Trailing Spouse

Blaine has been in Seoul, South Korea, since Tuesday to meet with experts and high-level government types to scout for story ideas. He planned to come home today (Friday) but was held over in Seoul for the joy of waking up at 4 a.m. on Sunday to slam together a deadline story about the return of South Koreans Christians who were held hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Then he'll hop on one of the 17 daily flights between Seoul and Tokyo and be home by 7 p.m. or so.

This means that Lucinda, Arno and I have been together all week by ourselves, and I took them tonight to a typically small Japanese restaurant for tempura (shrimp, eggplant, sweet potato, squash and mushroom), rice and soup.

We also tried a new tofu dish: several blocks of tofu were delivered in a hot clear soup, with a side dish of shaved bacon (I think) and thinly sliced scallions and a small bowl of tempura-ish soy sauce. The waitress watched me fumble around with it and came over to explain that I should lift the tofu with a little strainer into the tempura sauce, add in bacon and scallions, mix and eat.

It was fantastic. Lucinda loved it, too, but Arno didn't like the squishiness of it. At least they love tempura and rice - our Japanese equivalent of mac n cheese.

Good friends in Seattle

Even though we've been here a few weeks, I didn't want to forget about our last visits with so many good friends in Seattle:

We had waffles and lattes for the umpteenth time at the home of Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Adrienne Fairhall and their children, Eliot and Anselm.







We went to the Seattle Tennis Club with Josie and John Amory and their sons, William and Thomas, for a swim and supper - and ice cream.






We took the ferry to Vashon Island to hang with the fine Kellison-Straleys: Julia, Nick, Georgia and Oliver. Lucinda and Georgia are especially great pals.





We went up the Space Needle for the first time with Bill and Eileen Yardley and their children, Clara, Louisa and Jack D. (Bill is the Seattle Bureau Chief for the New York Times.) Arno is STILL talking about Clara, who held his hand as we walked along Queen Anne Blvd. (Apologies for the dark foto of the Yardley family.)






Without an official photographer present, we had a delicious dinner with Sam and Lisa Verhovek and Margaret Lane and Steven Caplow. This was a nice bookend to a goodbye party we attended in 2003, when we were fresh off the plane from NYC, in honor of Sam and Lisa's move to China for the Los Angeles Times.

And we had many playdates with, and attended a goodbye party for, Maryam Mohit, Erik Blachford and their children, Jake, Sedi Ann and Theo. They've just moved to San Francisco.

Don't forget us! We may well be back in Seattle in 2010 or 2011.

Free at last

Hooray - the kids are in school! Which means I have more time to look around, to write, to think... and to blog.

Blaine on A1

Hooray! Blaine has his first Asia story on the front page - or A1, as it's known in a broadsheet newspaper.

Here is his lede:

Japan's Warp-Speed Ride to Internet Future

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 29, 2007; Page A01

TOKYO -- Americans invented the Internet, but the Japanese are running away with it.

Weekend festival

Festivals are terrifically popular in Japan throughout the year, and we spent some time this weekend at the festival on Azabu Juban, one of Tokyo's oldest shopping streets, which is a 15 minute walk from our house.

On Saturday and Sunday nights, thousands of people were packed onto Azabu Juban on streets lined with red lanterns and bordered by booths selling roasting meat and seafood, corn, edamame and "kakigori", which are shaved ice treats doused with sweet syrup.

Unlike the lame New York City street fairs that seem made for tourists, this was crowded with "real" Japanese people, including many women and children wearing beautiful kimonos.

Here's the street scene:








On Sunday night, we also stopped at a similar, more modern-looking festival in the Roppongi Hills area, which is home to towering luxury apartment buildings and several investment banks. Lucinda enjoyed a giant batter-coated prawn and we tried mediocre squid and chicken with grilled corn.

We heard traditional drumming by a troupe of young women, and watched hundreds of people participate in line dances that circled from the stage into the crowds - led by women and children in kimonos. Here are some views:

Getting around town

We don't have a car yet and kid + stroller is a pretty slow way to travel. So this is our new way to get around town.



I'm a bit wobbly on a bike, especially in traffic, but Blaine is very confident. You'll probably notice that neither Arno nor Blaine is wearing a helmet - which is typical for Tokyo. Our helmets will arrive in a month or so with our furniture, and new helmets here are apparently very expensive, so we haven't (yet?) invested in new ones.

The new normal

We had a much better, more relaxed, more normal day today. First, Arno woke up at 6:45am (okay, okay, he did have a brief shout at 4 a.m., too), so we didn't feel like we were underwater for the morning. Then a trip to Japan's immigration office to sign yet another set of papers and legalize our long stay here. And the weather was much cooler - like maybe in the 70s or 80s.

Around 10a, we met another recent arrival here, Susan Mulcahy, and her children; they took us to the Tokyo American Club for a swim in the wading pool. The TAC, as it's called, is culturally, um, limited - a tired kids' menu of mac-n-cheese and chicken nuggets in a country where the average restaurant meal is unbelievably fresh and delicious - but damn convenient when you want to take your children to a swimming pool and rooftop playground, or if you want to use the English lang library.

From there, I took Lucinda and Arno to our new fave bakery for a sugared donut. Then we strolled over to Lucinda's school to meet her kindergarten teachers (first day tomorrow!), then to the playground in nearby Arisagawa Park, where Lucinda bonded w/a 6 yr old Malaysian girl in pink clothing. The children seemed more relaxed tonite than they had since our arrival 1 week ago - and that's a big relief.

Two things I should mention

1. I expect to write about more than family stuff here - but probably after the kids are in school and I can actually think/deal w/other subjects.

2. I'll include many more photos. We left the power cord for my neat Panasonic Lumix camera in Seattle, and have to wait till a new one arrives to juice the dead battery.

Hooray - the cable man!

The cable guy has just left, and the children are thrilled to find cartoons in English. "Buzz Lightyear!", Arno shrieked when we found the Toy Story spinoff cartoon, known as Buzzu-Lightyear-u (I think) in Japanese.

We usually stuck to PBS Sprout at home, maxing out at 1 hr per day. I don't see Sesame Street in the cable guide, so we may be stuck w/Nickelodeon and Disney unless we can download Sesame for the Apple TV box.

I know, I should feel guilty for handing my children off to Pixar commercialism, but I can thank Buzz Lightyear for giving me a few minutes to blog.

New friends

Our isolation from the broader culture and family ties makes it relatively easy to meet new people here - other foreigners, usually Brits, Americans or Australians, at playgrounds, in coffee shops, or just waiting around.

Through my NYC friend Mary Lambert, I've met "Susan", who just moved here from NYC with her family; we'd been emailing and I ran into her randomly at the local supermarket. Waiting for Lucinda's Nishimachi screening, I hung out w/"Nancy", an official at the Australian embassy. And Gita, who came here last week from Malaysia, is similarly hanging out w/her kids until her childcare help arrives.

We are all trailing spouses, and it's new for each of us to be totally responsible for daily childcare - I really miss our fantastic nanny, Lisa Mackie, from Seattle, because she made it easy for me to work or do other things for 7 hours a day.

Blaine and I will find some childcare help here, but the schools will soak up most of it. Many of the nannies here are Filipino and have left their young children behind to earn more in Tokyo per hour than (someone told me) they could make as a bank employee in Manila.

Arno's jet-lagging

Arno's morning wakefulness is totally kicking our ass. He continues to wake up at 5/5:30am, and after a week Blaine and I feel crushed by it. At noon, I can't believe I've been awake for nearly 7 hours already - and we are in bed by 9:30/10pm every nite.

I keep telling myself that Arno did this for a week after we went to Denver, for god's sake, and he eventually worked his way back to a 7:30am wakeup call. I seriously hope that happens here, and it can't happen soon enough.

Maneuvering

We've now maneuvered thru Day 4, with much sweating in this steamy heat! Blaine had his first day at work on Monday and Lucinda went to a "screening" at the Nishimachi International School that was much more nervewracking than I'd anticipated - like sending a child to be looked over at Seattle's University Child Development School or something.

Arno, Lucinda and I strolled to Nishimachi (a 25 min walk in 90+ degree heat) for a 1pm meeting w/ the kindergarten teachers. I'd insisted that Lucinda wear shorts and a t-shirt to stay as cool as possible, and I was wearing the same - I didn't want to dress up to make her feel that it would be a pressured situation. It was, then, a surprise to find most other parents and some children dressed up as if it were a job intvu - and I started to worry that Lucinda might be rejected at the last minute because of her mother's poor fashion sense.

In June, Nishimachi's friendly elementary principal told us that this screening would likely not present any problems for Lucinda - but that Nishimachi would not formally admit her until they met her and, I assume, confirmed that she was the girl they expected. The screening turned out to be, or feel like, a much bigger deal - for me, anyway. We were told it would take 90 minutes (!) with 6 teachers and a handful of other children. Not the brief meet-and-greet I'd expected.

They had to sing the alphabet song, play "I Spy" with letter sounds, count into the 30s, cut an apple out of some paper, tell a story, listen to a story, play catch, write their names and play w/blocks and legos and other kids while they weren't being questioned by the teachers. Fortunately, Lucinda wasn't at all stressed out by the experience and told me it was "fun".

The school then waited till after supper to email a confirmation that - yes - Lucinda could actually attend school there! Lucky thing, because we had no Plan B for school - and I was sick thinking that we'd have to scramble at the last minute. Geez. I'm glad it all worked out.

5:30 a.m.!

Our days are still a bit of a blur here. Unfortunately, Arno is STILL waking up at 5:30 a.m., and Blaine was called at 6 a.m. to write sthg about the plane crash yesterday.

Welcome to foreign correspondency!

Lucinda plans ahead

We are learning, suddenly, that our manipulative parental logic is no longer guaranteed to convince Lucinda to do what we want her to do. In other words, at age 5, she can think for herself.

Tonight we went for a walk in the muggy air, and Lucinda whined that she was hot. I suggested that she take her shirt off or let me tie it up into a knot.

Lucinda: "I can't do that; people will laugh at me."
Me: "We don't know anyone here, not even the neighbors - so what does it matter?"
Lucinda: " But we will know everyone."

This is the same girl who told me that she was sad to leave her friends in Seattle, and also sad knowing that she'll have to leave the friends she makes in Japan. That's planning ahead.

Little earthquake(s)

We know, of course, that Japan is famous for its earthquakes; something like 40 percent of the world's quakes happen here because this is where the Pacific tectonic plate dives under the Eurasian plate. Somehow I didn't expect to experience this reality of Japanese life so quickly.

But at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning (about 36 hours into our stay here) the house started to shake. I was sleeping in Arno's room while Blaine handled Arno's pre-dawn, jet-lagged wakefulness. It was so weird: it felt like someone, or something, had picked up the bed and was jerking it back and forth, It lasted for a few seconds, if that, and I leaped out of bed expecting to hear Lucinda and Arno crying out.

Instead, there was total silence in our little house, Blaine, Lucinda and Arno had slept through it. I wasn't sure if I'd dreamed it, until I read a short news story the next day.

Our first full day

We decided not to wait to move into our new house, and left the luxurious, wonderfully air-conditioned, fully staffed Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel after just one night. Blaine's colleague, Ako, met us in the lobby and we crammed our 8 suitcases and 2 carseats into 2 taxis for the 10 minute ride from Shibuya ward to our house in Minato ward.

The kids were thrilled to see the red mailbox with the name "HARDEN" on it - probably put there by Ako, who thinks of everything. They raced inside - into stifling 100-degree (probably) heat because the "aircon" wasn't on. Blaine and I squabbled about whether it was better to open the windows to cool things off slightly (it was marginally cooler outside) or to keep them closed until the aircon did its magic. Nothing much worked until I set the thermostat on a spoiled 18-degrees with the fan on "quickly". By then the kids had stripped down to underwear and Arno's face was the color of a medium-rare slice of lamb.

Blaine met w/the real estate lady, the representative of the homeowner, the security man and some other guy whose job I never learned (the internet hookup guy?). I made the kids' beds w/our rented sheets, handed out ice water and felt stressed out by having so many people in the house. It was hard to behave normally. Finally got the kids settled for nap/quiet time, I took a nap myself and felt much better.

Next up, grocery shopping at the nearby, overpriced, "gaijin" (foreigner) grocery known as "National Azabu Supermarket" - where you can easily spend $10 for a hunk of gruyere and $5 for a tiny box of Raisin Bran. At first it was similarly overwhelming - what if I bought the wrong thing? Reality set in: Tide or Purex? Charmin or Kleenex? Every product was described by a small sticker in English. I relaxed and reminded myself that this was one reason to move here: to test the unknown and the known, even at the supermarket.

Different or the same?

Lucinda and I have a new game: to notice things that are different than in Seattle - and things that are the same. She is a good observer of the world around her, and of human behavior. Here's a start:

What's different in Japan?

- Japanese people often swing their arms vigorously when they walk.
- Milk and ice cream have a nuttier flavor.
- They don't sell red bean ice cream bars in Seattle
- Many Japanese women carry umbrellas to protect their skin from the sun and stay a bit cooler.
- At night in Tokyo, you sometimes see women wearing kimonos.
- Women mostly wear clothing that is colored black, white, beige or gray - and rarely wear bright colors like American women (and I) do. They also wear high heels "maybe because they are shorter," Lucinda says.
- The cars drive on the left, and the taxi drivers sit on the right.

What's the same in Tokyo as in Seattle?
- Tully's and Starbucks
- Edamame
- Lucinda and Arno have their own bedrooms.

We're here!

We are in Tokyo! Seems like a big achievement after talking about the move for months.

The flight was, well, kinda long, though I hesitate to say that because we want everyone to visit us. About 3 hours into a 9.5 hr trip, with both kids whining because they'd already watched Shrek 3 (the only kids' movie on tap), I looked at Blaine and said, "Whose bright idea was this?" Maybe next time we'll bring that DVD player we talked about buying.

Arno was good natured about most things on the trip, but Lucinda was missing her friends and her home and barely left her seat. (She especially misses her friend Kaila.) Three showings of Shrek, two snacks, two lame airline meals and a gajillion Target-purchased toys later, we arrived at 2:15pm. Add passport, suitcase collection and customs, and we were on a bus by 3:30pm and the hotel manager was showing us to two adjoining rooms on the 20th floor by 5pm.



The kids promptly went nuts (in a good way) leaping on the beds and getting out their wiggles after 12 hrs of travel.

Despite the mugginess (though it's definitely not as bad as the worst DC swampiness), we took them to one of Tokyo's 80,000 local restaurants for hot udon noodle soup, veggie tempura and edamame. One other food note: Arno is shocked that the milk here tastes different (nuttier and less sweet, to me) which might lead to a dramatic cutback in his aggressive milk consumption.

We were totally pooped by 8pm. Lucinda fell asleep about a minute after Blaine read a chapter in Harry Potter, and then the rest of us passed out. Arno woke up at 2:20am, then again at 4:45am when he and I were up for the day. Lucinda and Blaine came in at 5:45am, and Lucinda is feeling brighter after eating nearly an entire mango from the fruit plate that greeted us in our hotel room. "This is delicious!" she said. (But she still greatly misses Kaila.)

We expect to move into our new house today because we've rented a "survival package" from the furniture-rental place: sheets, towels, cookware and other basics till our stuff arrives in the coming weeks and months. Blaine's colleague and translator, Ako, will meet us in 3 hrs (I'm typing this at 6:30am) to take us over there.

Lucinda will meet the teachers at her school on Monday, and the first day is next Wed. Arno starts his dual-language preschool the following week. And Blaine might take his first trip to Korea by next weekend. I'll start putting the house together and get family life organized - and will get my blog organized and ready for reading.

We miss you! Thanks for being such terrific friends and family.

Jessica (for Blaine, Lucinda and Arno)

Quotable: Lucinda

"I wish tickle-hands could fall from the sky and tickle us." - Lucinda, August 3, 2007

Trailing Spouse

I've had a short preview of the challenge of being the "trailing spouse," and the challenge is me. The other day, Lucinda and Arno played in our backyard in Seattle while I frenetically weeded and trimmed plants with an eye toward our departure in 2 weeks.

Then Lucinda told me she wanted to play "wedding" - she would be the bride and I would be the groom - and she kept asking me, every two minutes, while I zipped through the garden looking for things that didn't belong there. "Mama, when can we play wedding?," she kept saying. "Soon," I kept saying, "soon."

Then I heard her singing, to the tune of "Que Sera Sera": "When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, "When will we play..." This, in a nutshell, is the challenge: I like being busy. I like writing my to-do lists and crossing things off from my to-do lists. And yet I will be mainly responsible for childcare (when the children are not in school) when we get to Tokyo. Which means that, yes, I will have to be more willing to "play" and not to "work," whether that work consists of freelance writing or unpacking or doing the laundry.