Volunteering, TEDxKyoto Style

Hello everyone.

Amid teaching at a variety of schools and businesses and untangling the web of online school insanity in which we have found ourselves entangled, I've been volunteering.

It was a little like the story "The House that Jack Built".  Bob teaches at Ritsumeikan University.  Jay, one of the co-founders of TEDxKyoto teaches at Ritsumeikan University.  The two words "Christina" and "writes" were lumped together and I found myself invited to lend my often times questionable writing and proofreading skills to the TEDxKyoto cause.

So for the past few months I've been proofreading informational and publicity documents.  I've also been writing up the biographical paragraphs for the speakers.  And the closer it got to the big day--Sunday, September 16th--the faster I wrote.

Now, for those of you who have never heard of TED or TEDx, let me give it to you in a nutshell.

TED is an acronym that stands for "Technology" "Entertainment" and "Design".  TED is a non profit organization dedicated to simply spreading great ideas.  "TED" is used for the official annual conferences.  There are now over 900 TEDTalks available for free on Youtube or on the TED websites or iphone and ipad applications.  

"TEDx" events are TED-styled experiences done at local levels.    Sunday's event was the first major event for TEDxKyoto.

So it was a big deal. 

And the entire event was  powered by volunteers.   

University professors and college students, foreign residents and Japanese of all ages, backgrounds, and professions--you name it, they were volunteering.  

 This picture of the volunteers  was taken right before the end of Sunday's event.  I'm lurking on the right (not that you can actually see me, but I'm there).  And this wasn't even everyone.  There were still many volunteers manning the cameras and sound systems and setting up the reception area for the dinner which followed.  

The event was fabulous.  It was an all day  commitment even for attendees--from 10:00am to 8:30pm.  For the volunteers it was a much longer day.   Many  of the volunteers had spent  all of Saturday setting up, testing the video feeds, the lighting, preparing the supplies and decorations for the refreshments and meals that were provided throughout the day.  Speakers stayed much of Saturday to  practice their presentations.  

So while I'm pretty proud that people were reading my words on the programs and here and there on the website (at least the English words!), I'm not fooling myself.  My part was a tiny piece of the whole.  In addition to writing I became a "gopher" on the day of  the event, filling in wherever help was needed.  And it was great and exhausting and filled with that sense of chaotic belonging that comes from being a wee cog in the midst of a great machine.  

And it was extremely humbling.  The speakers were experts in their fields--mathematicians, archaeologists, writers, detectives, musicians, film makers, robot engineers....the list goes on.  But in the context of "putting on the show" we were all just people.  Up on that stage each speaker and performer was a star and a visionary.  Back stage they were new friends.   In addition to the speakers and performers, I was surrounded by a sea of other volunteers.  And each of them were new friends as well.

Now you may ask, was it worth it?  Was all the writing worth it?  And on the day of the event, was all the running, sweating, fetching, prepping  and sore, sore feet worth it? 

Absolutely.  

In fact, I'm already working with a few people on laying the foundations for a youth-focused TEDx event called "TEDxYouth-Kyoto".  

Here we go again! 

Until next time...

Kwaj + California + Japan = Shodoshima

Hello all...

Bob, the kids and I have just returned from  a whirlwind weekend trip to Shodoshima, an island in the Seto Inland Sea about a 3 hour ferry ride from Kobe.

We went with my Sanyo Chemical Company English Club.   This trip was their annual English Club get-together and their first attempt at a weekend-long event. The trip  was a win-win for Sanyo and for us--we all got a chance to visit a part of Japan we had never been to, and they got 4 native english speakers with whom to chat.

Bob and I on the ferry bound for Shodoshima.  Behind us in the distance is what I've heard to be the longest suspension bridge in the world. Sort of like a very long, pale Golden Gate Bridge.








Aya looking seriously cool on deck.









Immediately upon reaching Shodoshima, I had a baffling rush of recognition--the incredible nearness  of the lapping water coupled with the steamy summer air filled my head with visions of Kwajalein, where I lived so many years ago.  But the towering green mountains tumbling down to the sea gave me pangs for the Northern California coasts.  And all the while I was indisputably in Japan.

I'm pretty sure I was alone with my  schizophrenic trifecta of memory.  But that's okay.  I often am.

But back to the trip....

First of all, you'd think that it would be a bit awkward and weird trying to meld the 4 of us with the 22 Sanyo Chemical Company employees.  Bob and the kids, after all, had never met any of these lovely people.   But I have been teaching at Sanyo since early spring, so my students were well-accustomed to my pitiful jokes and slightly warped sense of humor.  They were incredibly helpful and friendly, always including Patrick and Aya in whatever we did.  We, in turn, thanking our lucky stars we had been living in  Japan for as long as we have, were able to do our part to also give them room to have a good time without having to "babysit" us.  It was a combo that  from the start that made for a great weekend.

Upon landing on Shodoshima  we were greeted by Sanyo's former English teacher, Brandon, from England, and his wife, who is from Japan.  They had moved earlier this year to Shodoshima and were eager to show off their new island home.    Brandon had a hearty greeting and a warm handshake for each of  his former students, as well as for the 4 strange Americans who tumbled off the ferry after them.   Brandon and his wife  were incredible hosts. That first night (Saturday night) they put on a barbecue in the picnic area of the youth hostel where Bob and the kids and I were staying.  BARBECUE.  All capital letters.  There were 3 big half-barrel barbecue pits upon which everyone joined in to roast slices of beef, pork and chicken, freshly caught fish and squid, slices of Japanese kabocha (pumpkin), onions, okra, hunks of green onions, corn on the cob and shitake mushrooms.   Brandon's wife had made row upon row of onigiri (rice balls, Aya's favorite), which people snapped up in their chopsticks to grill over the coals as well.  Brandon had also arranged for the local liquor store to deliver 20 liters of beer on tap, in addition to which he had added innumerable six packs of beer, bottles of wine and liter upon liter of soda and tea. He and his wife had brought so much food that they had forgotten to bring out the yakisoba (noodles grilled with sliced cabbage, pork and onions in a tangy sauce) and the watermelon.

In the middle of all the beer-sipping, soda-chugging, food grilling and visiting, a young dog, probably part Shiba Inu, trailing a short length of rope off his collar, tiptoed to within sniffing distance of our group.  One of the Sanyo guys eased over to the dog with a bit of meat.  The dog was wary, but hungry, and was finally coaxed into taking the meat, after which he leaped back.

By this time several other Sanyo people had come over.  The hubbub attracted Patrick, who took his bowl containing a number of slices of beef and pork, and went out to the open area where the dog hesitated.  Patrick sat cross legged on the ground and held out a bit of meat.  The dog immediately eased up to him and took the meat.  For the next half hour Patrick gave the dog tiny bits of meat, all the while trying to get a grip on the dog's collar so he could find out where the dog was from.

It was not meant to be folks.  Patrick managed to wrap  his fingers around the dog's collar  just one time.  In retaliation, the dog wiggled, turned and peed on the leg of Patrick's pants.  Which, by the way, Bob found totally hilarious.

Patrick did not.

Soon the dog walked very purposefully back up the residential street and vanished, leading us to think that perhaps it knew exactly where it's home was, and simply came down to investigate our barbecue's tantalizing smells....

After most of the food had been devoured there were fireworks.  Brandon had bought huge packs of sparklers and fizzing sticks for Patrick and Aya, and one of the Sanyo employees had brought roughly 1000 more smaller zipping and popping fireworks.  And aside from me managing to get a hole burnt into my shirt from a flying ember and several beers being toppled over, a great time was had by everyone.

The next day we were up at dawn to eat the early morning youth hostel breakfast, and then off for a day of sightseeing.

Dawn over the water, just outside our youth hostel room.  

We climbed abord the small bus that Sanyo had rented for both days we were on Shodoshima (a bus, which I might add, that was beautifully air conditioned) and headed up, up, up into the misty mountains to a small temple carved right into a cave in the rock face.  The entrance to the temple, startlingly enough, had loudspeakers and blinking lights that automatically sound when a motion sensor is triggered--a system intended to  scare away overly curious local resident monkeys, of which  there are MANY.  

The map of the temple grounds.  There really is a massive, faint hand (of Buddha) carved into the rock face above the temple.  

Inside the cool, dampness of the cave temple, a small older woman was standing behind a table with good luck charms, bead bracelets and temple memorabilia.  One by one the Sanyo employees tossed coins in the offering box, clapped twice and offered a brief prayer at the shrine.  Meanwhile, I perused the table of mementos.

I finally chose a bracelet made of polished dark stone beads and what I thought were carved flowers on frosted glass beads. Something about it  delighted me, and since it wasn't incredibly expensive, I bought it.  I was delighted later to discover that the glass beads were actually each meticulously engraved with tiny dragons--my brother's Chinese zodiac animal.  I had been wanting to find a piece of jewelry involving dragons for several years now to wear as a sort of Dennis memento.  It seems the jewelry found me.  

Ya-hoo for the twists of fate.

We went next to the top of another mountain and boarded a sky tram that took us up to one of the peaks, on top of which were incredible vista points, a souvenir shop, a plant stand, a snack bar and a restaurant. (Trivia for you:  it also had an impressively swanky public bathroom that cost a reported $10 million to build.  And while the bathroom WAS incredible--gleaming, row upon row of western toilets with all the requisite  jets and singing chimes, as well as skylights and growing plants festooned everywhere--$10 million DOES seem like a lot for a bathroom.)

After some wandering and picture taking, we all met again at the restaurant and had a kaiseki lunch.  "Kaiseki" is a traditional Japanese style of dining where the food is served in individual portions, each of which features a seasonal speciality of the area.  We enjoyed both regular and green olive oil somen, salmon sashimi, marinated raw thinly sliced ika (squid), clams sauteed in sake, shrimp, tofu, sliced lotus root with flying fish eggs, and rice cooked with mushrooms in a dashi sauce. 

After that I bought a baby olive tree (of course) and we all boarded the bus again.  

We were on our way to our last scenic view point when we were set upon by:

MONKEYS!  Dozens of monkeys!  They spied our bus from their leafy hiding places and lumbered right up.  The bus driver stopped the bus and we found ourselves surrounded by monkeys of all sizes and ages--older monkeys who would just sit in the street and stare at us, all the way down to dainty, tiny baby monkeys  clinging to their mother's fur.   After a suffering a brief vision of  a "Planet of the Apes"  scenario befalling us all, the driver eased the bus back into the street and the monkeys, looking totally blase and unsurprised, wandered back into the forest.  

Our last stop was a spectacular viewpoint  on top of a mountain above us where we could actually see 360 degrees around.  Bob had good fun playing with his new iphone toy, a 360 degree panorama picture taking gizmo:

And I managed to convince an exhausted Aya to pose for one photo as we perched high above the harbor below:

After that we swirled back down the switchbacks and down to the waterfront where we bid our goodbyes to Brandon, his wife, and the island of Shodoshima--a bit too soon in my opinion--to retrace our steps from ferry to train, to train, to subway to home, where our 3 cats were waiting for us.

But Brandon has invited us to visit anytime....and I have a sneaky suspicion we are going to try to go back.

Until next time...

Hello Humans? This is your teacher speaking.....

Hello all.

When I last blogged, we were in Seoul,  delightfully confused, overheated and full to bursting with incredible food.

I am happy to say that we made it back to Kyoto with nary a scratch, and have plodded our way back into the start of another autumn...not that you'd know it from the weather, which remains steaming hot with  sudden torrential downpours that appear and disappear with neither warning, rhyme nor reason.

I have spent the last few weeks shaking my head back and forth over the world's largely horrible hijinks...specifically the hijinks of my native land, but also the hijinks of other places on this weird planet of ours.  And I have come to the conclusion that adult humans, for the most part, seem to have completely forgotten the lessons they learned way back in elementary school.

Yes, I know this topic has been dragged out  ad infinitum, written and blogged about so many times and in so many varying ways that it is quite cliche for me to be writing about it now.

But it's true.

The lessons we teachers give our youngest students are meant to be the foundations for a life time of learning how to live among our fellow creatures.  These lessons take on different tones depending on the  philosophies and political beliefs of the community, school and individual teacher--sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.  But the intention is the same:  to help young people successfully grow  into adults.

For me--a self-confessed liberal Californian--I try to imbue my lessons with a sense of the big picture.  Even preschoolers and kindergarteners can grasp a bigger picture if it's presented just right....and nothing delights me more than giving a lesson and letting the kids discover the bigger ideas all by themselves.

Which they do, and often in very eloquent ways.

And of course, the backbone of the best lessons are positive messages.  People respond better to positive messages  rather than negatives.  "Do's" rather than"Don'ts".  "Do's" provide a path, a set of instructions to follow.  "Don'ts" leave you hanging, stranded--you've been told what NOT to do, but then left to figure out what TO do in confused isolation.

But for me it's more than just spouting off rules to live by.  I try to teach the rules that I live by.  How can I believably teach something that I don't believe for myself?  I can't.  So whether I'm teaching 1+1=2 or helping a student discover how amazing  a bug can be, I better believe that 1+1=2, and I better be willing to pick that bug up in my own hands  and share in that amazement.

What, you may ask, are my "big"lessons?  I'm glad you asked...


Christina's "Big" Lessons


1. Skin color is just pigment, beneath which we all have the same needs, and often very similar desires.

2. Respect=accepting that  each person is different, and being different is good.

3. Help others.  Always.

4. Humans do not own the planet earth.  This planet belongs to everything and everyone upon it, from the earthworm to the redwood, from the human to the elephant.

5. Even things you think are icky  deserve the chance to live.  (I can't tell you how many spiders/beetles/flies/moths/ants I have rescued in cups and toted out of my classrooms.  It got to the point that whenever any kid saw a bug in a classroom, I'd be called upon to rescue it)

6. If you have to say "I'm sorry", it's already too late.  You've already done the deed.  Instead try to make "thinking choices" so that the "sorry moment" never has to happen.

7. Live gently.

8. Hands of friendship.

9.  Always share (unless, that is, you have a peanut butter sandwich and your friend has a peanut allergy.)

10. True fun surpasses all differences. (Hey, try throwing a bunch of balloons into a group of kids who don't share the same language.  I've done it many times and after a minute or so, my friends, you've got magic.  And a lot of running, laughing, yelling and quite a few popped balloons)

11. Individually we can do great things.  Together we can do unbelievable things.

12. ASK QUESTIONS. There is no such thing as a silly question.

13. Use your words.

14. Learning happens for our entire lives.  Even teachers don't have all the answers. (The kids loved it when I wouldn't know the answer to some obscure science question because they got to watch me drag out a book or my ipad to look up the answer.  As a bonus lesson, they got to learn the words "Index"  "Appendix"  "Glossary" and "Wikipedia")

15. Try.  Try.  Try.  If you fail, try again.


I promise you that if you were a fly on the wall of my classroom at any point in the past 21 years, you would've heard me say these things, and would have seen  me teaching these things.

And I hope you would have seen me living these things.
As I still try to do.

Until next time...

Hello Charades--We're Back!

Hello all from Sinseol-Dong!

We are at the end of day 2 in Seoul.  And I am happy to say that we have learned some truths already which I feel will make us wiser:

1. When flying  on a low cost airline in Japan, it is a lot like flying on a regular airline in the states.  As far as I could tell, The only difference is that we don't get free sodas.

2. As a bonus we got the very Kwaj like experience of riding on a bus out to the plane, and then Actually walking up a set of outside stairs to board. (It should be noted that this was due to the discount airline terminal not yet being finished, and not due to some sort of discount airline "we can't afford a proper boarding gate" issue.  I still got a kick out of it)

3. Never underestimate the power of charades as a communication tool.

4. Incredible spiciness does NOT, in fact, always appear as a brilliant red chili color.  Spiciness can also be quite invisible.

5. Seoul is not appreciably cooler than Kyoto, but since it is so awesome, I forgive it. 

6. Confusingly, it is equally difficult to find a good antiperspirant/deodorant here as it is in Japan.  I can only assume that people on this side of the world have developed the happy ability to simply sweat less than I do.  If this is so. I am alarmingly envious.

7.  Dragons beard candy is possibly the most lovely thing to eat ever created. 


So I am sure we will learn more handy things as the days progress.  But for now, suffice it to say that Seoul is an incredibly vibrant, diverse, colorful, noisy and delightful place, and we have barely tiptoed into life here. 

What's next for the functionally illiterate Mooreheads in Seoul?  I haven't the foggiest idea, but I'm positive it will be unbelievable. 

Until next time....

   

Hot Hot Hanabi

It was well over 95 degrees on Saturday.

We went anyway.

The air was a 200 pound barbell of humidity.

We went anyway.

The train station was surging with people, politely jostling against each other, adding heat and friction to the already scorching day.

We went anyway.

Hanabi.

Fireworks (hanabi) are as much a part of the Japanese summer as rainbow colored yukata, waving fans and kakigori (shaved ice).

On Saturday Bob and I prodded the kids away from the delights of the air conditioner, loaded up our trusty Trader Joe's bags with plastic ground tarps, drinks, snacks and plenty of sunblock, and headed out towards one of the more popular summer firework displays, in the town of  Juso, near Osaka.

We had arranged to meet with one of the local groups whose goal was to bring together Japanese people and foreign residents.  A number of these groups were gathering in the same spot to enjoy the fireworks together.  It didn't take us long to find the group--a combination of the Japanese organizers, clad in yukata and holding signboards that read "WE ARE ONE" (the name of the group), along with a number of rather bewildered looking foreigners.

When we all got to the river, it was a vivid combination of organization and gentle chaos.  A huge swath of the river bank had been formally set up with vast and clearly marked areas for people to spread out tarps, rows of gray porta potties and evenly spaced tents of food vendors.  People--hundreds, perhaps thousands-- were a mass of activity, spreading out tarps, sharing snacks, or winding carefully on the narrow strips of grass between already established tarps.

Once we found the rest of our group we settled in, put on sunblock and hats, and resigned ourselves to sitting out in the blazing sun for the next 5 hours until nightfall, when the fireworks would start.

Aya quickly amused herself by snapping pictures of us with my iphone.  Amid sips of tepid water and nibbles of rice crackers,  we posed for Aya and chatted with the other members of the group, more of whom were arriving every few minutes and settling themselves on the large tarps with us.

Along with the people, however, we soon discovered one of the typical side-effects of sitting on formerly people-free areas of riverbank--insects.  There was a fascinating assortment of hopping, crawling and jumping critters using  the newly arrived arms, legs, heads and tarps as venues for new exploration:  praying mantises, small jumping spiders, gnats, ants, crickets, grasshoppers.  Probably many more that were either too small or too fast to see.  Unfortunately, while I didn't mind being used as an insectoid playground, Aya did not share my sentiments and clamored at Patrick every few seconds to shoo away some new critter.


At dusk we ventured out to find sustenance at some of the many food tents.  Bob snapped up skewers of steak along with chicken karage and fried potatoes.  I made a beeline for the kakigori.


We were pleased to note that the sun was setting by the time we got back to our group's tarp (a task which took a considerable amount of coordination and skill, as we had to maneuver in complex maze-like patterns to avoid stepping on other people's tarps.  This task was made a bit more challenging since Japanese people typically take off their shoes before walking on picnic tarps.  This is brilliant in that it keeps the tarp relatively clean, but it turns walking between the tarps into a ground-bound tightrope act).  

As we dug into our snacks, a newcomer showed up at the side of our tarp and introduced himself  and his girlfriend to us.  In short order we discovered that he was a 1975 graduate of UC Santa Cruz, which amused and amazed Bob and I since we, as you may recall, graduated from UC Santa Cruz as well, albeit 10 years later.

The sky  finally darkened into true night, and the first booms and towers of fire shot up into the air from the fenced off river's edge.

Finally, the fireworks began.

I must emphasize that Japanese fireworks shows are not like those in the United States.  Back at home fireworks shows are always frustratingly short.  Usually 20-30 minutes at most, sequestered to the Fourth of July (accompanied by patriotic music), sports events (accompanied invariably by "Celebrate") or, oddly, demolition derbys (some sort of indeterminate instrumental rock music).

But here, oh man, here, the fireworks shows can last one, two sometimes three hours.  And the fireworks are of a variety and power that I have yet to witness at home.  Shooting  flares that sparkle into looking like palm trees, or weeping willows.  Explosions that resolve themselves into Mickey Mouse heads, slices of watermelon and flowers.

This show did not disappoint.  Echoes of the explosions bounced off the buildings along the river's edge while a light breeze finally kicked up.  And with each new burst thousands of voices would gasp in unison.

Of course, at the end we had the unenviable task of actually getting back to the train station--along with thousands of other people.  Osaka police officers and back up security guards expertly siphoned the mob of cooked, tired and murmuring people into lines that lead neatly back to various train stations.

When we finally stumbled off the train in Kyoto--sweaty, tired, grubby, our ears still ringing with echoing explosions-- we opted for a taxi rather than another train ride and 15 minute trek back to our house.

Just another summer day in Japan...

Until Next time.
 

Unfamiliar in the Most Familiar of Ways

So, dear ones, I finally went.

Tucked securely into the shiny red mini SUV of my friend Hitomi, I finally went to Costco.

And I am not ashamed to say that it was GOOD.  Weird.  But good.

We drove through busy, narrow city streets that became gradually wider as we moved out of the city center.  We chatted about our kids and teaching and Montessori and the gloriousness of seeing a musical live on stage.

Eventually we wound up on an expressway that  sped our progress considerably, and led us  into the kind of rice fields and spread apart clusters of houses that greatly reminded me of our former Japan home of Kozoji.

Soon we turned onto newer streets with shiny freshly built houses and sprawling new shopping complexes  (complete with massive parking lots) that would put a California strip mall to shame.

Suddenly there it was.  Costco.  We twirled up into a multi level parking building and trudged through the stifling car exhaust heat to a row of downward tilted moving walkways.  And at the top of the huge moving walkways were rows and rows of Costco shopping carts--and yes, they were the same size as the Costco carts back at home.

With one difference.

When Hitomi and I wheeled the carts onto the moving walkway, I expected to have to brace the cart with my feet to keep it from rolling downward and crashing into Hitomi.

But It needed no such help.

The walkway was magnetized, built to stick to thick metal plugs that sat near each wheel of the shopping carts.  I shoved a bit at the cart but could not budge it.

Glorious.

Once safely carded and inside the store we split up.  I looked around for a bit.

Totally, completely familiar.  And while I've come to accept and quickly adapt to the many surprises inherent in living abroad in Japan, I wasn't quite ready for Costco to be so much like....well....Costco.

It was appropriately huge.  The aisles were the same preposterously massive width as Costco stores in California.  People lingered over the free samples that were being offered by cheery aproned folks at the head of nearly every aisle.

The main difference I noted between this Costco and the one at home is that the many, many kids accompanying their parents were totally, mind-blowingly and delightfully jazzed by the size of the shopping carts  (primarily because in a regular Japanese grocery store, "shopping carts" are actually little contraptions designed to wheel around the plastic shopping hand baskets, and are approximately the size of a small portable folding baby stroller. What's the fun in that?).

Throughout the store collections of children of all ages would take turns sitting in the massive cart while other kids zipped them gleefully around corners and down straightaways, interestingly careful to steer meticulously away from other shoppers.  No one seemed to find this amiss or distracting or unpleasant, and quite frankly I couldn't blame the kids.  Costco carts ARE huge, even by overblown American standards, and I would bet good money that more than one adult Costco shopper back at home in California  has wished for the chance to collapse into a cart and be wheeled around.  I know I have.

Of course, this is NOT an American Costco store, so what it offered did differ somewhat from what is sold back in California.  For one thing, this one was chock full of lovely (and immense) Japanese seasonings and ingredients:  a variety of kinds of soy sauce, mirin, rice vinegar and seaweed.  The clothing section catered specifically to Japanese sizes (somewhat smaller than American sizes).  And, much to my dismay but not to my surprise, the book section was much smaller, and contained a limited selection of children's board books and educational materials in English.  Sigh.

I was delighted to find everything I wanted:  40 count packages of frozen flour tortillas, massive jars of Skippy peanut butter, huge Costco muffins, bagels, Frosted Flake cereal (in a 3 pack), a huge brick of mild cheddar cheese (cheddar being difficult to find outside of Costco in Japan) and 2 very large jars of salsa.

I quickly realized that I had either (a) not brought nearly enough cash with me or (b) was being sucked into the Costco richness of offerings far too easily.

Hitomi and I stashed our carts in a corner (a common strategy as it turned out...carts were tucked away everywhere as people took a break from shopping to eat or take a rest).

And of course, we went to get a hot dog and a soda.

And it was good.

After that it was more shopping and more gut wrenching balancing of what I wanted versus what I needed vs what I could actually afford.

Soon enough we paid for our groceries, had our receipts checked and headed back to the moving walkway, tilting up this time.

And we headed back on the expressway, past the rice fields and houses,  back into the embrace of narrow streets, temples, shrines and pink faced overheated people, all the way back to our neighborhood in the shadow of Daitokuji.

Hitomi pulled up to the mouth of our tiny street and slid open her car doors while I called Patrick on my cell phone to come help carry groceries.  

Once all my things were unloaded and I had thanked Hitomi profusely for this rare and wonderful treat, Patrick and I carried everything inside the house.

And it was  just a little like a birthday or Christmas.  Aya squealed over  the six cans of black olives I had bought for her and wasted no time in opening one can, digging her carefully in to spear one olive on her fingertip before popping it into her mouth.  Bob dug into the tray of muffins.  Patrick  made quick work getting into the Frosted Flakes.

Hitomi has suggested we make plans to make regular trips together to Costco.

It didn't take much for me to say yes.

Until next time.

A Conspiracy of Humidity

Hello all,

I seem to be having this monthly blog check in pattern going.  Ahh well, such is life.  These days sitting down at the computer means doing lesson planning, with ye olde faithful blog taking a back seat.

The infamous Japan summer  has returned in all it's sweaty splendour.  Right now the June rainy season is meeting the July heat to create air so thick and hot that you can practically grab it and wring it out.  Clothes on the clothesline stay ever so slightly damp and it has become a daily game of "chase the mold" in the ofuro (bath and shower room).

Yet as  much as I'd like to park myself in front of an air conditioner or fan for the next month and a half, I cannot do that.  There seems to be a vast conspiracy of factors whose primary goal is to keep me guessing.  Case in point....



The Pee Dictionary.
Yes, that's right, I wrote "pee dictionary".

We have these three cats, you see.

The white one, Raku, is afraid of her own shadow and is a perpetual source of flying white hairballs.

The black one, Doko, spends her days begging us to turn on the faucet in the bathroom sink so she can sip water, drop by drop, for long minutes while we wait to turn the thing off.

And we have the orange one, Genki.  Genki is not  a hairball hurling coward nor does she have a water fixation.    At least, not a drinking water fixation.

Genki is what I would call a pee performance artist.  While most of the time she is happy to use the litter box, sometimes she just needs a new kind of canvas.   Once in a great while we'll find all the bathroom towels slid to the floor off the towel rack, each one with a neat circle of pee upon it.   Or we'll find a stray piece of printer paper that was dropped on the floor, again with that neat yellow circle of pee upon it.

Genki doesn't do these things on a regular basis.  We can go months without a pee circle revealing itself upon something.   Nor does she seem to do these things out of some sort of need for vengeance.

So when I found one of the kid's Japanese bags (which contained their notebook, homework papers, pencils and such) on the floor, I had a sneaky suspicion what I would find.

Yes, a fragrant wet mess which included, among the aforementioned items, an English-Japanese/Japanese-English dictionary we've had since our first trip to Japan.

Embellished, as it were, with pee.
Drat.

HaikuMan!
As I reported on my Facebook page,  during one of my Friday Starbucks sojurns (wherein I go to  Starbucks and write bad poetry while the kids have Japanese lessons), I was approached by an older Japanese man.

He handed me a hand-bound book, written in Japanese and painstakingly translated English, about haiku.

The book explained the history of haiku, talked about the difficulty of translating this art form into another language, and then gave samples of haiku, again written in both Japanese and English.  Clearly this was a labor of haiku love for him, one which he distributed, one by one, to the foreign coffee drinkers of  Kyoto.

During last week's Starbucks trip, he approached me again and gave me another book (so very many foreigners, it must be hard to keep us all sorted out).  I accepted it, as he seemed intent on sharing it.  When Aya and I got done and left Starbucks, he left right after us.

He saw Aya standing on the bridge near Starbucks, taking pictures of the river below.  He tapped me on the shoulder and offered to take our picture.  Aya, ever cautious, was hesitant to let a stranger take the camera.  So she snapped a picture of HaikuMan and I.  He seemed rather pleased, and Aya didn't have to endanger her camera.  A win-win I suppose.

And, of course, I can show the world that I'm not making this stuff up.

Sigh.

Well, I have more to say, but not enough time to say it.  Sleep is calling.  As it always does this time of night.

Yawn.

Until next ime....