Trailing Spouse: Flu shot edition

Finally getting back to the blog...

Blaine hoped to come back tonight (Saturday), but his editors told him to stay in Thailand to crash a big story about Burma - which could be on the WaPo's front page on Sunday or Monday.

He had a grueling week: 7-hour flight to Bangkok on Monday and interviews that night; six-hour drive on Tuesday, plus more interviews; a foray into Burma and back on Wednesday; six-hour drive back to Bangkok on Thurs; then reporting and writing until 1 a.m. on Saturday morning. He couldn't catch his flight today, so we hope to see him Sunday night.

The kids have grown progressively more mellow since their rocky days early last week when Blaine, Grammy and Granddaddy left town. On Friday, they were relaxed from morning till night, a huge relief for me. I wanted today (Saturday) to be equally easy.

We started with flu shots (their second dose in 10 days), and they were brave and calm, thank god. We are going to a group of English-speaking family doctors who are favorites in the expat community.

The medical office is at the foot of Tokyo Tower - think Eiffel Tower, paint it orange, eliminate any romantic vibe. The MD's brick building is in the backround; the Tokyo Tower's foot is in the foreground.



Tokyo Tower, straight up.



The kids played happily in the tower's tragic little holiday display and pretended that the "train" engine was the bulldozer from Bob the Builder.



Just before we left, this fuzzy phallic character showed up. Lucinda insists it's a girl because "it's pink," but I'm not so sure.



Then on to the American Club for pancakes (I said I was taking it easy!). Blaine called from Bangkok during our breakfast - and Arno took the call while chewing on pancake and sipping juice from a Thomas the Tank Engine sippy cup. The executive 3-yr-old.

Trailing spouse: Mom-leaves-town edition

For the first time since we moved here in mid-Aug, I'm feeling a bit lonely here.

My mom flew back home today after 2 weeks here, and her visit - and the fact that I won't see her again for 7 months - made me recognize how far away we are from our family and US friends.

That might sound silly: how could I not see that earlier? But the busy-ness of life here, the school dropoffs and pickups, meeting so many new people and the novelty of the place smoothed over a lot of the emotional ups and downs of moving.

Also, Blaine is in Thailand this week - so we have gone from a full house to me + kids. Lucinda and Arno handled their grandma's departure pretty smoothly this morning, but there was some serious blowback tonight, with fighting, whining and general fussing and unhappiness.

I'm sure I'll feel better tomorrow, so best to go to sleep and get on with it.

Blaine's latest...

This is a really poignant story, about Japanese men who fear divorce as they near retirement, because their wives can now claim 50 percent of corporate pensions, and so are learning to say "I love you" to their wives.

Many Japanese men are absentee husbands and fathers because of crushing work hours and afterwork social requirements of Japanese corporate life. Decades later, after retirement, they are basically zeroes to their families.

Be sure to click on this video to see and hear these men and women talk about their marriages. Makes American marriage look like a piece of cake.

Japanese talent show

Lucinda can sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" in Japanese.



Here are the words, according to this website. Lucinda and Arno sing a slightly altered version.

Kirakira Boshi (Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star)

Kira- kira hikaru
Osora-no hoshi-yo
Mabataki shitewa Minnna-o miteru
Kira-kira hikaru
Osorano hoshi-yo

Sheila and Blake in Tokyo

Our first visitors: My mother, Sheila, and my stepfather, Blake. They have been here for 2 weeks and are leaving tomorrow. I took this photo on the roof the National Children's Castle. More about our adventures with them to come...

Talent show

The kids have some new songs, which is an excuse for me to post more video.

Arno learned this "Vegetables" song at Willowbrook, and we credit his teachers with inspiring him to eat lots of broccoli lately.



(No, he is not appearing in "Oklahoma"; my mom brought him a Woody costume from Toy Story.)

Tokyo Thanksgiving

My mother, Sheila, and stepfather, Blake, joined us for Thanksgiving chez Newsweek, with Christian and Natasha Caryl and their children, Timothy and Sasha. Also at table: David and Eriko (he is the chief press officer at the US Embassy here) and Mike (?) and Jackie and their daughter Emily (he is a fellow Columbia J-school grad in '87, former AP, former Far Eastern Econ Revu, now KPMG). So lots to talk about.

Natalia roasted a terrific turkey, with delicious stuffing, plus mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberries, asparagus and broc w/cheese. I supplied green beans with almonds and thyme (highly recommend the beans, which do not need garlic powder) and a pumpkin pie. Jackie made pecan pie.

I rescued my pumpkin pie after straying miles from the original New Basics recipe. Just 3 hrs before T-giving dinner, I read to the end of the recipe and found it required... 6 hours of chilling in the fridge. So I left out gelatin, folded in the egg whites, baked it for 40 minutes and it was great.

We've invited the Caryls here for Xmas Eve dinner, and I'm thinking I can rely on Barefoot Contessa rib roast, horseradish sauce, vegetables, bread, potatoes, and maybe Natasha can bring a specialty from her native country, Kazakhstan. For dessert... tiramisu?

Hilarious!

Video on the blog! From Arno's birthday. Click play and prepare to laugh.

Big Bird in Japan?

This was so random: in a playground near our house, I spotted a video crew and these two characters in costume.






A woman told me that their names are "Hanax" (or Hamax?) and "Dodo". She said they are part of a children's show, "like Big Bird," she said. But I haven't been able to find them via Google. Any ideas?

Blaine's latest...

Is a fantastic story about "planned escapes" from North Korea. South Korean families pay brokers and smugglers to get relatives out of the North - which sometimes sends their other Northern relatives to gulags. Sad, tough story.

Sleeping in the subway

One thing I've noticed here is how many people sleep on the subway.

I took the subway at 9 a.m. one day this week, and probably half the people in the car were asleep. Is it rude to photograph sleeping strangers? Oh well, I did it anyway.




I've heard that many Japanese are seriously sleep deprived because the office culture demands extraordinarily long hours, and many people commute for 1-2 hours. So they get up at 6, get to work by 8 or 9, stay for 12 hrs (or whatever), go out to dinner, ride home, get a bit of sleep and start over.

It can't hurt that Tokyo subway seats are cushy and covered in velvety fabric - nothing like the hard plastic, easy-to-clean seats on the NYC subway. Sometimes a person at the end of a row leans his/her head on the metal bar next to the door, too. That can't be comfortable, though the bar is at the right height for napping.

Of course no one here worries about crime on the subway, but lots of people must miss their stops because they are truly, deeply asleep.

You also often find people sleeping in comfy chairs at Starbucks, and Blaine went to a dept store and saw people sleeping in the massage chairs in the furniture showroom. (He has a WaPo story waiting for publication on that.) Someone also told me that exhausted office workers sometimes sleep at their desks, which certainly undermines the concept that more work hours=more productivity.

Arno's 3rd birthday

Arno turned 3 today - although if we could measure a kid's age by sheer talkativeness, Arno would be at least 10.

He is still a pretty relaxed kid, mostly cheerful, very charming and loves to perform for an audience. Of course he throws tantrums, but he doesn't hold grudges. Six months ago, he was into pirates; now it's Superman and Spiderman. This week, riding in his stroller, he's been sticking out his foot because he says, "that's how Superman flies."

I decided to skip any serious birthday party because, after all, he is 3 and doesn't mind as long as we toss him a few presents. Besides, my mother, Sheila, and my stepfather, Blake, arrived in Tokyo yesterday for a two-week visit - and that is enough of a party for us.

So tonight I made my first birthday cake here - admittedly from a mix, with directions in Japanese, in an oven that overbakes everything. Adventures in baking!

Here's the package.



It came with this funny cardboard baking pan.



Try to figure out the directions yourself. How many eggs? How much milk? (click foto to enlarge)



Final result - much less elegant than the picture on the box, even if I did sprinkle it with powdered sugar. Birthday boy blows out candles...



...and shows off his fave present: a water gun from his sister.

Blaine's latest - from Korea

Blaine had another interesting story this weekend: about North Korea's recent efforts to be more open to the rest of the world.

Great info about the DPRK, er, North Korea.

Blaine's latest

Blaine is on the front page of the WaPo's Sunday 11/11/07 paper, with his terrific story about the shortage of bluefin tuna so coveted for Japanese sashimi and sushi.

Here is his lede: "Tuna cannot look like skinny Japanese women."

This is the first of a handful of Blaine stories that will be posted with video on the WaPo's website. A WaPo video team was here for about 10 days in mid-October to shoot pictures; Blaine does the voice over.

By all means read the story, but you can also see video of Tokyo's famous Tsukiji fish market - and some really big tuna - by clicking here.

Maybe my writer husband has a future in network television?

Obento

An "obento" is a Japanese boxed meal, and the school lunch version is something of an obsession here.

Japanese children do not "brown bag" it. They (and now my kids, too) have small plastic lunchboxes decorated with cartoon characters or other cute stuff. Of course American kids have big metal lunchboxes with cartoon characters... but the actual lunch is what's different.

I scramble every morning to throw together a peanut-butter sandwich and chips, or pasta and some sliced hotdog.

This was the gorgeous obento that one Willowbrook mom prepared when Arno and his classmates went potato digging. Note the matching fork/spoon set.


Salmon with a sliced rice ball, an omelette with condiments, a yogurt drink (the small bottle at top left) and, for the mom, the tomatoes and steak patty - while Arno was lunching on corn chips! I complimented the mom on her artistry, and she told me it wasn't up to her usual standards.

This reminded me of lunch-beautification products that I photographed in a department store.

Lunch boxes.


Tiny paper cups designed to keep one dish from touching another.


At left and center, tiny bottles for soy sauce, vinegars or salad dressing. On the right, cute skewers.


Left, sandwich cutouts. Center, a thingy that punches designs out of seaweed to decorate rice balls.


Individually wrapped "Freshful Straw - Heartful Goods" for lunchbox drinks.

Odds and ends

I see so many things that are different about Japan, and I often photograph them - but then forget to post them on the blog. It's Sat night, the kids are sleeping, I'm watching a movie, Blaine is fixing his computer, and it's a good time for me to clear some of them away.

Such as: The farmer from Arno's potato-digging expedition wore these "tabi" boots. (click pic for a close-up view)



This website tells me that "tabi" socks have been worn since the 16th century. They split off the big toe to suit Japanese sandals and clogs, but you also sometimes see construction workers wearing boots like the farmer's, too.

The website says further that "according to Shiatsu theory, wearing Tabi socks benefits the back, the spine, and the digestion due to the acupuncture meridians located between the toes." True?

Obstacle course birthday

Lucinda attended a really cool birthday party last weekend, at a wooded park with a massive obstacle course for children.

The park was Heiwa-no-Mori Koen ("koen" means park).

A Nishimachi/Willowbrook friend, Laurie Lebrun, drove me, our friend Rachel Wang and our three children to eastern Tokyo, and we made our way to the obstacle course's unassuming entrance.



The cost is only 360 yen/adult (about $3) and 80 yen (or 50 cents!) per child. There are 45 obstacles made mainly of logs and rope - like a Marines' training course - for children age 5 and up.

This is one of the first obstacles. Easy, right?



But the designs grew much more challenging, with vertical and horizontal logs to climb or swing around, and wobbly steps attached to ropes. A selection:







Some were 10+ feet off the ground, with no safety net. Lucinda was frightened by one early climb, but that taught her to assess what to try and what to skip.

She has very strong arms and climbed anything with a rope to hold.



But she avoided (to my relief) water obstacles that involved pure balance - like these wobbly rafts that claimed several victims (as in this photo, at left) and two boating tests.




I don't know if this is an "only in Japan" experience, but it was the most creative playground I've ever seen. Isn't this loop-the-loop tunnel amazing?

Working in Japan

This week I am doing my first work in Tokyo: Editing articles for the English-language Japanese magazine Kateigaho International Edition (KIE). Here is the website.

The Japanese mag Kateigaho is a gorgeous, super-glossy, super-thick, ad-heavy publication about Japanese arts and culture, owned by the equivalent of Conde Nast here, Sekai Bunka Publishing.

KIE has very precise articles about Japanese arts and culture, with absolutely gorgeous photographs, that appeal to Japan-o-philes around the world. The stories are written by Japanese writers who can fully understand and express the cultural contexts, translated into English and then edited by English-speaking editors like me.

It's my good luck that KIE's executive editor, Mary Ord, lives in Kirkland, Wash., near Seattle, and my friend Kim Brown Seely connected us before we moved here.

It feels great to do some work here, and I can learn about Japan along the way.

Origami of the Week

Australian party food

My Seattle friend Adrienne Fairhall emailed with a more detailed explanation of Australian birthday delights from the b-day party Arno attended at the Australian embassy.

Remember the fairy bread?



Adrienne says these are basic sprinkles, but fairy bread in her home country would properly be topped with tiny round candies called "hundreds and thousands" or H&T.

Beyond the meat pies and mini sausages, she gave me a name for the pancakes with jam and cream: "party pikelets."

Adrienne: "This is exactly the menu of a hundred parties I went to as a kid."

Potato digging

On Thursday Arno's class had a field trip (literally) to dig Japanese sweet potatoes at a farm in Tokyo. His teacher, Miss Makiko, said many Tokyo schools take young children to do this because they rarely touch real dirt in this concrete city.

We rode in a big bus for more than an hour on city streets to Chofu city in western Tokyo. The sign says something like "Welcome to the sweet potato farm."




The farmer at Nagano farm:



We had a snack and went digging. The farmer roped off three rows of potatoes. The vines were wilted but still intact and, fortunately, the ground was not muddy. This is the "before" shot, before the farmer pulled the vines away:





The kids dug in. I found a shiny, sharp spade for Arno at a "100 yen store," where everything actually costs 105 yen - about 95 cents.

Boy finds sweet potato, brandishes sweet potato.




Arno's three lovely teachers: Miss Makiko, Miss Sharee and Miss Natsumi.




Each kid was allowed to extract a massive daikon radish for 100 yen apiece.



The kids washed their hands without using soap. The farmers laid out four basins, designated for hands that were successively less dirty. The first basin was mud-cloudy, but the water in the fourth basin looked almost drinkable.



Arno poked a caterpillar, had lunch, checked out the farmer's guinea pigs, marched on the fields, dug dirt, squished dirt, threw dirt and fell asleep on my lap as we drove back to school.

It was a relaxing way to parent: no responsibility to make the day a success, no tantrums, no stress, nice chats with other moms.

That night, we steamed the starchy potatoes with butter, and sliced the radish (white strips) into a Japanese stew.