Okay, we might as well reach an agreement now that my blog might be updated weekly. Or it might be updated every two weeks. I can basically promise you that while I WILL update my blog, WHEN is a matter of some dispute.
Such is life.
The Best Laid Plans
I don't think it would be too much of an exaggeration to say that there has been a carrot dangling in front of us ever since we arrived in Kyoto: the happy necessity to return to California in the spring for mandatory state tests for the kids. This might have been the first time in the history of the world when teenagers actually looked forward to taking standardized tests. Of course, it wasn't the tests they were looking forward to: it was the accompanying visits with friends and family.
However, after weeks of sifting through Japanese and U.S. based internet travel sites and talking with friends and travel agents aplenty, Bob and I had to admit defeat.
There are no affordable airplane tickets anywhere on earth that will enable us to fly from Kyoto to California and back.
None.
You see, there is a mandatory $500 (50,000yen, which actually comes out to more than $500 U.S. dollars, but saying '$500' is less painful) "gas surcharge". Bob and I were surprised to find out that the TICKET price actually only entitles us to sit on the "spacious" airplane seats and eat the "excellent" food (okay, okay, we are also pitching in to pay all the cabin attendants, baggage handlers and security x-ray technicians/voyeurs.) The TICKET price evidently has nothing to do with the fuel the plane uses. Huh.
So a $400 round trip ticket actually would have cost us about $1000. Which would have brought the grand total of our visit home to around $5000 to $6000, once we tally in the plane fares, rental cars, various food costs for missed goodies and things we wanted to stock up on.
I don't know about you, but I don't have $6000 just laying around, unspent and wasting away from nonuse. If I had $6000 laying around like that, I probably wouldn't have to go to 5 different stores to stock our refrigerator as I scamper around Kyoto, finding the lowest prices for milk, rice, bread, meat and fresh vegetables.
So, to be blunt, no trip home. Patrick is stoically disappointed. Aya is most obviously disappointed and isn't even bothering to be stoic about it. I'm silently disappointed (Mothers aren't allowed to have tantrums. Bad precedent). Bob is disappointed (there was a brief, tantalizing window there where it looked like Bob would've been able to join us), but is being sufficiently distracted with work and the promise of a new Bruce Springsteen CD.
Now we are setting our sights at a shorter, more local and infinitely more affordable trip. Patrick is firm. "Okinawa. It's warm there and I'm really cold right now." Bob says "Seoul. We haven't been there yet." Aya says "California".
Sigh. To be continued....
Heart Breaking Lessons for Us All
This week was a sad one for Bob, and fraught with lessons for all of us, I think.
Bob went to work last Monday to administer his final exams. One of his students finished before everyone else and asked to leave early, as she wasn't feeling well.
She went to another class. Submitted a final paper to yet another.
Then she went back to her dorm room and suddenly died.
She was 24 years old.
It wasn't until Friday her friends and dorm mates became seriously concerned since they hadn't seen her all that week.
They got the help of the dorm official and found her when they managed to get her door open.
We will likely never know all the facts. However the evidence points to the fact that she was diabetic, and had told NO ONE about her condition. Whether she wasn't taking her medication correctly or not eating correctly we don't know.
By now her parents have already come from Australia to collect her body. Her teachers and friends are left reeling.
Herein lay the lessons, not only for foreign students studying abroad, but for all of us.
--Take care of your health. Take your medicines. Eat what you need to eat. Whether you are in a foreign country or in a far-flung place in your own country, no one can take better care of you than you.
--If you have a medical condition, TELL SOMEONE. Put aside the discomfort and embarrassment. Find at least one person you can trust to tell. Tell them what to do in an emergency. Write it down so they can keep it handy. It might just save your life.
--This one is for everyone else out there. Those of you who sense something is wrong with someone you know, those of you who want to reach out but don't. My advice? DO. Reach out, even if it doesn't work at first. Regret is a heavy weight to drag around through life. And I promise you, this girl's friends are in a world of regret right now.
Cold Weather Revenge: Bubble Wrap and Shower Curtains
By now many of you have read our email and Facebook updates about our war with the freezing Kyoto temperatures. We spent a few weeks searching high and low for this wacky stuff called "insulation", to, oddly enough, stuff into our attic crawl space to keep the heat from flying out our roof. We have now discovered that insulation is not available to regular folks here in Japan, and it is unclear if it is available to home contractors either. And faced with the choice of either no insulation or spending probably $4000 to have some mailed to us from California, we selected the less expensive of the two evils. No insulation.
So we ramped up our battle and with the help of friends, embraced the tried and true Japanese methods to fight the chill (which, I might add, really isn't that much colder than Northern California during cold winters. I mean, it's not Hawaii, but it's not Duluth either. And we've been to Duluth in the dead of winter. Look in the dictionary under the heading "cold". There is a picture of Duluth. And possibly Antarctica and Alaska, but I've never gone to those places).
After multiple trips to home stores, we have done the following:
1. We have lined many of our windows with bubble wrap. The bubbles in this wrap are about a centimeter (half inch) in diameter. The theory here is that the bubble wrap seals out some of the cold coming through the window glass. It took a great deal of self-restraint not to cathartically pop the bubbles as we prepared to adhere it to the windows. The result? The room is just as cold, but the windows look trippy.
2. Sponge tape. The side-effect of having a frigid house is that the act of 4 people and 3 cats breathing creates unbelievable amounts of condensation that not only drips, but POURS down all the windows. The result is sopping window sills, puddles on the floor and a constant battle against mold. Enter in the SPONGE TAPE. This is, obviously, strips of sponge that have a tape backing. Peel off the paper strip, stick the sponge to all the edges of the window. It is pretty effective, except I keep wondering how often I'm going to have to either replace it, or wring it out.
3. Just yesterday Bob went out and bought the latest weapon in our cold battle arsenal: shower curtains. Of course, they aren't called shower curtains here. But that's what they are. Plastic sheets with holes in the top for hooks. You hang these behind your actual curtains. They supposedly do what the bubble wrap does: block the chill coming through the window glass. So far we don't feel a significant difference in the temperature, but the act of hanging up the plastic sheets did invigorate us a bit for awhile. I suppose only time will tell.
4. We are also engaged in a delicate balancing act involving our heated table (the kotatsu), our gas heater, various electric space heaters and our electric blankets. Up until a few weeks ago we were blindly turning on several heaters at a time: one in the living room for the kids, one in the kitchen for me. Sometimes the kotatsu was on as well. Insane! The outcome of all this wasteful heating was a total combined gas and electric bill of $300. When we got the bills in the mail I thought I'd have to utilize my CPR skills on Bob, who paled and looked at me incredulously before dashing pell mell into each room to slap off the various heating devices.
Now we are careful to pay close attention to how many heating devices are on at a time, and try to heat as few rooms as possible. Sometimes Bob or I, or both of us, will shake our heads in disbelief at the fact that keeps slithering through our heads: that the house would be infinitely warmer, and the use of heaters infinitely less, if this house were INSULATED.
Which brings us right back to the beginning of my tale, doesn't it?
Well, that's it for now. I hope the week ahead is warm and well insulated for you all.
Until next time....
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