As American as Baseball and Apple Pie...

Last night, we went to a baseball game. As we were leaving the stadium, I found myself musing: that was one of the most interesting cultural experiences we’ve had in Japan. 

Did everyone hear me on that one? We went to a baseball game—a completely and utterly American sport—and it was one of the most interesting cultural experiences we’ve had here. Yes, they play baseball in other countries. And I understand that cultural phenomena are fluid. They travel. They transform. They are re-appropriated by whatever society happens to pick them up, thereby making the “But what was it originally?” question somewhat of a moot point. 

But what I’m getting at is that because I am an American, baseball feels very familiar. Because I’ve already sat at many a stadium and sung about countless peanuts and cracker jacks, I would not expect a Japanese baseball game to be one of our more interesting cultural experiences. I would have thought that award would go to sumo wrestling. Or puppet theater. Or public baths. But I walked away from that baseball game feeling both jarred and enlivened by the fact that I had just had a true cultural experience. What is that?

We went to that game with confident familiarity in hand, asking a whole set of informed questions. What will they have if not cotton candy? What will we do at the 7th inning stretch? Will there be an organ to tell us when to cheer? I think it is precisely this familiarity that gets at the root of why study abroad is so transformative. You don’t start from scratch when you go overseas. (Granted, it feels as if you do.) You keep your ideas. You keep your categories. You keep your expectations, as much as you may try to lose them at the door. The process, the struggle of study abroad is figuring out how to get all of the newness you encounter to work with the categories of understanding you already have within you. I’m at the grocery store. It looks very similar to a store I visit at home. But it’s not. Why? What’s different? And how different? And because I’m visiting this new store, am I now different, too?

Study abroad is not an abandonment of all that is familiar. On the contrary, study abroad requires a sense of the familiar because it is precisely the search for the familiar that guides the learning. 

Our going to a baseball game was an experience ripe with expectations. In fact, this entire Japan experience has been ripe with expectations. We did a lot of homework before we got on the plane. We researched, we read, we thought about how things would be, we used whatever information we had to try to paint ourselves a picture. If we care to push the boundary further, in this day and age, I would venture that it’s impossible to go anywhere in this world without carrying some sort of expectation with you, even if you don’t want to. Someone, at some point, is going to show you a photograph of your destination. You’ll hear about it on the news. You’ll read a travel guide. You’ll visit a study abroad provider website. The point is that we are not pioneers. We are not charting new waters, even though the waters that we navigate feel unfamiliar and dangerous. Everything we do has been done before. This is both the comfort and the banality of living in the Digital Age. 

And so we went to a baseball game. Nothing felt new when we set foot in the stadium. Yet everything was new when we set foot in the stadium. Why? Because our image of what the experience might be was already crystal clear. Contrast was sharpened. And similarity camouflaged.

As we approached the stadium, we noticed a beer table right next to the turnstiles. This was not a place to buy beer. Just as in the US, you can buy beer after you are inside the stadium. Sellers walk up and down the aisles and you can purchase it from them. (Of course, unlike in the US, the sellers wear the beer in an insulated pack on their backs, and they pour the pour the beer for you from a hose and tap that extend to their front.) Instead, the table was for people who had brought beer from home and happened to have started drinking it already. The attendants at the table take their beer from them. And then they pour it in a cup, and give it back. No cans allowed, but please, bring all the beer you want from home! Nope, we’re not in Kansas anymore…

Just about everyone in the stadium has a set of mini plastic baseball bats that they bang together in order to cheer. But it’s not just a random banging. Instead, there is a distinct chant and rhythm for every single player. (Jeremy actually looked the chants up on line beforehand, and printed out cheat sheets for us. You can take the educator out of the classroom….) A player comes up to bat, and the entire stadium starts singing, chanting and tapping in unison. It’s incredible. What was even more incredible is that I managed to get the rhythms down. I have had enough music education in my life to make this doable. I counted 16th notes, I noted syncopation, and I kept up! After four months of living in a complete linguistic maze, I kept up. Baseball player rhythms. This is a language I can speak.

I can speak the language of happy-baseball-fan, too. On a good play, you tap your baseball bats against those of the fans around you. You high five everyone you see. You enthusiastically tap out a rhythm. I know that there is always bonding among fans at a sports match. That’s universal. Was the fan bonding that I experienced last night actually more intense? Or did it just feel more intense because I’ve grown accustomed to being the oddball foreigner here, always one step out of the loop? I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. But it was cozy. So comfy cozy. At one point, I turned to Jeremy and said, “I have never felt more at home in Japan than right now.” 

The seventh inning stretch was less of a stretch and more of an experiment in group performance art. Balloons! When you first come to the game, you buy a pack of large balloons. As the top of the 7th winds down, the crowd starts to get their balloons out. You hear balloons inflating all around you. Every once in a while, one pops, or a random balloon floats over right field. Middle of the 7th, everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) stands up and lets their balloons go at exactly the same time. There’s a big squeak, and then you see a flood of balloons over the stadium. In true Japanese form, 30 seconds later, a very efficient cleaning crew emerges to pick up all of the spent balloons on the field.

A second balloon performance happened at the end of the game, probably because our team won. We, the oddball foreigners, hadn’t purchased enough balloons so were going to content ourselves with watching, much to the kids’ dismay. Not to fear! The man behind us had extras and promptly offered balloons to Eli and Mikki. And when Mikki’s popped by accident, he gave another. “Arigatoo,” she said. (The “thank you’s in Japanese are coming more frequently these days.)

At the end of the night, more familiarity: a large, drunken, mass of humanity heads to the train station at the same time. It reminded me of walking in New York City on July 4th, 1983, the 200th anniversary of our constitution. Huge fireworks display. Wall-to-wall people. Me hanging onto the back of my dad’s shirt so that I wouldn’t lose him in the crowd. A memory of yet another quintessentially American experience. And this memory, part of the extensive package of familiarity and expectations that I brought with me to Japan. And part of what made last night’s game one of the most interesting, and revealing, cultural experiences we’ve had here.

Finding My Own Way

There’s nothing like coming to Japan with a husband who is a Japan scholar. Jeremy studies Japan professionally. It’s his job. This country is what he does. And regardless of how long I’ve known him, during our time here I have found myself repeatedly blown away by his insane amounts of knowledge about this place. It’s not just a matter of language skills. Yes, he can read the public library guidelines to ensure that our books are returned on time, and he can understand a bus schedule at a glance. But it’s his depth of knowledge beyond the language that amazes me. The legend behind the statue that we’re seeing in front of the shrine. The reason a food has a fancy nickname. How the painting on a billboard actually includes a reference to a poem that most passers-by will miss. How a certain part of the city has changed in the past quarter century. It’s not just that he’s well read. He’s well experienced. He’s been a student in Osaka. A teacher in Osaka. A guide in Osaka. And a 20-year old in Osaka. (Yes, that last one is its own category.) 

The kids and I benefit from Jeremy’s knowledge. Because of him, we get to skip over some of the stumbling that usually comes with living in a new place—any new place, not just a foreign place. We don’t show up to a museum only to learn that it’s closed every other Wednesday because Jeremy read that on the website in advance. We don’t offend everyone by eating while walking down a busy street because Jeremy already told us that walking while eating is typically considered rude. We don’t receive dirty looks from a bunch of naked elderly women because we dove into the hot springs without bathing first. Jeremy saved us from that faux pas, too.

Having stumbled through many a situation in China, there’s a part of me that absolutely adores this short cut. (And for the record, I still stumble in China. As appealing as the tidy categories of Japan as Jeremy’s and China as Jocelyn’s are, they are simply not valid. I never even came close to the breadth of knowledge in China that Jeremy has earned in Japan, and I never will.) You mean I can try out my sentence on a real, live Japanese teacher first before heading to the ticket stand? You mean I don’t have to cringe in embarrassment two days later when I realize that I should have taken my shoes off but didn’t? You made sure I would do it right the first time?! Sign me up.

I raise all of this because, and I’m sure you saw this point coming, this kind of stumbling through a culture is part of the learning. As wonderful and comforting as it is to have Jeremy there as our cultural gaffe safety net, it robs us of the experience of figuring things out on our own, and learning things the hard way. The kids and I need to be able to understand by observing, order food by pointing, and figure things out by trial and error. Eli and Mikki, too, have picked up on this dynamic. For her birthday, Mikki has requested a family experience: “I just want to get on a train and go somewhere that no one knows about…someplace Daddy has never been.”

Please understand that it’s not that Jeremy tries to serve as family teacher all the time. It’s his mere presence that does it. I have found that I am much more willing to speak Japanese my way—a loose series of nouns and non-conjugated verbs—when Jeremy’s not around to hear it.  And from his perspective, Jeremy admits that he feels a constant pressure to guide his family through this experience. He loves having us here. But in the past, he’s only ever done Japan on his own. He amassed his extensive knowledge through living here independently. Autonomously. Anonymously. And I think we rob him of that.

All of this musing stems from the kids and my exploring of Kobe on our own last week. So let the reflection serve as introduction to this story:

The four of us vacationed on Awaji Island last week. On the last day, Jeremy needed to get back to work, but the kids and I were in no rush. Prompted by the notion that we needed to explore more of Japan on our own, sans tour guide, we decided to stop off in Kobe on the way home. Without Jeremy. We were equipped with Japanese and English maps, and a vague notion that Kobe had a cool harbor and a Chinatown that might be worth checking out. I told the kids that we would be navigating everything together, as a team. They were delighted.

When we first got to Kobe station, my heart sank. Gawd, all big stations in Japan look exactly the same! They are overwhelming. And everyone else always knows exactly where they are going. I started desperately looking around for maps and signs, only to be interrupted by Mikki, who declared, “I’m hungry.” Rule #1: Never try to navigate a new area with a hungry child. In the middle of the station, there was a food stand with a woman selling traditional sweet snacks. We bought some, but get this: Eli ordered his on his own in Japanese. This was the first time he’s ever done that. Maybe he, too, is nervous to try out his Japanese in front of Jeremy? We then proceeded to eat our snacks while walking around the station. Yes, we ate and walked at the same time. Declaration made: Today, we are doing things Mommy-style.

With tummy-rumblings gone, we stared at maps for a little while. It was Eli (who, gratefully, has inherited his father’s sense of direction, not his mother’s) who noticed that we needed to get to a different station in order to transfer to the subway, and it was the subway that would take us to Kobe’s Chinatown, our first destination. Once we knew where we needed to go, the signs just sort of fell into place. This is where Japan is unbeatable—relevant, helpful information where you need it to be. So we started walking, each of us finding signs one-by-one. Surprisingly, what worked in our favor was the concentrated attention to detail that usually causes Mikki to zone out to what a parent is saying while she is head down focusing on her bead craft. We told her we were looking for purple arrows, and all she found for the next 15 minutes were purple arrows. Eagle eye. Destination found.

We landed at a restaurant in Chinatown. The server was Japanese, but spoke some Chinese and understood some English. Rule #2: Always use all languages at your disposal in order to get your point across. The server and I soon developed a sort of trilingual form of communication. 

a. Chinese food names are expressed in Chinese. No translating these.

b. The order itself happens in Japanese, the most polite of the three languages.

c. Kids’ questions are in English, with Chinese translation from me when necessary. 

d. The server’s responses are in slow Japanese, with translation from me when necessary.

Food ordered. Needs met. Done.

After Chinatown, we hopped back on the subway to the main train station, and from there, walked to Harborland. Harborland is a large, fancy shopping area right on the waterfront. It’s good for window-shopping, strolling and snacking (though not at the same time, of course). But we did no shopping, and once we got to the harbor, we walked around for all of five minutes before snapping a quick selfie and then turning back. For us, this was not about the destination. It was about the getting there. The kids led the way…the entire way. They looked for signs. They studied maps. They tried paths, and when those paths led to nowhere, they turned around and tried others. They did all of the navigating, and on different occasions, with absolutely no prompting from me, each looked at me and said, “This is fun!” 

We got home later that night, with “navigation day souvenirs” in hand, plenty of stories ready for Jeremy’s curious ear, and for my part, a vow to do this more. Be brave. Make mistakes. Break some rules. Embarrass yourself. And then go home and laugh about it with your Japan scholar husband.

Highs & Lows

I know this stage. This is the part of study abroad where you’ve been there long enough to have everything feel normal and ordinary. But things aren’t normal and ordinary. We’ve been here for less than two months. The normalcy is deceptive—it sets up the expectation for ease and mastery, when really, ease and mastery are still a long way off. Most things are still kind of hard. We’re still very much on the “first time around” cycle of learning.

So, as a result, this is the stage of extreme highs and lows. This is when the smallest failures can drive you to tears and tiniest successes can make you feel like you own the world.

Eli had a massive meltdown two nights ago when he was doing his math homework. His class is working on long division with decimals. And, true to stereotype, a lot of learning here is done by rote. There’s no conceptual math, but instead, just problem after problem after problem to solve. Practice, practice, practice. His math homework is tedious and long, and he is not a fan. I will interject to say that it’s working. He is getting ridiculously fast at division. But the other night, he copied a problem wrong and ended up having to erase a small bit of work. And that did it. A flood of tears and cries of homesickness.

So we listened. And soothed. But mostly, the only way through it is through it. I have found myself telling Eli many times that his sadness is not unexpected. We knew that this experience would be hard, for all of us. But we decided to do it anyway, and we’d make that same decision again. Even the worst days are still better than not coming at all. Eli likes to hear me say this. It’s comforting, I think, to know that your sadness is completely normal.

But, here comes the high. Back on the horse today. He arrived home from school with three friends in tow—two boys and a girl. A quick hello and off they went to the park to play baseball and tag and “monkey in the middle.” Eli was gone for less than an hour, but upon return, bounded into the house announcing, “This was the most awesomest day ever!” He felt included and liked and he was absolutely brimming with confidence. This feeling carried over into the evening, and math homework caused not the slightest problem tonight.

Mikki has had her own lows, too. I will say that she is already a kid of highs and lows, so it’s actually harder to ascribe her mood swings solely to cultural adjustment. But here, she has more mood swings, and with more intense emotions. She’s had moments of absolute misery and frustration—when she lost a game of “rock, scissor, paper” or couldn’t find her favorite pen. But also unlike at home, she turns around from her low moods exceptionally quickly. Smiles come only a few minutes after tears.

But she, too, had a great day today. A friend came ringing our bell after school, and Mikki scooted off to a playdate. And this week, she has found her element here. We got her a craft book and have watched her dive into it in full force. Every disposable chopstick, empty box and piece of scrap paper we have has been rescued from our recycle bin, and Mikki has created puppet after creature after toy. She’s happiest when she’s creating, and I’ve spent the week watching her happily engage herself after school.

I, too, am hardly immune to these ups and downs. The other day, I was in tears, TEARS I tell you, when I couldn’t find ginger at the grocery store. (It’s not next to the garlic, folks!) It wasn’t even the frustration of not being able to find a simple ingredient that got me. It was the fact that I tried to be brave. I know the word for ginger, and I actually got courageous and asked a store clerk for help finding it. But my Japanese is at the level where I can handle conversations only when they go in a predictable pattern. “Yes, let me show you!” or “Right there on the left!” are phrases that I can stomp all over. It’s when the conversation takes an unexpected turn: “We should have more in next week” or “Would you consider using a different aromatic instead?” that I can’t handle. And of course, I’m guessing on those last two comments because I have NO idea what the woman said to me. But whatever it was, my response was completely wrong and invalid. Her reaction showed confusion and, I swear, borderline pain. And then someone else tried to help, and the whole exchange got even worse. And I was embarrassed and frustrated, and I really just wanted to go home and put the chicken in to marinade. So I went home and cried instead.

What’s interesting for me about the process of language learning here is that I’ve BEEN there. I've had about a million “can’t-understand-the-grocery-store-woman” experiences before, only they were in China at a time when I was hell bent on learning Chinese. I carried around a little notebook to jot down phrases. If I heard a new word, I would run home to look it up. I listened to the radio not because I was interested in the program but because I wanted to practice listening. I took countless cabs to nowhere-in-particular simply because I discovered early on that cabbies were a great way to practice chatting. I know what this process is like. And I can honestly say that I have no interest in doing it again. I just don’t. It’s not that I’m jaded or tapped out or no longer interested in learning in general. I love learning. I’m just not interested in learning a language. I want to read books and visit museums. And then I want to go home and put the chicken in to marinade.

But lows to highs, on the flip side, here’s what I’m absolutely loving about this experience:

Riding my bike to the grocery store. Bike riding is old-school here. No fancy mountain bikes with a million gears. Just old-fashioned street bikes. No gears. No helmets. A big basket up front for carrying home groceries. I usually shop at the local supermarket, but on the way there, I’m sometimes tempted by a great little shotengai (shopping street). There’s a meat market next to a flower shop next to a small hardware store—shop after shop. And, the best part is that the street actually has speakers with cheerful music playing all day long. So when you bike down it, you actually feel like you’re in a movie. SCENE: The background music enraptures the audience as they watch the leading lady happily riding her bike to the local market to pick up that day’s fresh vegetables which she will feed to her loving family. (Of course, nothing she cooks will be flavored with ginger, but I digress…).

The way people look at my children on the train. With utter fascination and delight, since foreign children (well, let’s be honest….WHITE foreign children) are a rarity here. But racial privilege aside (another blog post on that to come soon), people are really kind to my family and excited by my children. Any mom would be proud.

Cleanliness. Clean cars, clean streets, clean trains, clean parks, clean signs. Every once in a while, you might pass a cigarette butt or some random trash. But it’s rare. There is a wonderful sense of civic responsibility here. People pick up after themselves. And public spaces tend to be immaculate. It’s inspiring.

The looseness of our schedule. I’m telecommuting from the US. Everyone with whom I collaborate is available early in the morning or late at night. So that’s usually when I end up working. And that leaves my middays delightfully free. I read. I walk. I cook. I have lunch with Jeremy.

And tourism. The tourism deserves a mention. The real high is that on the weekend, we forget about all of that immersion stuff and we play the part of tourists. Our weekends are jam-packed with discovery. There is simply an incredible number of things to see and do. Temples, gardens, shrines, a science museum, a monkey park (monkeys were free-roaming…no cages!), great restaurants, cool shops, hikes…it just doesn’t stop. And the best part is that it’s just us. No playdates, no sleepovers, no school events. It’s just family time. Please don’t get me wrong—we have a very full life in Michigan and I love the community event-filled weekends, too. But it’s really nice to get a break from it. The kids have loved it, too. They are interested and eager, and troopers about long days of tourism. We come home exhausted on Saturday and Sunday nights. Granted, I will admit that Sunday night usually brings its share of meltdowns—really, back to school again? But they recover, the lows turn into highs, and it’s worth it in spades.

More About School

I’ve been trying to encourage the kids to blog about their experiences, to absolutely no avail. They are simply not interested. Ironically, they were very interested in blogging about our plans before we actually got here. This is a good sign, I think. In Jeremy’s words, “They are too busy living their lives to write about them.” And as Eli actually said to me last night, “It doesn’t feel like Japan here. It just feels normal.”

But Jeremy and I are both learning a lot from the kids, and love watching them experience a side of East Asia to which neither of us has ever had insider’s access: kid culture. Eli and Mikki are just blazing through experiences here—they are not worried about being impolite, they don’t get down on themselves for not understanding the language, they are not nervous about doing something culturally inappropriate. Like all kids everywhere, they just do what looks fun and what they want to do, until someone tells them to stop.

Overall, school has been going really well, so I thought I’d share some of the details that the kids have reported to us, before everything starts to feel so normal that the reports slow sown.

The neighborhood kids meet up at 7:45 am to walk to school. This means that our kids leave the house at 7:40 am to get to the meeting spot on time. A member of the local PTO waits at the meeting spot to organize everyone. And there is a system: the 1st grade goes first (much to Mikki’s delight!), then the 2nd grade, etc. And boys and girls walk separately.

Once at school, the kids are essentially in their classroom the entire day, or, at least there is significantly less moving from room to room than there is back home. Eli reports that his class switches rooms for calligraphy, music, gym, library and science. Mikki reports much less movement. Both kids tell us that they eat lunch right in the classroom.

At lunchtime, all kids put on uniforms—a white smock, a white hat to keep hair out of the way, and a mask to protect from germs. The lunch gets rolled in on a big cart. The daily lunch helpers hand out the milk to everyone, and everyone helps with serving food at one point or another. (Everyone also helps sweep up the classroom after lunch is over.)  The kids line up at the edge of the classroom to get their lunches.

The milk comes in glass bottles, and once finished, the kids rinse out the bottles and put them back on the cart for re-use the next day.

The kids seem to like most of the food, but there are different expectations for how much they are supposed to eat. Mikki reports that if she doesn’t eat something, she just heads out the classroom door where there is a big bin where you can dump the un-eaten food. Eli reports that everyone pretty much eats everything on the tray, and if you don’t, you have to walk a fairly long distance down to a different room where there are food-ready garbage bins. The incentive, therefore, is to clean your plate so that you can avoid having to do that. Eli usually complies. 

The school sends home a lunch calendar so we know what is served each day. The calendar is exceptionally detailed, and provides not only the menu, but all of the ingredients plus the nutritional information. I’ve learned how to say “sodium” and “protein” in Japanese.

For gym glass, the kids have uniforms—polyester t-shirts & pants, and a white hat—that they bring home every Friday for weekend washing. There is no locker room—they change their clothes right at their desks! So, as the kids have pointed out, everyone gets to see everyone else’s underwear. This is all fine with me, but when you take that and contrast it to the fact that boys and girls have to walk to separately to school, there is a small disconnect, no?

Gym class is either in the gym or outside, and each class merges with others of the same grade. The kids tell us that they have to stretch and run around the gym three times. Mikki reports jumping rope. And Eli reports doing soccer drills on the outside field, or basketball drills in the gym.

There are no school uniforms, but there was a long list of supplies that we needed to get for the kids. The idea is that all kids bring the exact same things to school, though sometimes in different colors. In fact, when we sent Mikki to school with cough drops for a lingering cough from the flu, the teacher told us that that wasn’t allowed. No child gets to have something that the other kids don’t. And the school nurse is on hand if there is any sort of medical need.

Here’s the basic list of supplies that we needed to buy:

 - Gym uniform and shoes

 - Shoes to wear inside the school

 - Lunch uniform

 - A special bag for transporting the gym uniform back and forth to school on Mondays and Fridays

 - A special bag for transporting the school shoes back and forth to school on Mondays and Fridays

 - A special bag for transporting the lunch uniform back and forth to school on Mondays and Fridays

 - And a larger bag in which to put all of the above-listed bags.

 - A jump rope

 - School supplies like tape, scissors, pencil, pencil sharpener, etc.

 - Pencil case

And then there are items that the school purchases on our behalf, with us reimbursing: musical instruments (in music class, Eli is learning the recorder and Mikki is learning the harmonica), flash cards, notebooks, file boxes, etc. Textbooks are provided for free.

The one item we did not have to buy was the classic backpack. Standard school backpacks are hard covered, and meant to last for all of elementary school. As such, they cost about $300 a pop! Given that we’re only here for six months, the principal gave us a bye on this, and we were grateful.

The teachers are very kind and have been trying to help the kids get the hang of things. Mikki’s teacher, in particular, is pretty hands-on and helps Mikki determine what to bring home every day. Both teachers use translation apps on their phones to get quick, brief information to the kids in English. So Eli knows when his class is going to have history, or moral education, or science. The other kids in the room try to help him understand, too.

At the end of the school day, the kids have to copy down their homework for that night from the blackboard into their notebooks. They copy this in Japanese, without knowing what it means, and it has taken Jeremy a couple of weeks to figure out both their handwriting and the system of notation that the teachers use on the board. The homework amount is not bad, mostly because our kids are excused from any reading exercises. The math homework is comparable to what the kids were learning back in the US…maybe one step ahead. Their teachers also use this notebook to communicate with us if there’s anything specific they need us to take care of.

The daily homework assignment that occupies the most time is the Japanese writing system. The Japanese written language basically has three parts:

1. Hiragana—the alphabet of 46 syllables that make up all Japanese words. Kids here learn this writing system in 1st grade, so Eli was way behind on this, and Mikki only slightly behind.

2. Katakana—the same 46 syllables, but written in a different way, used when writing foreign import words, like “ice cream” (a-ee-su-ku-ree-mu). Again, typically learned in 1st grade here.

3. Kanji —the Chinese characters used for many verbs and nouns. Japanese kids typically start learning these in the 1st grade, but things really take off in 3rd and 4th grade.

So, while our kids escape Japanese reading homework, they do have extra hiragana- and katakana- learning exercises meant to try to catch them up with the rest of the class. Learning these is essentially rote memorization, to which Eli responds very well and Mikki not so much. Eli has already gotten most of his hiragana down, and so is starting to be able to read signs while out and about.

Both kids are TIRED when they come home from school…Eli, in particular, since he gets home after 4pm. They both seem to like school and thanks to help from friends and their teachers, they are managing to understand what’s expected. But it is exhausting being around a language that you don’t understand all day. And there are parts of the day that are very boring—both kids have expressed this. Neither has ever protested going to school. There have been no crying fits in the morning. But I do sense some serious relief from the kids on the weekends, when they get to take it easy and be with their English-speaking family.

Eli has made some friends, one of whom lives right across the street. They play together at school—soccer, catch, basketball, card games, etc. Thanks to his friends, Eli is hearing certain Japanese phrases enough that he comes home asking Jeremy what things mean. Eli’s teacher also told us last week that some of the boys have expressed interest in playing with Eli after school, but haven’t known how to ask. So Jeremy talked with him about how we might set this up. No play dates yet, but we are all hoping that will happen soon.

Mikki doesn’t talk much about friends, but when I asked her if she had friends at school, she said, “Yeah, a lot!” She jumps rope with friends on the playground and the girls in her class seem excited about her.

One thing that helped all of us was last weekend’s neighborhood gathering. It was sort like a block party (a sacred event where we live in Michigan!), but on a Sunday morning and centered on the pounding of mochi (sticky rice, usually served in little balls with a flavored coating—like peanut or green tea). Thank goodness Jeremy likes to read bulletin boards, or we would have missed this event. From what we can gather, the event was put on by the local community organization. It was in a park a few blocks from where we live. There was a campfire to keep everyone warm and lots of food. Everyone had a chance to pound the sticky rice with a big wooden hammer. And oh my, it was gendered! The men got to use the real, bulky hammer. The women and children used the smaller “symbolic” hammer. Of course, this utterly offended me, but the hammer was actually pretty heavy, so I kept my mouth shut. Cultural immersion and all…

The kids saw some classmates from school, and Eli ran off with his friends immediately after we got there. Mikki was shy and somewhat clingy for the first hour, but then got her footing, and went off to play with some girls. Jer and I chatted with some of the neighborhood folks, many of whom wanted to practice their limited English with me. No problem!  Much like the very first block party that we attended after we moved into our house in Grand Rapids, the mochi-pounding party introduced us to the neighborhood and got us all feeling more comfortable here.

That’s it for now. More to come soon…

Out and About

This past week was sick week! Eli, Mikki and I all went down with the flu, leaving Jeremy as nursemaid/medical translator/healthcare advocate. For details on that experience, check out his post. But as icky as that experience was, I think that the hardest part of the week was the final days, after the fevers went down and symptoms subsided and we were all feeling better, but were still contagious enough to have to stay trapped inside. School policy required that the kids stay home all week. Further complicating matters was the fact that I went back to work this week. My “transition to Japan” vacation ended, and the email inbox I had happily been ignoring for two weeks required opening. So we spent a good portion of the week huddled around our kotatsu (a low table,with a heater underneath), the kids enjoying ridiculous amounts of screen time while I started to unravel the specifics of how, exactly, I am going to get my US-based job done with a 14-hour time difference between me and the colleagues with whom I work most closely.

Needless to say, this week wasn't exactly a winner.

But yesterday and today (Friday and Saturday), with a little cooperation from Mother Nature, we FINALLY shook off the last remnants of the flu, shut down the screens, and got ourselves out there for a weekend of tourist fun. We are BACK! We were active. And we had fun.

Aquarium
Friday's destination was the Osaka Aquarium, right near Osaka harbor. Check out the requisite pre-entry family selfie!

Two great things about this activity. One, all Japanese school-age children were in school, so the crowds weren’t bad at all. For another, the design of the building is fantastic. No pictures (too busy staring at fish!) but here’s how it worked:

You enter the building and immediately head up the escalator to about the 3rd floor. They you start down a sloped path with tanks on either side (think “Guggenheim”, only with fish tanks instead of art). So on the 3rd floor, at various junctures, you get to see the seals and penguins dive from their little rocks into the water. Fun, right? But it gets better after you complete one lap of the slope and find yourself on the 2nd floor, only looking at the same tank. Here, you get to see the penguins AFTER they’ve jumped into the water. In fact, you can look up and see shapes of people from the 3rd floor looking down into the water as you look up. This whole thing continues, as you keep heading down the slope and end up in the basement, where you see what’s happening at the very bottom of those tanks that have been entertaining you all the way down.

Now, I’m no Aquarium connoisseur, so maybe this is par for the course these days? Hell, maybe Osaka borrowed this idea from Chicago and I have no idea! And, after five days of being trapped inside the house with restless children, I imagine that staring at a goldfish for an hour would have been inspiring. But all disclaimers aside, I thought it was cool. I love good design, no matter where in the world I am.

Osaka Castle
Saturday was even more beautiful out, so our adventure led us outdoors to Osaka Castle. This was the castle of one of the three generals who managed to unify Japan after that pesky Warring States period (16th century, give or take). As the story goes, after years of fighting and various warlords making plays for power, these three generals got things under control. But they each had a different style. The first one, it was said, killed the cuckoo bird if it didn't sing. The second one beat the cuckoo bird to get it to sing. And the third one waited for the cuckoo bird to sing on its own. Well, I know the suspense is killing you, but guess which one was successful and led Japan through the delightfully unified and flourishing Edo period? That’s right! The third one.


Well, now that you know that story, I hope it doesn’t disappoint you to know that the castle we saw was actually of the second guy, the cuckoo beater. Jerk.

Anyway, it’s a beautiful building within huge castle walls, situated in a lovely park in the middle of the city. So we had lunch outside, and the kids played in the castle-themed playground right next door, and then we explored the castle and went all the way up to the top.

Now I will say that the inside of the castle has been completely redone into a museum, to the extent that you really don't get a sense of how it was inhabited at the time. Both of the kids were disappointed about that, as was I. But some of the exhibits showed scrolls and screens from the time, and since Jeremy teaches courses on the merging of word and image in pre-modern literature, it was actually fun to point out some of the details to the kids. Suffice it to say, they had more patience for looking at scrolls than I ever would have guessed.

There. I just jinxed our next attempt at a museum visit.

Dotomburi
Everyone still had energy to burn after the castle adventure, so back on the train we went, landing in one of Osaka’s major shopping districts: Dotomburi.

I had been here once before, but briefly, and years ago. However, everything still looked familiar because much of the imagery is iconic, and widely photographed. The Glico man. The huge crab on the store front. It is an incredibly vibrant, active, animated section of the city, with high end retail, next to street food stands, next to edgy urban shops.

We walked around for a bit, battling the crowds. Mikki just about died when we strolled past the Hello Kitty store—three floors, count ‘em THREE, of just about every piece of Hello Kitty merchandise you could ever want. Eli was patient (by which I mean, not at all patient) while Mikki looked around, but don’t worry, he got his own time in when we walked another block and stumbled upon a game center. 100 yen got the kids 3 attempts at the drumming game, which they caught on to surprisingly quickly (or, maybe not too surprisingly, given the amount of screen time those kids have had in the past month…).

A further stroll down some side streets led us to a small temple. (There are some small temples and shrines in our neighborhood, too. I pass them on my running route...boasts she, who has been running ONCE since having arrived. But the kids have been surprisingly intrigued with them...just wait until we take 'em to Kyoto.)

And then out we went to dinner for yakiniku, literally, “roasted meat”, but really sort of like Korean BBQ where you get to cook your own meat and vegetables on a bbq at your own table. I don't care where you live. I don't care what country you're from. I don't think there's a parent on the planet who doesn't want to jump for joy when she's found a meal that every single person at the table relishes. Family dinners just don't get better than that.

All in all, it was a PACKED couple of days full of quintessential Japan activities. The kids ate it up…we ALL did. It was wonderful to be out of the house, and away from email, and reveling in this wonderful big city that we are fortunate enough to call home, if only for a little while.

First Day of School

We made it! The kids started school today and seem to have survived. Big, big day.

The kids are attending a local public school. There is no English spoken there. None. This is complete immersion, and as one could imagine, it has been a source of anxiety for all of us. One by one, we have each had our meltdowns, caused by varying combinations of nervousness + anticipation + jet lag + frustration for having to rely on Jeremy for information (OK, that’s just me…the kids don’t really care about this one.)

We walked the kids to school this morning. They are attending Suita East—yep, EGR friends, we are back in East! The school is about a 15” walk from our apartment. Positioned along the way were local Parent Teacher Organization representatives, dressed in white uniforms, there to ensure the kids’ safety. And, the kids wore their standard yellow commuting hats (kind of like wearable versions of a “Baby on Board” car sign), also for safety. We passed groups of children along the way, all of whom were fascinated by us. Some tried out a “Hello!” All stared. The staring is about curiosity not ill will, and I explained this to Eli, without adding that in 20 years of going to Asia, it’s something I have never gotten used to.

The school, as far as I can tell and from my own experience, is a pretty typical Asian school building. Cement walls. Open hallways around a courtyard. No heat. Simple rooms with desks in rows and not much decoration. It is very, very different from our Michigan elementary school, with its carpet and climate control, colorful bulletin boards and decorated classrooms. I’ve taught English in similar looking schools in China and Taiwan countless times. It’s strange to think that my children are now members of the student body.

Our day started with a trip to the principal’s office. Jeremy translated as much as he could, and I understood an ounce, but mostly my role was to explain to the kids whatever I could glean, and otherwise give them nods and winks of support. Then, the principal invited in the the kids’ teachers for a chat. Mikki’s 1st grade teacher is Meguro Sensei, who immediately came across as warm and friendly. Eli’s 4th grade teacher is Ibusuki Sensei, who looked very young and hip—he wore jeans and stylish glasses. Still, as nice and friendly and kind as the teachers seemed, when they left the principal’s office 15 minutes later, taking the kids with them, I had this overwhelming feeling that I was feeding my children to the wolves. I had been sitting listening to others actively participating in a conversation that I couldn’t understand for all of 20 minutes and I’d HAD it. How were the kids going to get through an entire day, let alone 6 months of entire days? As they departed, my kids looked nervous, but fine. I, on the other hand, fought back tears. After we left the school, I stopped fighting and let ’em flow. And then I texted my mom, because in the end, don’t we all just want our mommy whenever we’re feeling overwhelmed?

Jer and I spent the day shopping in downtown Osaka. We were both OK, and admittedly, enjoyed our time sans kids, but everyone once in a while, visions would pop into my head: Eli sitting alone and unnoticed at a lunch table. Mikki backed into a corner being taunted by other children. Both kids breaking down as they were called to the front of the classroom by their teachers and teased mercilessly when they didn’t know the answer because…don’t they do that in Japan? So it was with absolute trepidation that we returned to the school in the afternoon to see the damage. I expected the kids to come running out to me, crying. Even Jeremy, calm and stable and reasonable Jeremy, was nervous and expecting the worst.

The grades let out at different times, so Mikki came out first at 2:30. She approached us calmly and happily and with (and I am not kidding here) a gaggle of Japanese girls following her. The child does not speak a word of Japanese and yet, true to form, somehow managed to accumulate more friends in one day than I have accumulated in a life time. Her teacher came out, too, and reported that things went just fine, but could we please just send her with a pencil case and some pencils tomorrow?

Pencils? Seriously? That’s IT?

Getting information from Mikki was, shall we say, a process, but here’s what we learned:

• She learned how to write her name in Japanese.
• She drew pictures.
• She liked lunch.
• She had fun.
• She spent the entire day essentially in the same room, though she got to move her desk a couple of times.
• She was cold. (No heat in the building!)

All in all, she just seemed to power through and learn by watching. And there seems to be no fear about tomorrow, so I’m taking this as a very good sign.

Eli’s class let out an hour later (this was expected). And when I asked how it was, the reply was none other than: “It was awesome!” He made two friends, both of whom spoke a tiny amount of English. (Maybe they learned it from one of the TV shows that my kids were mocking the other day?) The boy who sat next to him was very friendly and spent the day trying to teach him words. Most of it what he said went over Eli’s head, but he appreciated the effort. The teacher wrote a bit of English on the board, but other than that, Eli just followed along by watching what the other kids did. Here’s what we know:

• He went to music class and started learning to play the recorder. (“It was good, but I’ve had better music teachers, Mom.”)
• He wrote kanji (Chinese characters) though didn’t know what they meant. Given his love of manga and anime, he was most excited about this.
• He showed the teacher where Michigan is on a map, and during Social Studies, the teacher showed the entire class.
• His teacher didn’t do much to quiet some of the giggles and chatting in the back of the room, much to Eli’s delight.
• A couple of kids gave Eli a tour of the school during recess and they visited Mikki’s classroom (much to Mikki’s delight).
• He liked lunch.
• He was hot. (I have no idea how.)
• He wants to walk to school on his own tomorrow, and under no circumstances are we to pick him up at school either. He will walk home with the other kids, thank you very much.

As we were walking home later this afternoon, two boys rode past us on bikes and waved as they called out “Eli!”. We now officially have friends in our neighborhood.

So we made it. First day is done. For not one second do I believe that we’ve had our last school-induced meltdown. There will be low days and frustration. But we made it past the first-day hurdle. And the start of school means that we will start to get a routine in place. Jer and I start working next week. Looks like we might have some semblance of a regular life here after all. Onward!

Arrived!

We made it. We are all here in Osaka, present and accounted for. It was a long journey, but very smooth overall.

The flight.

The technology of overseas flights has really improved in the past 10 years. Everyone has a touch screen with movies, games and music right in front of them. I had seen this before, of course, but as someone who remembers the days of having no choice but to watch the one in-flight movie on a main cabin screen, this never fails to impress me.

But here’s the catch: while my Digital Age kids were happy to have a touch screen at their disposal, they were most impressed with the fact that one could turn on the light and call the flight attendant from little buttons on the side of the arm rest. “Boy, they’ve really thought of everything!” my son marveled. Yes, sweetie. Yes, they have.

The kids also loved the blankets and pillows that were supplied on each seat, and immediately asked if they could keep them once the flight was done. “Trust me. In 14 hours, you won’t want them,” I said. And they didn’t.

One detail that caught us off guard was Beijing’s insistence that ALL passengers go through immigration + customs + security AGAIN, even just for an international transfer. When did this start? Is this par for the course with international flights these days? The long lines made what was supposed to be a short-but-leisurely transfer become a nail-biting rush to the gate. They held the plane for us and we made it, but our bags didn’t. So it will be Tuesday before I get the maternal pleasure of seeing my children in clean clothes. Oh well.

But here’s the upside to the lost baggage story. Japan is the most brilliantly service-oriented society. In the US (as in most countries, dare I venture?), we would have waited for our bags to appear on the carousel, and when they didn’t appear, we would have found the closest service desk to start filling out forms. Not in Japan. No, instead, an incredibly efficient airline professional found US to relay the news. And then she took us to a desk where not one, not two, but FOUR airline attendants helped us fill out the paperwork, while another two attendants engaged the kids in conversation on the side. There was no “Just fill out that form, ma’am.” It was more like: “Please, let me help you complete this form, and might you please describe the bag so that we can ensure that we deliver the correct bag to you?” I love this country! And here’s a random jet-lag-induced idea:

Every new staff member at my company takes a customer service training. Might I suggest that we just send all new staff to Japan for two weeks and let this culture train them instead? No one does it better. No one.

The apartment.

Our landlady, a connection from my company, met us at the airport and drove us to our new apartment. The apartment is cute, and while small, actually larger than I was preparing myself for. (Pics to come!) So we were pleasantly surprised. And this is where my work connections are really helping. We are living in an apartment that is typically rented to CET Japan study abroad students. So while we still have some shopping and rearranging to do, things like towel hooks, trash bins and extension cords are already here and ready to go. Small conveniences make a big difference.

Everyone was too wired to sleep when we got in, so we took a walk around our new neighborhood. Eli has apparently inherited Jeremy’s keen sense of direction, so after our walk to the local convenience store, he volunteered to lead us back to our apartment, and did so perfectly.

I’m a mess with directions (full disclosure: I still have to whisper “Never Eat Shredded Wheat” to myself in order to keep east and west straight….wait, did I just admit that publicly?) so it will take me a few rounds before I can make it to the train station and back without consulting my husband or a map….or now my son.

New loves. 

The kids were introduced to two Japan pleasures last night:

Combini food. Japanese convenience stores have GREAT FOOD. Rice balls and noodles and oden that are actually GOOD. Jeremy and I have both lived on convenience store (combini) food during earlier stints in Japan and Taiwan, and I have a feeling we will be no strangers to it this time.

Ofuro. Japanese baths. LOVE ‘em. You wash outside the tub. No soapy water in the tub! After you’re clean, you get to soak in a tub that is so deep, the water covers your shoulders. It’s a ton of water, but because there’s no yucky soap scum, the water stays clean and pure, and is used for all family members. In a typical Japanese family, the dad bathes first. Then the kids, and then the mom at the end. (And she gets to be the one to drain the water and clean everything up.) But we are doing this Japan thing in our own way! Kids went first. Then me. Jeremy last. 

Today’s list.

1. Shop for apartment needs and food.

2. Figure out train lines and teach the kids Japanese trains work. 

3. Lunch at a ramen shop. 

More later!