Surrogate mothers

I came across an interesting Newsweek story about surrogate mothers that I thought others might want to read.

Lots of info I hadn't heard before: many American surrogate mothers are military wives; surrogate mothers are implanted w/embryos that do not involve their own eggs, so they have no legal right to the baby; and American surrogates are bearing children for foreigners from countries like Germany, which doesn't allow surrogacy.

Headline: The Curious Lives of Surrogates

Obento and sashimi

Aside from the family-skiing experience, our Hokkaido trip reminded me again about the day-to-day differences in how Japanese people and Westerners eat. In Japan, the food preparation is more straightforward, without (for the most part) dairy products and elaborate sauces. Even the colors on the plate seem different to me.

I've written before about "obento" box lunches for children, and I got a good look at obento for grownups on this trip. In Haneda airport, across from the check-in counter, was a bustling, upscale shop...


... with elaborate obento boxes for travelers to take on planes. The second photograph shows a potpourri of seafood and a platter of sliced eel. (Click pix for close-ups.)



At the Minami-Chitose train station, a lady sold obento in this small shack on the train platform.


Lucinda chose a nicely wrapped wooden box that contained tofu stuffed with sweetened rice and a crab-and-cucumber roll.



At the ski area, the offerings included French fries and chicken nuggets acceptable to a certain 3-year-old American boy. But most dishes were suited for Japanese, Taiwanese and Chinese visitors.

The breakfast buffet included salad, cold poached eggs with soy sauce (not great, in my opinion), cod roe, eggs with a side of ketchup, cod roe, and miso soup, plus toast. On my breakfast tray: sausage patty with cheese, cukes, cooked cabbage with corn salad, crab croquette, a roll, tofu and slices of cold "omelette" eggs.


For lunch at the ski area, we had udon-noodle soup.


For supper, the buffet restaurant had a huge array of sashimi, pickled fish and salads, plus some fried foods for Westerners and a few Chinese dishes. It's so different think of sashimi as the main meal rather than a restaurant delicacy.

Supper one night was: salad with lettuce, daikon radish, corn, edamame and kidney beans; small steak with soy sauce; steamed potato, carrots and onion; slice of duck and 1 chili shrimp; and a bowl of tuna and salmon sashimi, crabmeat and salmon roe.


Here's a close-up of the sashimi. Real wasabi has a more subtle horseradish flavor than the green spicy paste at US sushi restaurants.


On the way home, we had 50 minutes between train and plane at the Sapporo airport, and Veli, Ako's husband, suggested we make a quick stop in the airport's third-floor noodle hall, which has a half-dozen noodle restaurants.

You find seats (low stools) at long tables and order your noodles (880 yen, or $8.80), which arrive in about 3 minutes.


Veli chose red miso (in photograph) and white miso noodles, plus "gyoza" dumplings with (I think) ground scallions and maybe pork.


Before the noodles arrived, Arno sat on the floor and had a full-on tantrum about the seating arrangements before digging in and trying every dish. All the kids slurped their noodles like professionals.

Flying north

We're learning that the most affordable way to travel in Asia is with package deals. Ako Yamamoto, Blaine's WashPost colleague, found an affordable (relatively speaking) package for the ski resort, Tomamu: about $400 per person including flights, 2 nights hotel, 2 lift tickets, rental equipment, spa visits and some meals, plus another $200/day for dinners, child ski lessons, Arno's ski stuff, and other expenses for a family of four.

The lateness of the ski season undoubtedly trimmed the price - and the snow was very slushy - but it pushed us to try sthg new, so no complaints.

Our trip started at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, which mainly serves domestic flights and is only a 30-minute taxi ride from home (vs. 2 hrs to Narita airport). We went with Ako and her husband, Veli Kattoulas, and their two children, Anastasia, 6, and Alex, almost 3. Ana and Lucinda are natural giggle twins; Alex and Arno bonded on the airplane with their stuffed dogs.


It was a 1 hr 15 minute flight on "Air Do" (that is, Hokkai"do") to the city of Sapporo. This was an advertisement in the Sapporo airport; Hokkaido provides much of Japan's best produce and dairy products.


A short train from airport to Minami-Chitose, then 1 hr 15 min in this cool-looking train to the ski resort.


We arrived at our hotel - nothing remarkable - by 11 a.m.


Though tempted to nap, we rallied for lunch and enrolled Lucinda, Alex and Arno in ski lessons. Lucinda skied off with her instructor, who spoke a little English.


I maneuvered Arno into ski clothing for the first time and he hopped on the conveyor belt up the bunny hill. Ski lesson ensued - and he seemed to enjoy it.



But... three runs down the bunny hill and Arno was finished with skiing at age 3. Fortunately, most Japanese ski resorts (unlike American mountains) aren't intent on soaking tourists as much as humanly possible and they refunded the cost of lessons for Arno and Alex (who also didn't last long). I later learned that children under age 6 ski for free and adults can buy single-lift tickets for $3/ride - shockingly low prices!

I tried one expert run at the end of the day and took two spectacular falls, oh well. Then we transitioned to the real object of the children's affection: the enormous indoor pool and spa.


In this pool, the wave machine is turned on for 5 minutes every half hour. Lucinda, Anastasia and Alex loved it and we practically had to drag them out of the pool and into the spa bath.

Many Japanese ski resorts have natural hot-spring "onsen" baths; Tomamu's bath isn't an onsen but it was beautiful. After showering indoors, you bathe outside (men and women are in separate, private pools) with a lovely, lighted view of meadow and trees at night.

The second day of the ski trip was much like the first, though we signed all four children (Lucinda, Arno, Anastasia and Alex) to go with a teacher to a cabin to make ice cream. The grownups went skiing.

Lucinda skis in Hokkaido

Here's one highlight from our vacation: Lucinda and I took one run together on Tuesday morning.



My encouraging "Good for you, Lu!" commentary is included.

Blaine's latest

Another day, another front-page story!

The latest (on Wednesday) is about the skyrocketing popularity of Major League Baseball in Japan because of players like the Boston Red Sox' Daisuke Matsuzaka and Seattle's Ichiro Suzuki.

The story has great play on A1 - and click here (find the March 26 edition if you read this at a later date) to see the front page with a neat photo of a lady in kimono.

As my Boston relatives know, the World Champion Red Sox are in Tokyo for their opening 2 games vs. the Oakland A's. Blaine and Ako returned from Hokkaido a few hours early to attend Tuesday night's season opener, in which Dice-K and Hideki Okajima pitched and the Red Sox won in the 10th inning.

Back home

We're back from a fun-but-sleep-challenged 3-day ski vacation in Hokkaido.

Why was it fun? Lucinda was delighted with 2 ski lessons and took one run with me yesterday. Arno took his first ski lesson, even if it lasted only 30 minutes. The resort had a massive indoor pool with a wave machine and an outdoor spa bath. And we got along famously with with our co-vacationers, the family of Ako Yamamoto, Blaine's brilliant WashPost colleague.

Why was it sleep-challenged? We woke up in Tokyo at 5am on Sunday (for a 6:45am flight) and returned home on Tuesday night at 10pm. That's 65 action-packed hours of skiing, playing, swimming and bathing. Plus, Arno woke us up 5 times each night with various demands. Not so restful, but worth the trip.

I'm sorting out my photographs and will post details in the next 1-2 days.

Gone skiing

We're going to this resort, Tomamu, in Hokkaido early tomorrow, back in a few days.

It's spring in Tokyo, but supposedly still quite snowy on Japan's northern island. I'm not sure if I'll be able to blog when we're there, but will post pix and travelogue when we're back.

Everyday Japan

There's usually an army of workers attached to any civic endeavor in Tokyo. Here's a repaving crew with supervisors, laborers and safety workers.

Easter Eggs

We always enjoyed the annual Easter egg hunt in Seattle's Volunteer Park, and now we've found a suitable substitute in Tokyo's Komaba Park.

A mother with 3 children at the American School in Japan (ASIJ), aided by mothers at the British School of Tokyo (BST) and other schools, collects plastic eggs + candy from about three dozen expat families and hides them in Komaba Koen, where we've been before. (Last year, there were 120 kids, but this year's crowd was trimmed by Spring Break travels.)

The egg hunt was held this morning at 11 a.m. in the mild woods near the playground. Here's the crowd listening to Jane Walshe, the organizing mum. She recruited the elementary-age Easter Bunny (top shot); last year, another mom told me, all the dads were drooling over a sexy young-woman bunny.


Arno joined a handful of little kids in an easier hunt and cleaned up in the egg dept. He and Lucinda scoped out the territory and he went to it.



Lucinda searched with the 4+ crowd, including some very speedy 8 yr olds. But the 10-egg limit left enough for everyone.


The kids assessed their loot.


This event was a great reminder about Tokyo's small-town expat world. We saw five families I've met thru completely different avenues, including Nicole Piasecki and Peter Heymann (friends from Seattle), one of Arno's classmates at Willowbrook, a former Willowbrook family, and Blaine's Newsweek colleague (Christian Caryl and his family, who invited us).

While we ate our picnic lunch, the children were entertained by Natasha Caryl's father, who'd just arrived from Kazakhstan and blew up long balloons that the kids released to make a screaming-fizzing noise. The park is very open and the kids didn't need much supervision, always a plus.

We strolled back to the train station, short ride to Shibuya, and then the bus home. The kids are very happy about the day; we'll do it again next year and can invite our Nishimachi and Willowbrook friends, too.

Blaine's latest

Another front-page story, with top play on the WashPost home page, about the world's voracious demand for coal.

Sounds like bad news for global warming...

The weak dollar

I should add... It doesn't help American expats in Tokyo that the dollar has fallen to record lows against the Japanese yen. On our scouting trip here last May/June, $1 was worth about 120 yen; today, it's down to 95 yen/dollar. Ugh.

Wall St. and Tokyo

Daily news reports from US often don't affect the lives of expat families in Tokyo, but the recent economic crisis and particularly the failure of Bear Stearns has some families wondering if they could be tossed out of the expat life unexpectedly.

Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers have huge offices in Roppongi Hills, an office and shopping complex near our house, which is also near Lucinda's and Arno's schools - which means that many Goldman and Lehman families live nearby and send their kids to Nishimachi and Willowbrook. I've also met parents (mainly dads) who work for JP Morgan and various other banks.

Some columns and news reports today and yesterday say that Lehman could follow Bear Stearns into trouble; this WashPost report says the markets will watch closely when Goldman and Lehman report their earnings in the coming days/weeks. I'm sure the families will be watching, too.

These financial hiccups also make international-school administrators a little nervous. The headmaster of Nishimachi held an info session last week and told parents that the school's building improvements and expansion plans are of course partly dependent on tuition payments from companies that foot the bill for employees' children. (including, say, the Washington Post.) Massive bank layoffs = fewer students.

Blaine's latest...

Two more A1 stories! Blaine has a very high front-page batting average here.

This is his latest about North Korea and likely food shortages there this year. (Photo above, at the Pyongyang airport.)

He was also on the front page last week with an upsetting story about a sumo-wrestling murder. Interesting cultural contexts.

More great stories to come...

What's happening

I've been writing a lot about where we've been going and what I've been seeing, but not much about life here generally. So here's a general update:

Blaine is writing a lot about North Korea, which is making his editors happy. (I'll post his latest story after I finish this post.) But he's also working so hard, and traveling a lot, that he's come down with a few severe colds. He needs a vacation! (More about that later.)

Lucinda is growing more confident in her reading every day, and she's reading faster and more smoothly. She brings home 1 or 2 short books as homework every night. Also, she was excited on Friday when her Japanese teacher assigned her first Japanese homework: writing her name in Katakana and Kanji (two of the three character-based languages that make up Japanese).

On Thursday, Lucinda will host Blaine and me for an hourlong "student-led conference" in her classroom to show us what she's learning. Nishimachi doesn't let parents volunteer in the classroom - though they gladly "let" us volunteer in the library or to raise money - which means we have to rely on Lucinda to give us scarce details from day to day.

Lucinda's other focus these days is her two best friends, Claire and Naomi. This triangular friendship sometimes causes heartburn - I assume for all three girls, but definitely for Lucinda - because shifting alliances sometimes leave one girl or another feeling left out. We talk about this situation almost every day, and I think Lucinda (with my help) has worked out a strategy that seems to help: on days when she knows the other two will have a playdate - which usually means they're wrapped up together - she has started to plan ahead to spend time with other friends. It seems to give her a sense of control on days when she's worried.

Arno is Arno: cheerful, lots of talking, enjoying school, jumping and twisting in the air. He's also really got a mommy-adoration thing going on, which is very sweet but also makes me worry that I'm not spending enough time with him. Alas, the endless parenting dilemma of time with kids vs. time alone. His class will have "family day" on Thursday, after Lucinda's parent conference, and we'll have lunch with him in the park.

Me: I'm working on pitches to a few magazines and volunteering at the kids' schools. Last week, the director of Willowbrook (Arno's school), another mom and I delivered a Volvo-load of donated groceries to a food bank, Second Harvest, here. Today I spent 1.5 hrs in Nishimachi's new library organizing books and painting props for an upcoming Book Day. Oh - and blogging when I can get it together.

Next week is spring vacation for both kids. We're flying to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido on Sunday to ski with Blaine's translator, Ako, and her family. Hokkaido is supposed to have amazing snow: something like 900 inches/year. Lucinda and Arno will probably take lessons - should be really neat. Then we'll be back in Tokyo by mid-week to witness the height of the cherry blossoms here.

Visit to the Toys' Kingdom

I recently took the children to the "Toys' Kingdom," a sort-of children's museum that offers a very Japanese approach to child's play.

It was near Tokyo Dome, where the Yomiuri Giants play baseball, in a place called Tokyo Dome City. We went with Emily, who is in Lucinda's class at Nishimachi, and her younger sister Elizabeth and their mom.

We popped out of the subway to see the futuristic Dome and an amusement park wedged next door.



We walked past a line of people buying baseball tickets and a bunch of restaurants to get to this:


It's 1000 yen ($10) for adults and 700 yen ($7) for children - that's $24 for us - for 3 hours of playtime. The Kingdom has two open floors connected by a short stairway, and older children - i.e. kindergarteners - walk freely from room to room without their parents. (Not something you'd see much in a US city.)

I thought this was a very Japanese play environment because (1) it wasn't noisy, even with 100+ children floating around; (2) the kids weren't jumping, running or shouting - except for my children; and (3) nearly every activity was task-oriented, so children could quietly practice skills by themselves - which is basically something my children never do.

On the big main floor, aside from a playground set that wasn't getting much action, half the room was dedicated to Lego-like blocks and the other half to train sets.



It obviously works for some parents who read the newspaper while their children fixate on Legos or trains. But the place really bugged me.

For one thing, the Toys' Kingdom usually provides sample creations for children to copy. For example, behind Arno in this shot, you can see sample Lego animals to build with blocks from that particular station. Multiply by 10 stations, and that's the Toys' Kingdom. (Arno and I built a Power Ranger.)


Or with these tile boards or this (actually very cool) set of wooden blocks. It's not a free-thinking mentality.



What's relevant here is that the Japanese education system, which used to be considered the world's best, is now often criticized for its cookie-cutter approach that emphasizes fact-memorization and cram schools rather than analysis, discussion or debate. Sort of like this?

Upstairs, we found a doll room (Emily is sitting next to Lucinda), a dollhouse room, and a computer-game room (Arno loved the Power Rangers' video game - notice the theme?) Focus, focus, focus!




There were collections of other task-oriented toys, mainly for preschoolers:




(On the plus side: The Kingdom also had some great German wooden toy sets that cost $200 that I'm too cheap to buy.)

The Toys' Kingdom totally wore me out - partly because Arno asked me 50 times to buy the Power Rangers gun from the toy shop located conveniently next to the lunch tables. I dragged the kids out when we hit our 3-hour limit.

We did see one amusing thing, though: these senbei (rice crackers) printed with a Power Ranger face.

Everyday Japan

I meant to post something about Japanese groceries months ago, but finally focused on a few things that are noticeably different than what you find in American stores. The quick summary is: groceries are sold in smaller amounts, with less packaging, and often with a shorter sell-by date.

The most obvious is milk: available here only in 1 liter containers like this, about 1/4 the size of an enormous American plastic milk jug.


We drink one of these every 1 1/2 days - which means we are constantly shopping for milk! Fortunately, Arno, who loved to drink milk in Seattle, decided the day of our arrival here that he didn't like Japanese milk; we think the milk here has a nuttier, less sweet flavor.

Also, most milk sold here is whole milk, and this tastes like it has a higher fat content than the 4% standard in the US; you also do find low-fat and non-fat milk. Some whole milk is also pasteurized at a lower temperature (you can see the temp printed on this package, and some show a lower temp) which some say improves the flavor.

Next, eggs. They are sold here in plastic cartons of 10 eggs, and each egg has a small sticker with a sell-by date. So precise!


Sandwich/toast bread is typically sold in packages of 6 or 8 slices - as much as a typical American family might eat in 1 day! The heels are left out and the bread is soft and fantastic; six-slice bread is thicker and almost luxurious. We are not talking Wonder Bread. In the US, bread is big business, so you find a variety of grain combinations. Here, nutty, whole-wheat bread is rare except in French bakeries.


Chicken broth: Sold in small, collapsible-plastic packages. Lots of products (including shampoo and cleaning supply replacement containers) come in this thin plastic, presumably to limit trash and packaging.


Finally, carrots. They typically come in cellophane packages of 1, 3 or 5 carrots. They are also three times as fat as American carrots and much more flavorful.


More as I find them...