Drumming

The same Saturday, we went to the Drum Museum near Asakusa.

The Drum Museum is small but so much fun - easily one of my favorite places to take young children. Lots of instruments to play, no one else there, and the room must be decently soundproofed because we did not leave with headaches.

The museum is on the 4th floor of this brick building; the ground floor is, reasonably, a percussion shop.


The museum is a medium-sized room filled with a few hundred percussion instruments.


We tried most of the instruments in about an hour. There were drums and shakers and jigglers made of wood and skins and horns and a turtle shell. A big hollow stick filled with rice (or something similarly small) sounds like falling rain when you flip it upside down.

Short videos seem like the best way to show and tell.

Here's Arno with an instrument from Indonesia:



Lucinda with this neat jiggling thing, maybe also from Indonesia?



Blaine with a Korean drum:



Lucinda plays a steel drum from Jamaica.



Drumming by our friends, Rena Singer (her husband, John Murphy, works for the Wall St. Journal) and her two children, Benjamin and Eden:



And finally, these pleasant Tinkerbell bells:

Archers on horseback

On a recent Saturday, we went to see an old-style Japanese "Yabusame" competition: Men in traditional Japanese-cowboy costumes shoot arrows at small targets while riding at full speed on horseback. As you might imagine, the kids loved it.

Yabusame (according to info handed out on site) was "a necessary accomplisment of a samurai" during two shogunate eras, in the late 1100s and early 1700s.

The competition, in Sumida Park near Asakusa every April, is conducted on a long, straight gravel path lined with ropes. At the starting point, a man in traditional dress makes a circle with a large white fan, like the hand of a clock, to signal the next rider's approach.


There are judges and assistants in costumes and hats, all wearing sandals and socks despite the mud.





I saw only one woman on the course; she replaced the broken targets in front of us, and her hat and clothes were very cool.




On to the contest:

Each horse and archer race out of the starting gate and reach the first target in about five seconds. The rider holds an enormous bow; his arrows are in a sling on his back. He controls the horse with his legs. He reaches for an arrow, loads it into the bow, slowwwwwly pulls back on the bowstring and, sometimes with a warlike shout, fires at a thin board target - I'm guessing 18 inches square - mounted on a tall post.

The target, if hit properly, blasts apart and releases a burst of confetti. Then he races on, gathering speed for another quarter-kilometer to the next target.

I managed, after many tries, to make a good video of this.



There were about 10 riders who cycled thru the course three times as we watched. After each round, they paraded back to the start.


Also after each round, there was a brief ceremony with two young men, who exchanged arrows and bowed to each other.



Like any modern family, we sometimes get stuck in the inertia of normal life: school, errands, swim lessons, playgrounds, dinner, the Disney Channel. An excursion like this reminds me why we are living in Japan.

Origami of the week

I forgot to post this Lucinda-origami from March, a small box made from two pieces of paper.

Origami of the week

Three weeks ago, Lucinda and Blaine went to see Nishimachi's middle-school play, A Thousand Cranes, which is a fictional account of a girl who survives the bombing of Hiroshima but eventually dies of leukemia caused by the radiation. The girl, Sadako Sasaki, tries to fold 1,000 origami cranes that would grant her one wish, to live.

Lucinda was quite inspired by the play and, 10 days ago, she brought home an origami crane that she'd folded in Japanese class with her teacher's help. A few days later, she showed me one that she'd done by herself in class. And since then, she's been coming home from school, sitting at the kitchen table, and folding more cranes.

It's been neat to watch her gain confidence with practice; at times, she was frustrated if the folds didn't turn out properly and ripped them up - but now she knows what she's doing.

So here are three recent cranes, with varying degrees of precision.



Throughout the school year, I've assumed that in-class origami was the teacher's way of inspiring children to enjoy the daily Japanese lesson. But a crane is not just a crane!

I realized recently that practicing origami teaches children some crucial skills as they learn how to write Japanese characters (that is, hiragana, katakana and kanji.) First, origami takes practice. Second, the folding improves a child's fine motor skills and spacial relations.

But maybe most importantly, origami has taught Lucinda that she has to remember a series of steps and do them in the right order - or it won't look right. The same is true with Japanese writing, as each character must be precisely remembered and precisely written.

A trip to Bollywood

When Blaine was in the Philippines writing about poor people who can't afford to buy rice, I went to Nishimachi's annual fundraising auction at the Grand Hyatt - and, wow, we couldn't have been in two more distant worlds.

Guilt for posh living aside, I really enjoyed dressing up for the Bollywood theme. Like many Nishimachi moms, I bought a sari from a shop in the Hiroo neigborhood near our house. The shop owner is very persuasive; I tried a dark color before he suggested that I try the fuchsia - and I was sold. I went to the shop before the auction so he could drape and pin it on me properly. How will I ever wear it again?

There's a silent auction for various things, including class artwork that sells for a few hundred dollars. This was Lucinda's class project (her photograph and handprint are in the upper left), which sold for 10,000 yen, or about $100.



The live auction is an odd experience, as bankers and hedge funders, etc., spend thousands for donated trips to India, or chauffered shopping sprees, or an 18-course catered Chinese dinner for 50 people, or a baseball game hosted by Bobby Valentine (who coaches in Japan).

Such profligacy separates the very wealthy from the merely wealthy and from families (like ours) who bid on dinners in the online auction. It's a great school for Lucinda and I'm not complaining, though who wouldn't reconsider an MBA at such a moment?

I took my camera out for a spin to capture the costumes, and here are some favorites. Check out these fabrics.







And this woman chose a lovely, traditional kimono.

Movie Night

We've started to turn Friday night into movie night at our house. (We're stealing the idea from our Seattle friends, the Ashbys.) Tonight we ate leftovers, plus fresh yakisoba for the kids, and snacked on fancy cookies, and then we rented a movie with our favorite new toy, Apple TV.

We can get movies from the Tokyo American Club (it has a better selection) but Apple's list is improving. We can choose a movie, rent it for $3-4, download and start watching a minute later. With no late fees. It is so cool!

Tonight we watched Underdog - and the kids LOVED it. I vaguely remember that it got bad reviews, maybe because it appeals to 3-yr-old boys with superhero fixations and 5-yr-old girls who giggle about mild potty humor?

Arno's new friend

Here's some family news: Arno has an imaginary friend named "Silly."

Silly made his first appearance during our holiday vacation in Guam, introduced as "my friend Silly." Arno told us that Silly "lives in Korea" (because, we guessed, Blaine often goes to Korea) but that Silly was on vacation in Guam, too. Silly and his family were staying in the hotel next to ours.

Blaine and I were curious to see how far Arno could imagine Silly, so we asked a bunch of questions and got a bunch of answers. Silly has a mom, dad, older sister Sally and little brother Jack. Later, we learned that Silly lives in Tokyo - in our neighborhood, no less - and that Silly will move to Seattle when we do.

Arno doesn't talk about Silly every day. Instead, Silly is the repository for Arno's dearest wish, which is a moving target. We've been told that Silly "doesn't go to school," that Silly "has a dog" and that "Silly's mom lets him do whatever he wants."

Arno's latest fixation is guns (replacing his fixation with swords) and tonight at supper he told us that Silly "lives at gun school." We wondered: What happens at gun school? "They shoot guns, play with guns, and they eat gun crackers that are shaped like guns." Sometimes Arno talks on a toy cell phone with Silly, and tonight Silly told Arno that Silly is "making a yellow sword for me; it turns into anything I want it to turn into, like a sword or a gun."

Trailing spouse: endless kid stuff

Yeah, the kids are neat, but don't you ever get tired of dealing with them? I do.

Conveniently today, a friend sent me these amusing videos on same subject:

The Mom Song, by Anita Renfroe



And the concordant Dad Song

Blaine's latest

... is his first story from the Philippines, about the rice shortage in some countries around the world. He interviewed someone from the International Rice Institute in Manila, an org that few people in the US have heard of.

The Philippines is a very poor place and, as a result, many of its men and women leave to work in other countries. Nearly all of Tokyo's "helpers," as nannies, housecleaners and housekeepers are called, are Filipina, including ours. And many are women in their 20s and 30s who leave their children with husbands and grandmas in the Philippines to work in Tokyo - often 6 or 7 days/week - and see their families maybe for 4-6 weeks a year.

I've heard many times that a Filipina can make far more as a nanny in Tokyo than working for a bank in Manila, but these women pay a high personal cost to work here.

Lucinda's school, Nishimachi, had a "book parade" last week to celebrate International Children's Book Day. Every student and some of the staff dressed up as a favorite character and marched around the playground. There was one rule: You can't buy a costume, which thankfully eliminated most Disney characters.

Lucinda was, as you can see, Laura Ingalls.


Her costume was mercifully easy to put together: Lu chose one of her cotton, calico-like dresses from H&M, to which we added a white, collared shirt and an apron. Then I tied on her "sunbonnet," which Lucinda pulled forward to emphasize the tunnel-vision nature of 1870s sunbonnets and attitudes about girls' behavior, which Laura Ingalls intensely disliked.

The elementary principal, Julie Jackson-Jin, was Amelia Bedelia.


The drama teacher was a Wild Thing.



Here's Madeline and a dragon of some sort.



Maybe I could import this event to Seattle, whenever we return.

Blaine's latest...

... is an interesting front-page story about Charles Robert Jenkins, a US Army soldier who got drunk and crossed the Demilitarized Zone from South to North Korea in the 1960s, and spent 40 years as a somewhat-prisoner in the North.

Here's Blaine's WaPo video about the guy.

Jenkins isn't an intellectual, but he does have a fascinating story. Most poignantly, he was "introduced" to and eventually married a 20-yr-old Japanese woman who'd been kidnapped by North Korea on her way home from badminton practice. (The North Koreans also abducted the woman's mother at the same time but Mom was never seen again. It's hard to fathom the trauma of living through that.)

Jenkins' book, The Reluctant Communist, has just been translated into English. He is a big celebrity in Japan, and his book sold 300,000 copies here.

Trailing Spouse: Philippines edition

Blaine is in Manila this week to do a few stories - back on Saturday - and I'm having a more productive and relaxed week than usual. I'm working on a pitch to Self magazine and editing a friend's book proposal, and doing a little volunteer work for Arno's school, Willowbrook. When Lucinda has afterschool activities, I send Arno to Willowbrook's flexible afterschool program, which gives me a few more hours to get things done.

Sometimes Blaine's trips exhaust my parenting skills, but the kids have been great this week, even in my morning rush to get Lucinda to school by 8:15am.

Lucinda, as she approaches age 6, is a pleasure to be around these days. She's become increasingly flexible about choosing outfits for school, does her homework without nagging, and is feeling very confident about her reading and school experience.

She does have brief bad moods - typically if I pick her up from school and say 'no' to something she wants immediately - but she is snapping out of that moodiness more rapidly.

Which reminds me that Lucinda made up a funny rhyme the other day, to a tune she often sings about her friends or her parents:.

"Mommy and her 'No', in a tree.
K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
First comes love, then comes marriage.
Then comes 'No' in the baby carriage."

Cherry blossoms

We went for a walk yesterday in Aoyama Cemetery to see the final weekend of cherry blossoms. Blaine brought his video camera.

Arno, leaping

Arno's class is also taking in the cherry blossoms. The children went to the park yesterday for snacktime and lunch, and his teachers captured some of his delightful energy.

Springtime in Tokyo

It's cherry blossom - "sakura" - time in Tokyo, and we've been enjoying the season. Today I went for a wonderful bike ride with a friend, Cathy, to see some "sakura" sights.


We rode through Aoyama Cemetery...


...where schoolchildren, old people and hipsters were lunching near or under the trees. That's the big event: standing or sitting near the blossoms, absorbing the atmosphere, and taking pictures of friends doing the same thing.



Then we rode to the Imperial Palace. You can't go inside the palace walls, but what we saw was delightful: the moat, the scenery from the palace gates.



I liked this refined couple.


And more photo-happy sakura visitors.


It was a lot of fun to be a tourist in our own city.