He goes to Japanese school and doesn't really get enough English writing practice, etc., and besides that, his handwriting has never been so good (in English or Japanese). I think it's a mild hand coordination problem - just his weak point, I guess. Ironically, the thing he writes the most neatly is kanji. I think it is because of all the straight lines. English letters and hiragana have curves and he seems to have more trouble writing them neatly. Anyway, if he can type then there is less pressure on us to improve his handwriting! So I have been letting him type for 20 minutes at a time. He loves it! Some of his best efforts have been:

June 3, 2009:

Monkeys eat apples. Elephants eat bananas. Dogs eat fish. Cats eat bones. Anteaters eat sweet stuff. Ants eat ants.

That was the food chain.

Detective Jiji.
Jiji looked for footprints.
He found handprints.
Jiji looked for handprints.
He found footprints.
Jiji is an inexperienced detective.

June 7, 2009 (this one's about our dog, Toby):

As black as eyes as black as a nose the thing he’s afraid of are pure black crows who am I typing to? Noone knows. That was a poem about Tobias D----.

June 17, 2009 (another one about Toby):

Big big whirlpools, robots grabbing scruffs.
Zombies grabbing paws, giant bugs chasing dogs.
A giant grabbing for Toby’s neck---.wu—wu—wu—wu—.
Toby just woke up from his nightmare whimpering.

He also enjoys playing around with the fonts, colors & sizes. The other day I thought it might be nice to see what all our family's typing speeds are. I knew mine more or less because I sometimes used to work as a temp in the States and England. Anyway, the results were:

Me - 74 wpm
Husband (I was amazed he actually took the test!) - 34 wpm
Dio (age 14) - 32 wpm
Jiji (age 10) - 4 wpm. It took like 30 minutes for him to complete the 1-paragraph-long test... he did it until the end, though! I told him he can try again in a year!

"Paper Orphans" - The Lie we Love

2009-03-12T22:26:00.002+09:00

This article contains important information about international adoptions:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4508&page=0

Lovely Toby

2009-02-14T15:25:00.010+09:00

A Valentine's Day post...

We all love our dog Toby, and have so many nicknames for him. Yesterday, I heard Jiji saying, "Hello Toby my little Love Fuzz Bucket." My husband calls him things like "Love Penguin" and "Captain Cuddles." I call him "Tobiliboo" or "Herr Toblepooper", etc. We make up many new nicknames all the time, in a similar vein.

Valentine's Day news from kidland...

My big son recently had to do a standardized test involving writing a fictional story (among other things). The start-off picture was of a shadow of a man or something. He made it into a Valentine's day story, which also involved a mysterious living shadow, and proudly told me that the very last word of the story was "love". I was happy he finished the story, because last year (or 2 years ago?) he took the same test, started a rambling story, got only half-way in the time allowed, and got a very bad score for that part of the test! This time I told him, "Just try to make it a *normal* story, and FINISH IT IN TIME!!" It sounds like it was maybe pretty good this time. He seems to have romance on his mind a lot lately.

Report from no. 2 kidland...

I was driving my younger son back from his karate class last night, with a Japanese friend from his class (3rd grade in Japanese elem. school). They went into Seiko-mart to get some snacks, and were talking about something. When they got in the car again, the friend, "Ryota" (who claims to be receiving about 5 Valentine's chocos from girls in their class!), said,

Ryota - "Nee, kitto... Miki ni suki tte yuttara, Miki mo Jiji no koto suki ni naru to omou yo." (I'm pretty sure if you tell Miki you like her, she will start to like you, too.)

Jiji - "Sou? Doushite?" (Do you think so? Why?)

Ryota - "Datte, ningen tte souiu mon da." (It's human nature.)

Jiji - "So na no." (Oh.)

It just sounded really cute... does this mean he likes Miki now? Before, he liked Emi and Natsuki... There seems to be something about coming from the same kindergarten, because in the whole of 3rd grade, there are only 3 other kids from my son's kindergarten, and Miki and Natsuki are two of them. They are also both really small, cute girls, and Jiji is the second tallest in his class.

For about 2 years he was the tallest kid in his class, but on the last measuring day (in Jan.), he came home and said a girl classmate called Kokoro (=heart) had edged just taller than him, and he is now the second tallest! Everyone was surprised. He was happy to not be the tallest, for a change. I told him he is now entering the stage where girls grow faster than boys, and a few more girls might pass him in the next couple of years. Three times a year, they are all measured to the millimeter, and they figure out the exact height order for the whole class. Then they frequently line up or stand in that exact order, for a multitude of reasons (standing on bleachers to sing, standing in line to walk somewhere, etc.). So every child who is anywhere near either the shortest end or the tallest end will be able to tell you, "I'm the 5th shortest in my class," or "I'm the 3rd tallest in my class."

The cat was out of the bag last year, but...

2008-12-25T18:15:00.013+09:00

... but he still believes.

My little guy R ("Jiji") is 9, and sometime last year he seemed to have figured out that the tooth fairy, Easter bunny and Santa Claus were not real. It seemed to happen quite naturally, and about the same age that our big son K ("Dio") figured it out, so everything seemed normal.

So, we were very surprised this Christmas to find that Jiji is now making a conscious effort to "believe in Santa". He seems to be going to some effort to preserve this belief, and he chooses to overlook evidence to the contrary.

He complains if Dio goes on too much about how "Santa isn't real, you know." He says, "Dio doesn't believe in Santa, but I do, and I'm right, aren't I." Last night (Xmas Eve) he was very excited, and told Dio several times, "If you wake up during the night and Santa is there, be sure to wake me up!!".. He also left out milk for Rudolph and Coke and cookies for Santa. Also a large bowl coated with leftover frosting from the Christmas cake we were making (a Japanese Xmas activity). With these things was a note written in his best cursive (I have been teaching him cursive this year):

Dear santa

here is some yumy cookies and cola.

oh and some frosting.

don't get sick!
from r----

He was so happy to see that these snacks were gone in the morning, and Santa had left a thank you note. He enjoyed opening his stocking, and getting several Twix, mini-Toblerones, and a mikan (mandarin orange). But in the late afternoon, in the kitchen, he came across the original larger bags which held the Twix and mini-Toblerones -- open, and about half empty. "Oh, so you guys are the ones who put the Twix in my stocking." Me: "Oh, why do you say that?" R: "Datte, the bags are here." Me: "Oh... ... well, those are just the leftovers that Santa left with us." R: "Ah -- so nanda!" (Oh, I see!)

After a few seconds' pause he then said to his brother, "It must be nice for Mommy that one of her children still believes in Santa Claus. ... You should believe in Santa, too."

By the way, here is the result of our Christmas-cake-making. Instead of strawberries (expensive!) we made snowmen for the top, as seen on A Tale of Three Beans (well, our snowman aren't as well-made as theirs, but anyway, it was fun!). Those red berries you see are a handful of raspberries from a bag of frozen raspberries I got at half-price a while back.

There is a really cute website were you write an email to Santa (using a form) and then Santa answers you. You don't have to give your email address - Santa just answers automatically on the next screen, when you click Send. It is at http://www.emailsanta.com/ . It kind of personalizes the letter Santa sends you back, and it is really cute. If your child asks for a well-known toy, it even personalizes the letter with some comment about that toy.

Jiji's 3 wishes from Santa were:

1. toyjack russel terrier
2. book about forests(fiction)
3. happy chrismas for my dog

[explanation - our little dog Toby is a jack russell terrier, so it seemed that Jiji wanted a toy one to play with, too, for some reason. He likes fictional books set in forests, like the "Warrior Cats" series ("Warriors" in the U.S. version), and the "Chronicles of Ancient Darkness" ("Wolf Brother" etc.) series. So he keeps saying he wants to read more fictional books set in forests. ]

In the "comment" section of EmailSanta, he wrote, "I useto believe in you endthen k---- told me that you were'nt real but then dad told me that you were real. You must be lucky to be born with magic."

I think Jiji wants to prolong the magic in his life. It's cute, and we are supporting it.

We had put one new toy in our little Toby (dog)'s stocking, but totally forgot to have "Santa" put more toys in during the night last night. When Jiji woke up this morning, he had time to open his own stocking but then went off to school (for a half day on Xmas day - the last school day before the winter holiday at his school). When he was getting ready in the morning, he said, "Oh, Toby must have gotten some more things in his stocking, from Santa! Datte, when I emailed him I also said I wanted a nice Christmas for my dog!" We were flustered because we forgot to have Santa get Toby anything else, so we hurried Jiji past Toby's stocking, saying, "Santa must have brought more things for Toby! We will open Toby's stocking when you get home from school!" (we later got some more things and Toby was very happy with his Christmas, thanks to Jiji sharing one of his wishes!)

After Jiji went off to school, I was working quickly to finish off most of my New Year's cards (they were due at the post office on the 25th, today, if I want them to be delivered on New Year's Day). Then Daddy and I went off to Costco to do some last-minute Xmas shopping, and buy a chicken and a salad for Xmas dinner. We figured most of the Japanese families would have had their special dinner on the night of the 24th, so there would be plenty of chicken for us to buy on the 25th. Indeed, Costco was not especially crowded, and we got a nice Caesar salad and a pack of 5 big, meaty chicken legs seasoned yummily with pepper. We are having some people over for New Year's Eve, and will cook dinner for them, plus I feel like I *just* did a Thanksgiving dinner, so I didn't want to put too much effort into today's dinner. Tonight we had:

Costco peppery chicken legs, Costco caesar salad, candied sweet potatoes with marshmallows, roasted veg (potato - from our garden!, carrots and leeks), yorkshire puddings (homemade!), and an oniony gravy/dressing (from the supermarket). Tonight we will have the remains of last night's Xmas cake, with chocolate ice cream.

For Xmas we got the kids (a lot of this was from money sent by various grandparents):

Video games (One Piece, Pokemon Platina, Dragon Dragoon, Pokemon Battle Revolution), Pokemon stickers, a Pokemon book, snowboarding gloves (for Dio), a Pokemon battle stadium board-game/toy thing, a book about the body (very detailed and scientific-looking) from Costco, a big & colorful Ripley's believe-it-or-not book from Costco, a pop-up dinosaur calendar from Costco, a box of 20 sticks of colorful holiday-themed jelly/gummies from Costco, a basketball (for Dio), two long cushions to use for resting/reading in front of the heater, a kick-scooter, a tiny Pokemon puzzle, 3 wind-up (kid-powered, no batteries) lights, 2 reading lights that attach to your book, and that might be all but I can't remember now.

For myself I was going to ask for a bottle of Bailey's, but then at Costco I saw the set of 20 decorative scissors (in a nice wooden rack!) that I have been looking at all year, so asked for that instead. Everybody said, "20 pairs of scissors!?" I think the wooden rack got me...

I leave you with a photo from our camping trip this past summer. Happy Holidays from us!!

The ins and outs of the English language - !?

2008-12-03T10:38:00.005+09:00

The other day as we were sitting down to dinner...

Son 1 (age 13): I'm going to DEVORE this! I'm so hungry!

Me: It's devour, not devore...

(a minute later)

Son 2 (age 9): Mmm... I'm going to devore this!!

Me: Look, it's devour, not devore! Devour. Devour.

Son 1: Devowore? I always thought it was "devore".

Me: No, devour. Devour. Like... flour!

Son 2: Oh, devour... hey! What about deflower? Deflower!

Son 1: Oh, deflower - that's good.

(they have no idea of the meaning!)

Me: ... (sigh)

(Daddy - a native English speaker - comes into the room).

Daddy (with a mischievous look): What's this? Deflower?

Me: Um, look. You can't say deflower, everybody. It's ... a naughty word.

Sons 1 & 2: What? Why? Deflower is naughty???

Son 1: What, does it mean to take someone's clothes off or something?

Me: Well, not exactly, but... something like that... anyway, you mustn't say it, especially at school.

Sons 1 & 2: Oh, huh. Well, whatever.

(Now, my kids both know the basics of how s.e.x. happens, but I am NOT going to get myself into an explanation of the new vocabulary word "deflower"! This is really a word loaded with weird nuances !!!)

Things I've done or not done...

2008-11-09T20:30:00.004+09:00

I saw this meme at Vicky's Hyotenka blog and thought it looked fun! Things I have done are in bold...

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland (L.A. and Tokyo)
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France (tried but failed - unbeknownst to me it was a religious holiday)
20. Slept on an overnight train (somewhere in Eastern Europe)
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked (in Germany, with a "Berlin Bitte" sign, and in Japan, holding a big sign saying "Maizuru", which didn't work...we took a train)
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice (I rode in a realistic fake one at Tokyo's Disney Sea!)
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors (in England, California and Utah)
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight (don't know)
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie (I was an extra in something, but I don't think it was a proper movie)
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class (no, but I just sat through my younger son's first karate class, the day before yesterday. It was neat!)
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving (NO!!! We were watching Space Cowboys last night, and I told my kids, "The lesson from this movie is, Never go into space!!")
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter (have flown a small plane myself though, with an instructor!)
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar (maybe?)
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square (don't know)
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London (don't know)
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee

How about you?

Interesting women in Obama's family

2008-10-29T08:36:00.006+09:00

I would love to actually meet these women. They all seem so interesting.

His sister talking about their mother:

His mother-in-law talking about her daughter:

Japanese names (1) - Girls' names from nature

2008-10-16T11:37:00.005+09:00

I spent the morning digging up some of my potatoes! About 1 big grocery bag full, with some nice-sized ones amongst them. That was a little over 1/3 of the total harvest, and there is about 1/3 left to harvest now (I harvested the first 1/3 over a month ago).

I wanted to do some posts on Japanese names, because many Japanese names have a nice meaning. There are various trends in Japanese names, as with English names. Right now I will focus on some currently-popular girls' names from nature.

The names listed here are all names of girls I have met at work or at my kids' schools. Some of these names can be found in older generations, too. Some of these names are quite popular, and some may be rare.

Girls' names from nature:

Sumire (Violet)
Kurumi (Walnut)
Hinata (Sunlight)
Kokoro (Heart)
Sakura (Cherry Blossom)
Hotaru (Firefly)
Hana (Flower)
Yuri (Lily)
Runa (Moon = "Luna")
Riria (Lily = "Lilia")
Kaede (Maple)
Yume (Dream)

More funny

2008-07-14T10:07:00.002+09:00

Jiji said something else funny the other day...

We were riding the bus on the way to his weekly swimming lesson, and he started talking:

"In the world we have a lot of questions that we can ask scientists. Like, how did trees grow before there were people? What, did monkeys plant them or something?" :)

He did have a point though, because when I told him that the trees just grow naturally from the seeds of other trees, he asked, "But what about the VERY first tree?"

The other day when I was posting about funny things he said during the last year, I forgot to mention that recently he has sometimes been using English that sounds like an adventure story or something. I don't know if this is because a lot of his English input is now coming from books and movies, not from other kids, since he speaks Japanese at school. Anyway... for example, my husband got him a new bronze-colored thermos a few months ago. Later Jiji referred to it as "My golden flask". Another time I asked him, "Can you watch my bag for me while I go to the bathroom?" -- he said, "I am the guardian of the bag." And another time he found two dead woodlice (potato bugs? fake roly polies? warajimushi? Anyway, they were those fake roly poly bugs that can't roll up), under a floor-sofa in our house. He said they were "travellers in the house of death." Really looking at things from the bugs' point of view!!

Happy birthday Jijiz!

2008-06-25T10:59:00.008+09:00

(here age 1 and 1/2)

My little guy Jiji is 9 -- Happy Birthday! He is enjoying his 3rd grade year at Japanese school. He has recently joined a baseball team, but is not so sure yet about the long hours involved, so I've been letting him skip about half of it! He would really like a Gameboy Advance for his birthday (even though they are old), because there is this one small part of this one Gamecube game that gives you something extra if you hook up your Gameboy Advance - nice going, Nintendo. Well, he will not be getting one! We have prepared a few other presents, though.

Some funny comments by our 8-year-old over the course of the year...

- "Can humans eat grass?" (while walking in the park)

- "Are midgets rare?" (he quietly asked me, a few seconds after catching sight of a very small person in a crowded department store)

- When I was discussing with my parents whether to send some of my used books via them to my sister (who had recently had her 4th child)... "Well, she doesn't have time to READ, with all those BABIES!"

He loves writing memos to the other people in our family... some memos we have found (usually on the kitchen counter) over this year...

- "Not to be tuched. Drying beetle. " (found on the kitchen shelf, next to a dead beetle)

- "To enybody From Jiji" (taped to this was a piece of dried red chili that he had found in his food, which his daddy had told him he didn't have to eat... so he left it taped to a memo paper, for "enybody" to have)

- found on my dresser, a memo tucked into one of those name-and-address tags for luggage ... "to Mommy or daddy (どっちでもいい）". [=either one] Unfolding the memo, it said inside, "I don't know what this is But I found it on my Desk"

- next to a folded tissue: "Do not throw away (this is Jiji's to ) (はがぬけたっていみ）" --- he meant to write "tooth" instead of "to", so lucky there was the explanation in Japanese, [=it means my tooth fell out]

- "ecsperiment DO NOT TOUCH" (found next to a cup of mysterious purple liquid)

- "this is for Jiji warning - (Jiji Has already Sucked on it)" -- a memo found next to a lollipop

- "I dident know what to do with the Krust So I left it Here" -- a memo found on the kitchen counter next to some bread crusts

edited to add: I forgot about 2 of the cutest ones, that are attached to our fridge. This one showed up clipped to the fridge a couple of weeks ago, after I bought Jiji some of his favorite milk (MegMilk):

- " to Mommy or daddy thank you so so SO SO So much for the Meg MiLK ♡♡ from Jiji"

- The cutest memo appeared on the front of the fridge a few months ago - "always Need to use the seceret ingridient. (Love♥) "

Donate rice while learning new words!

2008-01-17T19:56:00.000+09:00

On this site, you can donate rice to hungry people while learning English vocabulary.

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

It is suitable for native speakers of English, learners of English, adults, and children (my 7th grader really liked it and got into it, but my 2nd grader got bored quickly). The site automatically adjusts the vocabulary level to match your level of English! The rice is paid for by the advertisers at the bottom of the screen.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T11:06:00.001+09:00

Toby says Merry Christmas to everybody!

Visited Countries

2007-09-28T19:26:00.001+09:00

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Garden record 2

2007-08-28T22:17:00.001+09:00

Planted this year (stars are ratings for how happy I am with it):

- ***mini tomatoes, medium-sized tomatoes (like large mini-tomatoes) and orange medium sized tomatoes. Not bad, but still not as prolific as the ones the landlord had planted the first year we lived here, that I did not tend or tie up at all!

- **daikon. Small but edible. Handier than buying a large daikon and having most of it go to waste.

- ***fresh coriander (cilantro). It does very well here (surprisingly!) when planted in the ground, and in fact, seeds in last year's spot have grown up just as well as the small plants I bought this spring! Both are very tall and healthy, and I let both go to seed. Next year I may not buy any small plants, and wait for these seeds to sprout.

- **cucumber. Only two cucumbers have grown so far. Quite yummy.

- *pumpkin. The small plant I bought is growing alright, but no sign of anything pumpkin-like. Last year I tried seeds from a packet, and the plant never grew more than a few inches. The previous year we had a big pumpkin plant, with many pumpkins, but that plant had apparently come up naturally from veggie kitchen waste that the owners had buried in the garden. It seems that is the way to do it!

- ***green onion. Nice little green onions are growing in the green onion patch. They are smaller and lighter in taste than store-bought ones. Useful for all kinds of cooking.

- ***green chili. Very nice, strong plants this year. Lots of chilies! I put most in the freezer.

- ***potatoes. Plants looked healthy this year. Haven't started harvesting yet!

- *raspberry plant that my friend bought last year. We are supposed to be sharing the raspberries, but so far not many have grown. Another friend has a very healthy raspberry plant of a different species, with larger raspberries, and it is always sending out little shootlets, etc... I want to get a part of that one!

- ***spinach. This went well for a while, and I put some in the freezer and used some for salad. After a while I lost interest in weeding that area, and who knows how those plants are doing now.

- ***edamame. Just started harvesting 2-3 days ago. Going well so far! This kids like this with dinner.

- a small basil plant. This never really did anything useful.

- broccoli. Planted from seeds. Some leaves came up, but no broccoli at all! Caterpillars ate most of the leaves - maybe that was the problem.

- gobo (burdock root). I have no idea whether this even sprouted. I haven't been able to find it.

Things that were planted by our landlords before we moved in - these things seem to grow automatically year after year:

- **asparagus. I usually freeze them so they don't go to waste. They lose there fresh texture, but are still good for putting in coconut curry, wrapping with bacon, or whatever!

- ***chives. Yummy and grows automatically.

- ***Chinese chives (nira). Useful for coconut curry, nira tama (like an omelet with nira and other things), etc.! These plants grow up by themselves very healthily.

- *grapes. Didn't really tend them at all this year. At least one bunch of green grapes is visible.

- **parsley. These plants follow some unusual biennial system, where they alternate between a low, parsley-like shape and a tall, spindly shape. They don't mind being covered with about 3 meters of snow for 3-4 months! The snow is deeper there because all the snow from the roof slides off into the backyard. We have to put wooden slats up to protect the 2 windows back there, and the first winter the pile of snow reached as high as the bottom of the 2nd floor windows! I actually love parsley and used to eat everyone's parsley for them when we went out to dinner, when I was a kid. Unfortunately no-one else in my family loves it, but some can take it or leave it.

- **fuki. Butterbur, or something like that. We don't really do anything with this, but this year our next-door neighbors asked if they could come and harvest it early in the summer, so they did. They seem to have made several different dishes with it. It's sort of like rhubarb, I think.

- **strawberries! This year I discovered these for the first time - a few small strawberries were growing in a quiet corner. Small but sweet and yummy. Only 5 or 6 strawberries, though.

Daddy liked this one...

2007-04-08T22:23:00.000+09:00

Yesterday Daddy was hugging older son (age 12), and started joking around and pretending to dance with him, imitating a girl ...

Daddy (with girl's voice): Oh, where have you been all my life? I love you! Do you love me too?

Big son: No.

Daddy (with girl's voice): Why?? Is it because I'm fat??

Big son: Partly.

Book meme

2007-03-28T19:38:00.001+09:00

The top 100 books, as voted by the general public (not sure in which country, though...). I like the look of this because it involves hardly any thinking or writing. And I love lists! Saw this on Diapers, budgets & paint, and even though I don't know her, she was kind enough to tag "anyone with time to kill"! The ones in bold are the ones I have read, and I'm also writing when I read it...

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
(read recently - a perfectly good adventure story, isn't it?)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
(read this sometime around college years)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
(got it from my parents' bookshelf, while poking around there in my high school years, as with several others below)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
(read most of these after son no. 1 had had them for a while)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
(on my bookshelf in my room, growing up)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
(high school English class)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
(on my bookshelf in my room, growing up)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
(around college time?)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
(this was on my childhood bookshelf... I read it once quite young, about age 12, but appreciated it much more when reading it again around college age)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
(read these in childhood)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
(high school English class - also Animal Farm, and we used to go around in high school, singing the song from Animal Farm - this is from memory still now, to the tune of Clementine: "Beasts of England, Beasts of Ireland, Beasts of every land and clime -- harken to my joyful tidings of the golden future time. Rings shall vanish from our noses and the harness from our backs. Bit and spur shall rust forever, cruel whip no more shall crack... Soon or late the day is coming, tyrant man shall be o'erthrown. And the fruitful(???) fields of England shall be trod by beasts alone.")
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
(around college age, along with the next couple of books in the series)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
(not sure - after college?)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
(very recently - my husband got it from a friend who liked it)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
(high school English class)
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
(high school English class - I wasn't sure, but looked it up on Amazon and saw something about the guillotine and Mesdames Desfarges or something -- brings back more memories of how silly my friends and I were in high school, running around laughing about these English class books all the time... )
53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
(high school English class - involves a crazy lady in a wedding dress)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
(high school English class - I actually quite liked this, and ended up reading a few other books by him in college, and wrote a whole bunch in my diary about banana fish or something)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrew Niffenegger) ** ETA: have now read this, as of May 2011.
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
(hmmm.. embarrassing, but I went through an "Ayn Rand" phase around age 16. I found this one and one or two others on my parents' bookshelf. I thought I had read Atlas Shrugged, but couldn't recognize the info on Amazon, so if I did read it then, it didn't stick at all, and is not in bold here.)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy)
(this was great!! One of my favorites, and I had expected it to be dry and difficult to get through, on account of the title and reputation of being a "big, serious book". Read it in my mid-to-late twenties I think)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) ** ETA: have now read this, as of May 2011.
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
(high school English class... for our class project, we made a stop-action film with a little doll, of the part where the little girl is forced to go out into the night through the village and into the forest, to get a bucket of water, and the hero helps her to lift the bucket out of the well. We only made the arm of the hero, though, and it looked a little silly reaching in from the edge of the frame.)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
(borrowed from a friend sometime after college, I guess)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
(on my childhood bookshelf... a lot of these were those nice old hardcovers that were made in the 1960's or before, and had every so often a special, thicker, page, with a full color illustration on one side, and the other side blank)
76. Tigana (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
(had this as a child)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
(high school English class... gah, more laughing about the various characters...)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
(don't know, but I know I went through a Jane Austen phase sometime in college or just after)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
(from my parents' bookshelf, when I was in high school)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
(high school English class - I wrote a good essay about this for a college application)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
(high school English class... don't really remember much of an impression of this, except for the very exciting topic I chose for my project - kanji!! - chinese characters. I wrote a little report involving the kanji for white, tree, man, big, etc...)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)
(read this in a semester-long class on this book only, second semester of my freshman year of college... I had gone through a big James Joyce phase in my senior year of high school, reading a lot of his other books, and talked my way into this class the following year, even though it was supposed to be for jrs. and srs. Well, at least I can say I did read the entire thing, but I don't remember much, and didn't understand much, despite having a whole book of explanations which had to be read alongside the main book. Why is a book like this up here, anyway... it's not like the general public are all reading this and loving it - or was it just me who found it too difficult? was I just too young?)

Other books from my parents' bookshelf... The Tontine, Crome Yellow (can't remember this one, but I remember The Tontine - it was quite exciting!).
Other books on my bookshelf, growing up... Lorna Doon, and a whole set of Mark Twain books that I never really got into.
Other books read in high school English class... A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Moby Dick, The Scarlett Letter.
First real books I read, after graduating from Dr. Seuss, etc... Jonathan Livingston Seagull and then Black Beauty.
Favorite series as a young child (around age 7-10) ... The Black Stallion series. I had them all in hardback, and loved every bit, along with some other horse books like Marguerite Henry's books (Misty of Chincoteague, etc.). Also James Herriot's series! ** ETA: have now reread the James Herriot books, as of May 2011.
Favorite series as an older child (around age 11-14) ... The Dark is Rising series, by Susan Cooper, and the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey.
Favorite authors not mentioned at all here... Nabokov, Proust, Thomas Hardy.
Biggest embarrassment when filling out this meme... I don't think I've ever read Tolkien's books, although I think my sister may have had at least one of them. Must read them.
Okay, I am no good at reading plays so I could never enjoy reading these, but Shakespeare was not mentioned. Maybe plays and poems were against the rules?

Oh, I almost forgot... I tag anyone!

Big 100 yen shopping trip!

2007-03-22T19:18:00.000+09:00

I went to a big 100 yen shop today -- a different one that is a little further away than my normal one, so I enjoyed walking around on the various floors and getting this and that! 100 yen is about 85 cents, I guess, or around 50 p. I got (at 100 each, plus 5 yen tax):

1. a set of 3 sports-themed rocket pencils, each with an eraser shaped like a basketball, baseball, or soccer ball (for the kids)

2. an apple scented "nerikeshi" - a large, soft eraser, in a case decorated with apples (for the kids)

3. two packs of large lamune candies, each with a small plastic toy (I *love* lamune -- when we came back to Japan, I used to get a pack of lamune just about every time I went into any kind of shop. )(this was for me, but I gave 2 lamunes to each of the kids)

4. a set of 3 black hangers with swivel-heads

5. a set of 3 black hangers with swivel-heads

6. one more set of 3 black hangers with swivel-heads (this was my official reason for going to this shop, since we needed these and they aren't available at our local 100 yen shop)

7. a sleek and super-modern-looking blue and silver solar-powered calculator, for son no. 1

8. a red decorative hole-punch (makes a heart shape)

9. an orange decorative hole-punch (makes a teddy bear shape)

10. a yellow decorative hole-punch (makes a star shape)

11. a green decorative hole-punch (makes a tree shape)

12. a blue decorative hole-punch (makes a large circle)

13. a pack of 3 rolls of yellow vinyl electrical tape

14. a pack of 3 rolls of black vinyl electrical tape

15. a roll of larger black vinyl electrical tape

16. a small green "cracked glaze" ceramic bowl decorated with a gingko leaf, to match the one my husband bought the other day -- useful for dipping sauces for shabu shabu, zaru soba, etc.

17. a colorful set of 3 packs of gummies - orange, grape, and apple flavored

18. a pack of 2 plain lined notebooks, for son no. 1

19. a B5 sized dark-grey plastic ring binder, for son no. 1

20. a clear plastic 30 cm ruler, for son no. 1

21. a set of two plastic lids for use when microwaving soups, etc... one large, one small

22. a larger domed-type lid, for use when microwaving plates of food - it is cutely decorated with pictures of various types of kitchen implements

23. a pack of two small sauce holders for use with bentos - one is orange, and one is red, and they're decorated with pictures of apples and oranges

24. a black stop-watch with neck strap (this was 150 yen)

25. (this was 150 yen) a large round sock-drying hanger, that you can hang on the laundry poles outside -- it's blue and white and has many laundry clips for attaching small things

26. hmmm... I know there were about 6 more things... a tape dispenser for use with packing tape and the like - to make it easier to tape up boxes. I used to have one of these in England, and they are a great help!

27. a small spray-can of pet smell remover

28. a large, furry, green polka-dotted, bone-shaped stuffed toy for little Toby. He used to have one just like it, and enjoyed snuggling with it, until he ripped it open and tore out loads of stuffing. I had kept it to one side and meant to mend it, but as they are only 100 yen, decided today not to bother!

29. okay, I'll have to go downstairs to check the rest.... a soroban! a large, black and tan colored, wooden abacus. I have always wanted to learn how to use an abacus. I don't see them used much anymore, but when I first moved to Kyushu, Japan, 16 years ago, they were still used a lot by shopkeepers. Now with my 100 yen abacus I can start learning!

30. a pack of 3 different colors of iron-on patching material. Black, blue and white. My jeans are always getting holes in them, and instead of buying new ones I've just been patching them. Must go and search for new ones soon. I looked all around England when we were there for Christmas, but unfortunately all the shops were selling hip-huggers only, and NO, I cannot wear hiphuggers!!! Muri!!! (impossible!).

31. Did I miscount? I looked all around but couldn't find anything else...

So, you can see that 100 yen is a wonderful idea in theory, but in practice you have to be careful not to go crazy with a big, 3300 yen (30 dollar or 15 pound) shopping spree!!! Well, on our budget this is the only chance I have to get that nice "shopping high" that many women love so much... ;)

Only in Hokkaido

2007-03-14T10:37:00.000+09:00

A few days ago, as I was walking through a supermarket parking lot with my shopping...

Thinking to myself, "Oh, it's so springlike today! It's warm - I don't need to zip my coat up. The sun is shining! Spring is coming! What's that in the air... oh, it's snowing, too... well, anyway!!"

Things were looking really good, that day and even the next. A lot of roads and sidewalks were clear of snow, and I had switched from boots to sneakers. But unfortunately, spring has now gone away and we have had 3 days straight of snow, more and more each day. This morning I was out clearing snow from in front of the car, up to a foot deep in drifts. Everything is white again. It looks just like we've gone back to January. But not to worry! It can't be too much longer until spring, now!

Funny kids' language

2007-02-20T23:15:00.000+09:00

I love the way my kids speak in Japanese now! They sound just like elementary school boys in Hokkaido. This is not the same as the Japanese you will learn in a textbook. Sometimes they say things I have never heard of!

I cannot translate for "sense", so I will only translate for meaning - sorry, but this means this post will not mean much to anyone who cannot speak Japanese...

Dio (now age 12, in 6th grade):

- speaking to his younger brother: "Sassa to ikeya, mireya!" (Quick, go and look!) - he said this so quickly I didn't get it at first (and I had never heard of this -ya), but brother understood, so I was surprised!

- when dismayed or sympathetic: "Arama..." (Oh dear...)

- after asking Daddy if he ever looks at Mommy naked (Daddy said sometimes), and asking Mommy if she ever looks at Daddy naked (I said I try not to): "Eroda! Futaritomo eroda!!!" (accusatorily) (sexy! both of you are naughty!)

- when told he cannot do something because of such-and-such reason: "Ii-ssho betsuni" (It's okay isn't it)

One of my Hokkaidoian friends who is my age heard him saying "Ii-ssho" and so on, and was happy that he is speaking in Hokkaido dialect (-ssho instead of deshou), and asked him if he ever says "Namara". Apparently when she was younger it was a trendy word for "very". I had never heard of it, but he said a couple of the boys in his class (a bit rougher boys?) do use it. After that conversation, he suddenly started using it now and then, too - a bit of posing? Like, "Namara hayee" (really fast), etc...

- To me when I was in his classroom and he wanted me to look at his football robot: "Mite mina." (have a look)

- When I mistook "Tonkatsu" on a bento-shop menu for something else, and asked the girl at the cash register if it was chicken - Dio said quickly, "Tonkatsu-tte kaiteattara, futsuwa tonkatsudesho?" (well, if it says tonkatsu, it usually means tonkatsu, doesn't it?) ...

Jiji (age 7, in 1st grade):

- "UssSO! UsSO ja nee ka kore!" (No way! What a lie!)

- (last year, learned in kindergarten): "Daamenanda, damenanda, sensei ni yuccharo" (in a singsong voice, "that's bad, that's bad, I'm telling the teacher!"). When he first told us this it was garbled and we couldn't make out what he was saying, but when we asked him about it he said he didn't know the words, but it is what people say just before they go to tell the teacher! So we worked out what he was saying.

- "SuggE! SuggEE kore wa!" (Wow! This is great!)

- to his big brother when big brother is posing: "Kakkou tsukeruna." (quit posing) He was trying to shout something like this down from the chair lift several times, when he saw Dio just nicely practicing his snowboarding turns, down below.

Anyway, I just get a warm and happy feeling when I hear them saying these things. It is just so cute that they have learned to talk like school-age boys. Dio gets plenty of practice in "official" or "adult" Japanese from Kumon, anyway (he takes "Japanese" for foreigners, mostly targeted towards teenagers or adults, not kokugo - the poor thing has to read these endless example sentences about "Smisu-san" - Mr. Smith - and his friends, who are visiting Japan for business and tourism. I think they are trying to make the foreign students feel more connected by putting plenty of nice foreign characters in the stories and examples, but it gets a little wearing because it is about a world of Tokyo "fresh-off-the-plane" Anglo-Gaijin that my son knows nothing about! Complete with sharp-looking noses and friendly Japanese helpers... he keeps plugging away, though - maybe it is entertaining for him to read about the adventures of the hapless adult gaijins... ?).

Odd dates

2007-02-12T16:40:00.000+09:00

Younger brother Jiji (7) likes to write on our calendars when we put them up at the New Year. Last year we were surprised to see that he had confidently written "Critsmas" on December 5.

Today I just looked up at our 2007 puppy calendar (from the 100 yen shop), and learned that Feb. 28 is "Leap Year". :)

He has also put "Lucky Day" on every Saturday, and "RKT Day" on every Friday (well, up through mid-April on the calendar, anyway, when he seems to have tired of this project).

Saturday is the day of the week they sleep in our bed (one of us has to go elsewhere, as there is not room for 4 of us), and Friday nights if it is convenient, big brother Dio sleeps with Jiji in the lower bunk bed. I'm not sure what the "T" is for, but R and K are their initials. "Together" maybe?? We found it convenient to set a day of the week for these two special sleeping arrangements, because without a fixed day they were always asking just in case, "Can we sleep in your bed tonight??" and it was annoying being asked this all the time. They do well having a fixed day.

Aphids

2006-12-20T10:07:00.000+09:00

This is a typical story from our kids, riding in the car last summer, as told by my husband in an email he sent to his best friend in England. "Dio" is our older son (11), the sometimes clueless one. "Jiji" is our younger son (7), and he's not clueless, but just plain crazy!

(my husband writing to his friend...)
Dio made us laugh the other day:

Christie: .............aphids

Dio: what are those?

Christie: ask your brother - he'll tell you

Dio (indignantly): give me a second - I'm sure I know what those are - yeah, yeah.....

Me and Christie wait expectantly for proof that Dio is not completely clueless

Dio: aren't they those little green things....

Me and Christie (happily): yeah, yeah.....

Dio: ...that you put on pizza

Me: NO - those are bloody capers!

Dio: Oh!

Jiji: aphids are tiny little green bugs that destroy plants, and ladybirds can eat over 500 of them in one day

Baby's tooth

2006-11-24T23:27:00.000+09:00

Jiji finally lost his first tooth! He's nearly 7 yrs. and 5 mos. old, and he is one of the biggest kids in his class. His baby teeth were looking smaller and smaller, and spreading out. One bottom tooth had become very askew, and stayed that way for a couple of weeks. On Wednesday he was eating some apple in his school lunch, and thought there was an apple seed in his mouth. He found it and it was his tooth! Then he got some blood on his hand, and went to wash his hand, and lost the tooth in the sink. So he came home and asked us for some money, since the tooth fairy wouldn't ever know he had lost his tooth. Then big brother told him point blank that the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny too are all Mommy and Daddy. Mommy and Daddy lied when they said it was someone else. We had been skirting around this issue for some time. He would say, "I don't understand. Magic isn't real, but Santa Claus does magic, and Santa Claus is real..." I would say, "Well, some people think Santa Claus is not real, either..." Reply, "Well, I know Santa Claus is real." "Oh, okay... but some people think he's not real." Etc... at least he didn't seem to mind finding out the truth.

Anyway, since he knew for sure that the money was coming from us, now, he spent the rest of the day reminding me periodically, "Mommy... money?", until I finally gave him a 500 yen coin. He was happy with that and went to put it in his Doraemon piggy bank, where it sits with a few 1 yen coins and 10 yen coins (he doesn't get an allowance yet, and we hardly ever give him money).

So the big question was: "Mommy, but why did you say that you saw the Easter Bunny?" Er, well, I always say I saw the Easter Bunny once, but what I really saw (or think I saw... it was so long ago) was a small gray bunny hopping around the back of the family student housing dormitory, in the middle of the night Sat/Sun. on Easter weekend, at the university in Germany I was attending for a few months when I was 19. The only thing weird about this story is: why would a bunny have been hopping around in the middle of the night? I guess that is why I always say it was the Easter Bunny. It is certainly appropriate that it was near the family student housing dormitory, anway.

Son no. 2 now talks with a bit of a lisp, and now we call him by a new nickname, "dunda-bora" (it means toothless in Punjabi).

Son no. 1 is going to have his graduation ceremony soon, for finishing his baseball team! He's in 6th grade, the season is over, and his team is just for elementary school kids. He will have to read out a 3 page speech that he has written in Japanese. Actually, I was surprised at how well he can make sentences now. It must have been the Kumon. I don't think they practice writing actual sentences much in school. We are so relieved that baseball is finally finishing, because it has been just work, work, work, 3 weekdays and BOTH weekend days every week, with no weekends off (except one for Obon in mid-August) from April to November, for the last 2 1/2 years. And around here, that pretty much destroys any chance of doing anything at the weekend, ever, except having dinner together or (in winter) skiing! It has been great for him and fun for all of us, but now we're really looking forward to doing some other things on the weekends (of course now winter is starting, but anyway... soon!).

Health topic -- burns

2006-11-24T10:41:00.000+09:00

The other day I burned my hand on a paper towel saturated with very hot oil. The burned area was about 2 in. square, covering the front part of 3 fingers on my left hand. After running cold water on it and wrapping it in a wet cloth, it was very painful and seemed to need more treatment, so I looked up burns in my "doctor cookbook" (as my son put it). This is a great book called "Where's Mom now that I need her?: Surviving away from home", by B.R. Frandsen, K.J. Frandsen, and K.P. Frandsen. It is mostly a cookbook, but has sections on stain removal, first aid, common medical problems, and car and bicycle care! I use it even more now than I did in college. The burn advice worked really well. I highly recommend this for anyone who has a burn that is more than the usual small burn, but that is still a 1st degree burn. Their advice is:

Burns

"Note: You should attempt first aid treatment only for first-degree burns -- those in which the skin is reddened, slightly swollen, and sometimes covered with welts. If you receive a second- or third-degree burn -- one in which the skin is blistered or charred -- or if the burn covers a large area of skin, you should seek medical treatment immediately. For first-degree burns, follow these guidelines:
1. Immediately immerse the burn in cold water, and keep it immersed until you no longer feel pain; if necessary, periodically add ice cubes to the water to keep it cold. Do not put butter or any other greasy product on the burn.
2. Apply one of the following to the burn: (a) a commercial burn ointment, (b) a thick layer of honey, (c) petroleum jelly, or (d) a thin paste of baking soda and water.
3. Cover the burn with a loose protective bandage that allows some exposure to air. "

My notes:
When I had just burned my hand on the oil, I quickly washed the oil off with some soap, while the pain was still great and I figured washing wouldn't make it any worse.

Step 1: Immersing all my fingers in a mug of ice water felt great. For one thing, it kept the air off the burn. I kept my hand in the mug while I finished my dinner (okonomiyaki prepared on a grill at the dinner table - yum!!), though crying some. My kids brought me more ice cubes every few minutes. After 20 or 30 minutes, rather than the pain stopping as mentioned above, all my fingers started to have a new pain, seemingly from being in the ice water for too long. I decided to proceed to step two. This was very worrying, as exposing the burn to air even briefly was painful.
Steps 2 and 3: We had items b, c, and d in the house, and my kids were all for the honey. My husband said I should use the petroleum jelly (Vaseline), and I realized that honey was really a recipe for a big mess! Keeping my hand in the mug, I got the Vaseline, bandages, Germolene with local anaesthetic (from England -- an ointment for cuts, burns, etc.), and also took two aspirin. I took my hand out, and it did indeed seem rather numb. Dried it, covered it with a very thick layer of Germolene, and then a very thick layer of Vaseline (really overdoing it, in a gloppy way, in an effort to keep that painful air away). Then I put a couple of bandage pads on it and taped it up loosely. It did hurt, but not too badly now - like having a bad sunburn on a small area. Then I went about my normal activities, not using that hand. Walking the dog in the cold night air felt nice.

Well, the results of this treatment were great! The next morning I was able to remove the bandage and take a shower (keeping that hand up out of the water). The color and texture of my fingers was normal (no redness or burned-looking areas), but they were shiny, and smelled strongly of Germolene. There were just a couple of small blisters (the largest one about 3 mm across). No pain anymore, as long as I was careful - just a little tingling. By that evening, 24 hours after burning it, I could use my hand for most lighter activities, and by 48 hours I was not favoring it at all (could wash dishes, etc.) and even the blisters did not hurt. Now it has been one week, and there is no sign at all of a burn, except a small yellow scab or scar where the largest blister was.

To-by!

2006-10-25T09:33:00.000+09:00

This is Toby.
Also Toby with his biggest brother!

He's our new baby, and is now 5 1/2 months old. He is a really good boy, who tried his best to hold in his peepee and poo until he is able to go outside. One thing that really surprised us is that he slept through the night on his very first night here! When we got up in the morning, he was quietly sitting in his bedroom area (a large cage under the stairs, where he can see through the door into our bedroom, and see us sleeping!). He had a habit of biting or nibbling at our fingers at first, but he seems to have learned not to, now. When we let him run around the house, he gallops (like a horse) around and around the table, and the children enjoy lying down in his path, so that he jumps over them. He's a Jack Russell Terrier, and we got him in early August, when he was almost 3 months old. The poor little guy had to wait in the pet store for us for 2-3 weeks, while we sorted out a problem with the paperwork and changed our guarantor for renting the house, since our old guarantor would not sign the paper for us to get a dog, although we had assumed that she would. We had already found him and put a small deposit down on him, and we didn't want to give him up, so we did a rush job and found another guarantor (our old guarantor had been asking us to find a new one, anyway). He waited in the pet shop throughout that process.

Our favorite song to sing to him is "To---by!" This is modeled after a song that is famous here, called, "Yuu---ji!", which is sung by a man who is apparently like a Japanese version of Bruce Springsteen. This song "Yuu---ji!" is from the 80's I think, and seems to be about a past friendship with a man or boy called Yuuji. This song is now sung at our pro baseball team's games, whenever one of our players (named Yuuji) comes up to bat! My older son goes around the house singing this song... "Yuu---ji! ..... kaeritai, kaerenai... dadada,dadada, etc..." "I want to go back, but I can't go back, .... "

The volunteers, part 2

2006-10-11T20:51:00.001+09:00

To continue... So, after questioning and crying to the elderly woman volunteer for a while (as she calmly tried to tell me not to worry -- she didn't think the landlords were angry with me, etc...), I hooked Toby's leash onto something and started helping with the garden. It was a hot day and I was soon sweaty and redfaced -- not what I had wanted, as that was supposed to be my morning to rest and try to recover from the cold I'd had that week. But I felt there was no choice but to work very hard, NOW, since two elderly volunteers who had traveled a long way were working as hard as they could... they were friendly, anyway.

One morning a week later, I was finally throwing away some of the garden rubbish the volunteers had strewn here and there. I wanted to work on it for just 30 min. or so, as I was expecting a guest for a cup of tea, at 10:30. Aaah... there they were again, walking around the corner of the house into the back yard! This means more work for me, again at an inconvenient time. They immediately began helping me to clean up the rubbish and take it out to the trash station (it was garbage day and we have to take all our trash to the trash spot around the corner). After working for a while, I apologized and went inside to clean up the house. But before going in, I asked the lady if they could please go easy on the greenery, since it is still September, and there is green everywhere, for example in that park down there... but if all the greenery is pulled up in the garden here, it feels just like November, and it's depressing for me. She seemed to understand.

Eventually my guest came over, and we were having some tea and so on. She was from the U.S., too. We then went outside, to see the garden, and started chatting with the volunteers. They seemed knowledgeable about plants, so I thought I'd ask about some edible-looking berries and garlic chive type plants, etc. We were all standing around chatting, and I showed them the raspberry plant, etc. The volunteers said it was nice, and next year I could attach it to the back fence. "Oh and by the way, you can use any of those poles that you want to use. And don't worry, we've left a small baby cherry tree to grow here, and also this one grape vine can be revived next year, etc... also you should plant your corn plants further apart, about this far, and you'll get a better harvest. The soil is excellent, so if you put in some work you'll get a good harvest." Suddenly they were a wealth of information and suggestions. Something seemed not right. I wondered how to ask.

The four of us were standing there chatting, when I asked casually, "Oh, what are your names, Mr. and Mrs. volunteer?" (it did not sound so dorky in Japanese, though.) Mr. Volunteer looked chagrined or hesitant (oops, we've been found out) and said in a small voice, "We're the Ogawas". They were my landlord and landlady. I had been suspicious for a few minutes, so I wasn't too surprised, but I was going over in my head all the embarrassing things I had said, and the crying and so on, the week before. Had I criticized my landlords the previous week? Not sure, but I hope not! They said, "We lived in this house for 40 years." I said, "I'm so sorry I ate all your cherry tomatoes last year, and didn't share! There were so many. And your pumpkins, and your grapes, and ..." They said, "Don't worry, we put in the tomatoes in the spring before we moved, so our new tenant could enjoy them! And were there pumpkins? They must have grown up from seeds in our kitchen trash that we buried in the garden to improve the soil. You try it, too, and you'll have good soil next year." etc., etc. I was falling all over them trying to impress them.

After they left I was just hoping I had made a good impression BEFORE finding out who they really were. Like, I had offered them some daikon radish and shiso leaf to take home, before knowing who they were. I had worked alongside them, etc... but then there was the crying and the implied criticism of them the previous week... however, I had worked hard that week. I mostly felt that I had just taken part in some weird fairy tale, where someone comes along in disguise and then you are later judged on how you treated the stranger. And I was SO glad I hadn't called the real estate guy to complain about those pesky volunteers!! Actually, I really liked them, and I just hope they were able to accept my failings. We haven't heard a word from them or the real estate agent since that day, and it's been almost 3 weeks.

Our pro baseball team is right now playing game 1 of the league final series. Tonda! Haitta, haitta! They are leading 3-1.

Okay, it's over and we won this game. Good job to our pitcher, Daru-chan. He is only 20, and half Japanese, half Iranian. People say our kids look like him.

The volunteers, part 1

2006-09-24T18:36:00.001+09:00

A few weeks ago I had a call from our landlords' real estate agent, saying that our garden was a bit overgrown and the landlords had found some volunteers to come and do some gardening during the month of September. I was alarmed, since we had been told we didn't have to do any gardening, but I had been trying hard to look after the garden, anyway, and had enjoyed many peaceful hours gardening, looking after our new dog in the green garden, etc., and we were really enjoying our garden vegetables. I said, "If there's something we're doing wrong, I hope the landlords will tell us, and we can try harder. But I guess if it's trees or something like that, we can't do that ourselves." He said they were only coming to work on some of the trees, and not to worry.

About a week later, I went out into the back garden at night, with Toby-chan (our new dog), and got a huge shock. The garden looked like a typhoon had hit it. Plants had been cleared away, and piles of plants lay on the ground. The night sky looked huge, cold and threatening, in the space where there used to be a couple of cherry trees. I was shocked, and thought that probably the destruction of the plants and cherry trees had been my fault somehow. I remembered how I had said that we wouldn't be able to look after the trees. Also, that very evening I had written this post, where I had gone on about how nice Hokkaido is, and how we native-born Oregonians are not all the stereotypical treehuggers. I felt like my words were all coming back down on top of me. I touched each of the tree stumps and whispered, "I'm sorry". The branches and leaves were all muddled up in a big pile on the ground. The grape trellis and grapevines had also been torn down, just when the grapes were starting to turn purple.

Over the next couple of weeks, I didn't really have time to clean up the mess left by the volunteers. Every day I came home from work worried that next the pine tree would be cut down, or the azaleas, or the lovely tropical-looking trees with pinkish-orange flowers. I would rush to the back window and look outside to see if our garden had been leveled. I worried that our children would be psychologically scarred if our corn was torn out, when we had been looking forward to harvesting time. I put up a big sign, "Please do not remove this. Thank you." on the scraggly young raspberry plant my friend had bought, because she likes making cakes and wanted to have her own source of raspberries. I was to look after the plant, and we would split the harvest. One day I came home and found that the lovely decorative pine tree in the front had been trimmed to within an inch of its life, with just a tuft of green left on each branch. At least it had not been chopped down. I toyed with the idea of calling the real estate agent, but didn't want to cause trouble, especially as we had just given him a lot of bother at the time we got our dog, since we ended up having to change guarantors for the lease and wanted it done extra quickly since we had picked out our dog and couldn't take him home until our guarantor was changed. Our next-door neighbors, also renters, told me I should call and complain.

About a week ago, I took Toby outside to wait for a friend who was coming over for an English lesson (she never did show up). There was a little elderly lady, trimming my plants in the front of the house! I looked down and saw an elderly man, sawing something in the side garden. The volunteers! Finally my chance had come to talk to them, find out why they had cut down the cherry trees, and try to dissuade them from further destruction. I had a cold that week, and was soon in tears. On the good side, they seemed like nice, well-meaning people, and they told me that the cherry trees had been some bother or danger to the people in the house below, and that is why the landlord had said to remove them. As they trimmed grass and trees that I could easily have done, or at least more easily than them (they were using simple implements like handsaws and clippers, and using a ladder to get up in the trees), and as I saw that they had even swept last year's leaves out of my garage, I became so embarrassed and told them it was shameful to me that they were doing all these jobs that I could easily have done, and that all the neighbors would know I was not looking after the yard properly, etc...

Komadai

2006-08-29T08:59:00.001+09:00

Pictures: Saito (3rd from left) with his Waseda teammates; Tanaka (at the right, wearing a cap) with his teammates, listening to their coach.

Well, I wanted to say what happened to the Komadai High School baseball team in the end. Last I mentioned, they were going into the semi-finals. They won their semi-final, and were up for the final, for the 3rd year in a row!

The summer Koushien tournament starts with 49 teams -- one from each prefecture of Japan, except for Hokkaido and Tokyo, which are split into two sections and field 2 teams each. It is a single elimination tournament. Each prefecture has its own tournament earlier in the summer, in order to choose the team that will represent the prefecture. It is a very big deal just to make it to the main national tournament, which is held in the Koushien Stadium near Osaka. A friend of mine has fond memories of her high school team getting into the main tournament, in her Senior year. I think they lost in the first round, though.

Each year, of course, two teams from Hokkaido go to the main tournament, but historically they have not done very well. It was well known that Hokkaido is weak in Koushien. No-one expected a Hokkaido team to be able to win, until Komadai came along. Two years ago they went down to Osaka and won the whole tournament. The people of Hokkaido were overjoyed... Hokkaido's time has come!!

Last year, they won the whole thing again. This is a pretty rare occurrence. Wow... go Hokkaido. Up against the strongest high school baseball teams from Osaka, Tokyo, and all over the country.

There were those who could not stand to see Komadai having all this success. Parents of one of the 2nd string players complained that their son had been hit on the head several times by a coach, with a slipper. For a couple of days we all waited as the High School Baseball Federation determined whether they would be allowed to keep their second trophy. They were allowed the win, but celebrations in Hokkaido afterwards were muted. It was a real shame that that parents had to choose the moment of their glory to make the problem known. People all over Hokkaido were robbed of the chance to celebrate Komadai's second consecutive win. According to this Wikipedia article on High School Baseball in Japan (which has a section on Komadai's wins), it was the first time since 1947-8 that a team had won two years in a row.

Komadai then withdrew from this spring's Koushien (a separate tournament), after busy-bodies reported that they had seen former team members drinking and smoking underage in a pub. It was hard being the top team in the country for two years in a row.

Against this background, they made it (with some come-from-behind victories) into the final, for the 3rd consecutive year, in this month's summer tournament. Their opponent in the final: the team from Waseda University's attached high school. This is the top private university in the country, Japan's equivalent to Harvard. Their ace pitcher, Yuki Saito, looks very refined and well-brought-up, and wipes his brow neatly with a handkerchief, to the delight of moms around the country. Apparently his handkerchief has been featured on daytime TV, with people oohing and aahing over how it is folded, etc. His top pitching speed is not far off the top professional pitchers in Japan. In fact, in just 7 more months he will probably become a professional pitcher -- many of the top players are recruited straight out of high school. I still remember seeing the press conferences for high school star Hideki Matsui when he joined the Japanese league, still wearing his black button-down military style high school uniform, looking a bit awkward, quite thin, his face covered in zits. He has sure grown up. Godzilla!

Back to Saito. The final proved to be a battle between two great pitchers. Yes, we have our own ace, too. Masahiro Tanaka -- so calm, but the TV announcer said he looks like he has fire beneath the calm. He led Komadai to their championship last year. He is not from Hokkaido, and who knows why he chose to come here for his high school pitching career. He will also most likely be turning pro in 7 months.

The final was on a Sunday, starting at 1:00, and the pitchers held the score to 0-0 through the first 7 innings. In the 8th inning, each team scored one run, and they went into the 9th. Around 3:00, I got off work downtown, and walked to the main intersection, which was blocked off so that people could watch the game on a big screen. There was a brass band of some kind, and maybe a couple of hundred people were watching the game. Komadai batted at the top of the 9th inning, and we scored no runs. This left open the possibility of a Sayonara run by Waseda in the bottom of the 9th. I left and headed for home, knowing that the game would go into extra innings if Komadai held Waseda.

The streets were pretty deserted, as everyone was home watching the game. I heard a shout go up from an apartment building as I walked past... maybe another run?? No -- I got home and it was still 0-0. The two aces pitched inning after inning, with no more runs scored, until the 15th inning began. I heard the announcers saying that this would be the last inning, and wondered if the two teams would share the championship. It seemed highly unusual, though.

The 15th inning ended, with the score still 1-1; "The game is finished with a tie of 1-1, and there will be a rematch tomorrow!"

The players looked pretty happy after the game (no crying, as there usually is after Koushien games, from both the losing and winning teams). The pitchers looked tense, though ... they would have to play the following game, too. They had pitched 165 balls for Tanaka, and 178 balls for Saito. See article here. There were no "backup pitchers" who could take over the next day. For Saito, the rematch would mean pitching (whole games or nearly whole games) 4 days in a row, and for Tanaka, 3. About 50,000 fans watched the game at Koushien Stadium.

I heard that most of the rest of the country, including the TV announcers, seemed to be rooting for Waseda. They must have tired of always hearing about Komadai, Komadai, from way up there in Hokkaido, and Saito was a fresh face (clean from his handkerchief).

The next day, Monday, the game again started at 1 pm. A lot of the ladies in my office were watching the game online, or listening to it on the radio. Komadai tried hard to come back in the last inning, but they lost 4-3. See article here. In a fitting ending, the very last player to come up to bat was Tanaka, standing in the batter's box facing his rival, Saito.

I am so impressed with Komadai, just for making it to the final, and forcing a replay (the first one in summer Koushien since 1969 -- and at that time, the teams had to play 18 innings before a replay would be declared!). Only one team in history has ever won the summer Koushien tournament 3 times in a row, and that was in 1931-33.

Jiji words age 2 and 1/4

2006-08-25T23:07:00.001+09:00

A sheet I typed up for a babysitter one evening, in England. Jiji was 2 yrs. and 3 mos., and Dio was about 6 and 1/2. Nini and Dudu are real baby words for sleeping and milk in Punjabi, not made up! Jp-jp is the sound of the light sabers, of course.

Here are some words [Jiji] says that may be hard to understand (28/9/01)

“Shishi” or “Jiji” = [Jiji] (he will shout this if someone takes a toy away, or if he wants to do something too, etc)

“Dio” = [Dio]

“too” = me too, I want to go too, etc …

“bed” or “nini” = bed, sleeping, etc.

“dudu” = milk

“bikit” = biscuit

“birim birim” = sweets and snacks

“poo” = he says this after he’s done poo, or sometimes for no reason

“rehreh” = duckies, raisins, or Tweenies (these 3 all sound the same). He’s not allowed too many raisins, though.

“deddy, deddy, do!” = ready, steady, go!

He says a lot of things like “baby happy”, “hello Dio”, “blue car”, “Jiji too!”, “Jiji no bed”, “no nini”, etc. He also says “yes”, “no”, “ta”, “sorry”, etc, quite a lot.

Some of his favourite videos are: “E.T.”, “Jp-Jp” (=Star Wars), “Woody, Buzz” (=Toy Story), “Tory” (=The Neverending Story), and “Asah” (=Arthur). [Dio] can usually find all these videos. Feel free to watch your own T.V. shows too! Put away all the videos then, or he will just sit there trying to put them in. He might whinge for a bit, but he has to learn he can’t watch his own shows all the time.

He likes to do his ABC puzzle, and knows a lot of the letters. Also he likes books, his blocks and choo-choo sets, etc.

He normally has about some milk before bed. This is in his yellow cup, about ½ full with full-fat milk. He doesn’t always finish it, though.

Don’t worry about his potty – he can’t use it yet. If he wants to sit on it he can just sit on it with his clothes on. He should need just 1 more nappy, before bedtime.

Ouch!

2006-08-18T10:19:00.001+09:00

Yesterday my husband and I were watching the end of the Komadai quarter-final game in the summer Koushien national high school baseball tournament. Komadai is a Hokkaido team that, amazingly, won the whole tournament the last two years running. It was amazing for a Hokkaido team to win at all, two years ago, and then they won the following year as well. No Hokkaido team had ever won before -- they just couldn't get quite enough outside practice hours in, with all the snow. Komadai are our heroes.

The TV was turned up loud, as they came from behind to win their quarter-final (into the top 4 in the country now!), and Jiji's friends and their moms had just arrived to see our new dog. Son #1 (I'll call him "Dio") was supposed to be on his way home from baseball practice. Son #2, Jiji, called me from downstairs -- "Mommy, phone", and I went down. "Hello, is this the home of ----- ------?" Yes. "I'm calling from the emergency services. Your son has had an accident and is now in an ambulance on the way to ------ hospital." I could hear the sirens going, continuously, over the phone, and I had the weird idea that I had just heard sirens going past our house, too... on further thought, that couldn't have been right. I know the word for serious condition in Japanese, and that was my first question... "Juutai desu ka?" He answered that he had bled a lot, but the injury seemed not serious, and he is fully conscious and so on, but he doesn't speak Japanese well and can I come to the hospital. He put my son on the phone. crying... "Mommy, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." "It's okay - now just lie down and rest and give the phone back." "Okay..."

I was worried that he'd been hit by a car on the way back from baseball, but my husband called the mom of the boy he goes there with, and she knew the story. He and his friend had stopped to play at another teammate's house while dropping her off, and he had been running around and hit his head on something concrete in their garage.

When I arrived at the hospital, I caught a glimpse of him through a window in the hallway, and he was lying still with his head bandaged. I was relieved, because he tends to panic and fight against people touching any injuries. I sat in a small waiting room with the 2 baseball moms who had gone with him to the hospital. They had tried to contact me earlier, but couldn't because the Koushien tournament was turned up so loud at our house. We started talking with an older lady in the same waiting room, and she said she was there with her husband, who had suddenly collapsed and lost consciousness while watching Koushien. She said she had half given up hope, and that he was 85 and had had a lot of health problems recently. She looked about 10 years or so younger, and she was so calm. She had called her daughters and left messages on their answering machines.

I was called into the small emergency room to look after my son, as the staff were all taking the elderly man to have an MRI scan. My son had overheard that the man was not breathing on his own. My son was calm and covered with blood, and had already had stitches in his forehead. After a while a staff member came back and took him for an MRI scan and x-rays. After that was done, we went back to the emergency room for a bit, and tried to stay quiet and out of the way since the elderly man was in the room, and everybody was busy with him. His wife was waiting quietly in the hallway.

The doctor called me to his desk, and showed me the MRI scan and x-rays. Everything was fine inside, and I should watch out for nausea, headaches, etc. The cut was 2 cm long and they gave him 3 stitches. I should come back in 2 days to have the wound cleaned, and then in 1 week to have the stiches removed. That's all -- free to go home now. He had not eaten lunch yet, or had anything to drink for quite some time, so while I waited for the bill I got him a can of apple juice and a snack. He was really happy to have them, and I was happy to boost his energy and replace some of the blood he had lost. The total bill for the medical care was 7500 yen (about $70, or around 40 pounds).

According to my mobile phone call record:

1:08 -- The first call from another mom, trying to reach me.
1:39 -- I was half-way to the hospital in my car. Dio was already in hospital, probably having or just about to have his stitches.
2:21 -- Dio had just had his MRI scan and was in the hallway with me.
3:22 -- We were on our way home, having just stopped to pick up his things from his friend's house.

The hospital was new and not so big -- another privately run clinic/hospital, like so many here. I'm not sure why the ambulance service chose it, but I did get the impression that the hospital specialized in head injuries. I just looked them up online, and they do specialize in the brain, and they take emergency patients 24 hrs/day. While I was there, there were only the 2 emergency patients, and the place was largely empty. I overheard a family who arrived in the main reception area with their toddler, who'd had a fall, and they were worried. There were a few other people in the main reception area, and they asked my son if he was okay, etc., while we were waiting to pay (as he sat there covered in blood).

My husband (who is from the UK) seemed annoyed at the high cost, but I was quite happy. My sister in the US once had a problem where her son had hit a neighbor girl in the face with a plastic bat, and the girl was bleeding from her eye. She had a CAT scan, and the cost was going to be between $2000 and $5000. The little girl's family didn't have insurance, and my sister was worrying that they would have to pay. After a couple of weeks it was sorted out that it would be paid by some sort of insurance included with the rent of the apartments where both families lived. When you are dealing with an accident or a very sick child, the last thing you want to be thinking is "Bloody hell, there goes our financial situation down the drain." We pay about $400 (or about 200 pounds) a month in national health insurance for our whole family.

Once I got him home and changed his clothes, he looked a lot better. I got a cloth and cleaned off any remaining blood on his arms and face. The hospital staff had cleaned his face, but there was still dried blood behind his ears, where it must have dripped back when he was lying down. There was also blood at the neckline at the back of his T-shirt. At his friend's house there was blood on the garage floor and blood on a towel they had given him to stop the bleeding. I didn't see the floor or the towel, but there is quite enough on his uniform, so I can see why they called the ambulance.

He was running and hit his head on some sort of cement support on the ceiling of the garage. He fell backwards, getting a nasty scrape on his elbow, and said it felt like someone had hit him on the head with a hammer. He was with another 6th grade boy, and a 5th grade girl, and he asked them, "Did you hit me?" The girl said, "No, you hit that concrete." His hands were on his head, and they saw blood and asked, "Is your nose bleeding?" He checked, and then panicked, "It's my head! My head!" This was all in Japanese... he really has learned how to speak well in the last year in regular Japanese school. The other two ran to get the little girl's dad, who was home from work for his lunch break I think. He dealt with my son who was panicking and asking, "am I going to die?" etc., and gave him a towel. He got his wife home from work, and they got another mother over, and he went to work. I hope he didn't get blood on his work clothes. In the ambulance and at the hospital, the various staff members were able to communicate with him fine (he says no-one spoke to him in English), and they chatted some and asked him what position he plays in baseball, etc... In the ambulance he was saying over and over to himself under his breath, "Daijoubu, daijoubu" (I'm okay, I'm okay), and saying our names quickly under his breath: "Otousan, Okaasan, Jiji, Toby - Otousan, Okaasan, Jiji, Toby." Otousan and Okaasan mean Daddy and Mommy, and Toby is our new dog... :)

When it came time to do the stitches, they told him, "We have to give you stitches... we're going to tie it up with thread now, okay?" He understood and said, "What? Can you wait until my mum gets here?" They said, "No -- it's still bleeding, so we need to do it now.", and he said, "Okay." Also, apparently when they said he would have to wait for his MRI scan, since the elderly man had come in and they wanted to do his first, he had overheard them saying the man was not breathing, so he said, "Okay, his is more important." I am so proud of him for all this, since he has always been a great big panicker and over-reacter for all kinds of small cuts and bumps. His little brother is not like that, and I can tell the seriousness of the pain or accident based on his reaction. With big brother, any kind of pain gets a big reaction. He even freaks out having his nails clipped, for godssake! But he seems to have been calm yesterday, and held still by himself for the jab for local anaesthetic, and for the stitches too. What a relief that he is okay...

Garden record

2006-08-13T21:18:00.002+09:00

Picture: Edamame, corn, and a neighbor's house.

We live in Hokkaido, in the north where there is snow on the ground about 4 months of the year. People really get excited for spring and summer here! In the spring, everybody gets busy cleaning up and planting flowers. Summer activities include camping and going to a beach packed with beach bars decorated to look like somewhere in Hawaii or Jamaica, I guess.... pineapples, large signs for Jamaican rum, surfboards, and so on... it looks cool, not dorky, because it has all been homemade by bonafide alternative types, with dark tans, cutoffs, piercings and so on!

Well, my main summer activity now is gardening. We're renting a house, since last year, and when we moved in last year I was too busy with moving and then it became too hot, so the garden got really overgrown. As I fought my way through the plants later, I little by little discovered cherry tomatoes, pumpkins, big purple grapes, parsley, and lots and lots of shiso (a herb used with sushi and other cooking). There was a veritable shiso field in the lower garden. I don't really use shiso, so I gave a lot away and then in the fall pulled out all the plants. They come back up in the spring, anyway, so no harm done. The kids loved the grapes, I made a couple of pumpkin pies, and we ate fresh cherry tomatoes all summer. I didn't use any store-bought tomatoes for 3 months, which was great since tomatoes are about 4-5 medium ones for $3 here. These things had all been planted by our landlords before they left the place in the spring. They are an elderly couple, and moved to a condominium somewhere - we have never met them. I called the real estate agent one day to suggest that we send them some of their produce, but he said we didn't need to, and I didn't want to complicate our relationship, since they seemed to prefer to go exclusively through the agent.

Well, this spring I planted:

2 cherry tomato plants
daikon seeds
carrot seeds
pumpkin seeds
corn kernels
edamame (beans)
some new flowers, like cosmos and morning glory (there are already tons of bulbs, flowering bushes, and other flowers that come up anyway)
cilantro (fresh coriander) -- 3 small plants and some seeds
basil seeds
spinach seeds
a small field of potatoes (may queen and danshaku) in place of the shiso field
my friend bought a raspberry plant which will live here, and we will share the raspberries.

Here are the results so far:

Tomatos -- one plant died, the other got shaded over by fast growing plants and I had to move it. It gave us today its biggest harvest so far: about 7-8 small cherry tomatos, nothing special in terms of flavor, either! Last year I would go out every three days and come back with a large mixing bowl 2/3 full of delicious cherry tomatos - this was from plants that had no care whatsoever, and were just lying all over the ground. Will try again next year, with more plants from a different supplier.

Daikon -- nice looking, and I pulled out two of the biggest ones yesterday to give to the neighbors. About 2 inches thick and 8 inches long.

Carrots -- I didn't thin them properly, and there are too many small carrots growing in one place, so none of them seem to grow. I have yet to see one even as long as an inch. They smell like carrots, though!

Pumpkins -- I left just the healthiest two sprouts standing, and for some reason they are not growing taller/longer than 6 inches. There have been a couple of flowers.

Corn -- some sturdy looking corn stalks with nice waving leaves. Some flowery things are coming out of a few of them, and pollen comes off them when the stalks are shaken. Hopeful here!

Edamame -- coming along nicely, with plenty of beans. The beans are still too skinny to harvest.

New flowers -- Nothing so far... but there are plenty of other flowers, anyway.

Cilantro -- the 3 plants grew very big, but I should have harvested the leaves earlier, and frozen them. I waited too late and they changed shape. Then I harvested some, and the taste was wrong and seemed bitter. Now I'm letting them go to seed, in the hope that we'll see something next year... The seeds I planted have grown into small, feeble-looking plants that will hardly come to anything.

Basil -- this was in a container, and I didn't do the drainage part right, so the whole thing had to be scrapped.

Spinach -- these were used and added to salads as babies, and then the plants got strangely tall and scraggly. I harvested some more the put them in the freezer. Will try a different type next year.

Potatoes -- great! We have just started eating the new potatoes, and gave 1/2 a shoebox full to the neighbors on either side, along with a daikon. They look just like storebought potatoes, but in all different sizes, and they taste extra yummy! I have dug up about 1/5 of the patch.

Raspberry -- looks so-so, and about 30 raspberries grew. I suggested to my friend that there were too few to use, and we should let them fall and hopefully more plants would appear next year. The ground is so fertile here, and we have an amazing variety of plants, many of which seem to have sprung up from last year's fallen seeds, for example there are plenty of shiso plants and also sunflowers this year!

Also found and used this year (I didn't plant these):

Very vigorous parsley -- several feet of snow were no problem to the parsley plants, which defrosted nicely and started growing and growing!

Grapes -- some are growing, but they are not ready to harvest

Asparagus!! -- I didn't notice it at all last year, so was shocked one morning this spring to look out the window and see asparagus coming up. There is quite a bit in the freezer now. I've let two of them grow big and go to seed. When they grow big, all those little things at the top turn into little branches, and grow out away from the main stalk.

Some kind of nira thing -- nira is a green plant related to chives or garlic. We used it for a while, but then I got nervous about whether it was really an edible nira plant or just some inedible nira-lookalike.

My friends and neighbors have taken some shiso -- I am making sure there is a lot less than last year, by pulling up the larger plants. It smells nice to walk through a shiso field, but it is a pain because in the fall the plants all go dry and crackly, and then you have to pull them up and dispose of them somehow.

All the flowers are lovely! We saw the early-mid spring flowers for the first time this year, and the summer flowers are much more visible too, since the place is not so overgrown. I've heard that the owner really looked after this garden, but after they moved out last year, no-one did much with it until September and it was hard to see what was what! In the late fall, all the wilted or dry plants need to be cut down and thrown away, or they turn into a big mess under the snow. Plants which stay through the winter need to be supported with bamboo poles and little net dresses, so they are not damaged by the weight of the snow.

Jiji best quotes

2006-08-03T06:35:00.000+09:00

Here are some best quotes from my son #2, Jiji (this is not his real name, but what he called himself when he was two). He is 7 now. The other day, he said to his Daddy,

Age 7: "Maybe we are not real after all, but just toys in some big giant's game."

That reminds me of this one. I don't remember the exact wording, but:

Age 6, when shopping with Mommy in a home center: "Is all our life just a dream? Maybe we are just sleeping somewhere in space, and we are dreaming everything." (and no, he has not seen The Matrix!)

Best quote from age 5: "What about Pluto?"

My husband had been reading a novel set in Ireland about 150 years ago, or something like that... in that novel, a way of remembering the planets was described: "Mary's violet eyes make John stay up nights." My husband liked this and told the children about it (big brother Dio was about 9 then, and I was in the room listening, too) -- "You can use it to remember the planets! Mary is for Mercury, Violet is Venus, Eyes is Earth, and so on. So the next time you need to know the order of the planets, just remember that sentence! Me: "Wow, that's really useful, kids!" Dio: "Oh!"
Jiji: "What about Pluto?" Um, oops, none of the rest of us had noticed that Pluto was missing.

Best quote from age 4: "Aktrakjers was a keeper of farm animals. He was born there."

This was on our trip to Barcelona, 3 summers ago. He was pointing to some modern sculpture thing up on a hill. He had mentioned his made-up hero Aktrakjers (pronounced "Actractus" as in some sort of Roman name) before that, but only for a couple of months I think, since just before he turned 4. Aktrakjers is a sort of mythical hero. A lot of the stories remind me of Hercules and the Greek myths, etc... When we moved to Japan (soon after our trip to Barcelona) and started hearing people speaking Japanese a lot around us, he suddenly came up with Bubblippo language and then Bubblippo planet. It's a planet where a lot of things happen differently from here on earth. Except that some of the things are actually found here on earth, too (or have been in the past), but Jiji doesn't know that. For example, "On Bubblippo planet, you can be married to 10 people at the same time!" or "On Bubblippo planet, if somebody does something bad, they will be killed." He made up a whole bunch of other characters and monsters that live there, too. For example, a Finafone is a giant creature that balances on the planet with the tip of one very sharp toenail. The toenail is so sharp, and the giant is so large, that people on the planet can't see him. The size of the planet to him is like the size of a piece of sand to us -- like balancing on a piece of sand with one toenail. Zyn (pronounced "Zene") is the king of the baddies on Bubblippo planet, and he is a heart killer. A heart killer is someone who can make a good person turn into a baddy.

The playcocos are the heroes of Bubblippo planet, and each one has a person power. For example, Aktrakjers's person power is metal. Aktrakjers can do all sorts of incredible things, like climb a mountain that is as tall as the moon, and then ski down it (all in one day), and so on. Aktrakjers is 14 years old, and got his powers when he was 4. He has a little brother Moltred who is about 10 now (I think), and another littler brother, and a couple of big brothers, one being Spike Horn. His daddy's name is Uniclown. All of them have the surname Horn, actually. Uniclown Horn, and so on. His mommy was killed by a Tombodesawatta (a monster like a giant dragonfly), a long time ago. Actually there were no women or girls in the story for a long time, but recently one appeared -- the daughter of Ko Nor, and she will maybe be marrying Aktrakjers in the future.

Aktrakjers used to live on Earth, and he made Bubblippo planet (somehow making it in his chest and then spitting it out), and then he got a rocket and took a lot of Australians to live on it. Sometimes Jiji just goes on and on about Aktrakjers and the other characters and happenings. Often they relate to something happening around us. For example, on a very windy night in a mall parking lot, he said, "There is bad news from Bubblippo Planet. There's a big storm, and a little boy was blown away to Fly Planet, and there are almost only baddies on Fly Planet, and only 8 goodies." etc... There is also Gorilla Planet. Fly Planet and Gorilla Planet are just outlying planets, and not so important in the story... just used whenever another planet is needed. But they do have baseball teams, which play in a league with the teams from Bubblippo Planet. Recently Aktrakjers was injured in a baseball game between his team, the Rhinos, and another team. He was batting, and he hit the ball so hard that the bat shredded into a million tiny pieces, and then he started to run and fell down and broke his leg, or something. Nothing to do with the pieces of shredded bat...

One time last summer we were walking along and he was talking and talking, and I stopped listening for awhile, but then when I tuned back in, he was saying something like, "And then Aktrakjers made a sign in ant language, that said Please do not eat this cheese, and then .... " Later at the park, Jiji did write something scribbly (in ant language) on a bit of paper, made it into a sign, and put it up in the sand box for the ants. A couple of hours later he went to the sand box and couldn't see his sign. He was upset and came to tell me. I said, "Well, don't worry -- ants can't read, anyway!" and he seemed surprised and angry - "What?!".

Best quote from age 3: When his daddy stood him up on top of a barstool in our kitchen -- "This is not a safe place to put me."