Not taking the buyout

We recently decided to sign onto the Washington Post's future, for better or worse, when we decided not to take the WaPo's buyout offer for its longtime employees.

This was our struggle, just one year after we decided to move to Japan: Should Blaine quit the Post, accept a generous and steady buyout-related income, and start freelancing from Seattle - while I'd get a new full-time job? It was a tempting offer, especially given newspapers' tough times and falling profits.

Or should we stay in Japan for the duration of Blaine's planned posting, enjoy his fine work as a foreign correspondent, see how my editing and writing develops, and hang onto the kids' fantastic schools and the family's overseas experience - not knowing what the future holds for our next posting? We decided to stick around.

For me, the bottom line was seeing this is a onetime chance for our family to live something other than a typical American life: house, minivan, schools, soccer practice, big grocery stores and non-exotic vacations. The schools here are a big seller: We love them, and they may be the best schools that Lucinda (and maybe even Arno) ever attend, though I hope not.

When the buyout option popped up, I applied for Lucinda to attend 1st grade in our very good Seattle neighborhood public school, Stevens Elementary. She would have gone there this year for kindergarten in Seattle, but now, for 1st grade, there wasn't a space for her. Instead, she was #4 on the Stevens waiting list, with no guarantee of admission before September, and she was randomly assigned to a low-testing school a few miles away. This did not exactly make me want to rush back to Seattle.

But the truth is, the kids have done wonderfully here, and we're excited about their next school year. Arno's teachers told us last week that he's actually -speaking- Japanese to them, which was completely new info to us (he doesn't bother speaking it to us). And Lucinda performed in a short Japanese play today for her school assembly. No matter how long we stay - 3 or 4 years total, probably - they'll go home with some terrific language skills and a better understanding of the rest of the world.

Even as we made our decision, I know many families who are leaving Tokyo this year - more than in past years, friends say. Some bankers have been laid off, some US companies are pulling their people back, and some have run out of time. Many people are having "sayonara parties" right now. I'm glad we're not among them.

Blaine's latest...

... is a delightful WaPo Style story about a young African-American singer, Jero, who grew up in Pittsburgh and is now making it big in Japan by singing "enka," which Blaine describes as "syrupy ballads -- in perfect Japanese -- about lost love."

The story has some charming Blaine-ish writing. Like this description of enka's content: "Suicide is nearly always a viable option in its ballads of unrequited love, hopeless love, cheating love and relentless rain." Before Jero, he writes, enka "had the unhip odor of Elvis ballads in his years of white jumpsuits and belly fat."

As always, Blaine wraps the specifics of his subject matter into a social context that tells you something rich about the Japanese (or any culture he's writing about.) Don't forget to check out his photos, too!

Tatami mats

On our walk through Fukagawa to see the Edo Museum, I looked into an open workshop to see two men sewing tatami mats by hand. This man was sewing a border onto the mat's hem with an enormous needle.



Old Edo, still relevant today.

Old Edo

On a recent day off from school, Lucinda and I went with our friends Laurie and Sylvan Lebrun to a museum that recreates scenes from "old Edo," as Tokyo was called from 1457 to 1868.

The Fukagawa Edo Museum, which is an old-style neighborhood, is very modern on the outside - a typically enormous concrete structure.


But inside there's a reconstructed, 19th-century riverside neighborhood. Here's a drawing of the concept and what you find after paying an entrance fee of 300 yen ($3) for adults and 50 yen (50 cents) for children.




There were a few elderly Japanese who worked, or volunteered, in the museum, sort of like greeters at Wal-Mart. One woman silently followed us around - like a "minder" in a Communist country - to make sure that Lucinda and Sylvan (two very responsible kindergarteners) didn't wreck anything. But an elderly man, who spoke very good English, more generously explained what we were looking at. (Forgive the dim pix; the light in the museum changed day-to-night-to-day, etc., also somewhat annoying.)

Edo neighborhoods like this one were mainly occupied by young, single laborers or married men whose wives were in the country. The names of the inhabitants are listed on a board above the gate leading to a small boarding house and other dwellings, as a security measure to keep strangers out.


In the boarding house, each laborer lived in a single room that was smaller than our current kitchen. The floors are tatami mats, the sleeping futons are folded in the corner (back left in the photo) during the day. Each has a tiny kitchen and a small portable table or tray to serve and eat on.


Sometimes there were rice-straw "raincoats" and hats hanging inside the door, and tiny sandals by the door.



There was a produce store (top) and a rice store (bottom), with big foot-levers to smash the rice into paste, or "mochi."



Also available for viewing: a water taxi to take laborers elsewhere to have a little fun, and a "fire tower" where residents would check for smoke every hour, because a moderate fire would wipe out the whole place in minutes. And a public square with a shack to sell "yakitori" or grilled seafood and veggies.



It was fun and interesting - if restrained. After our visit, we found a local restaurant for noodles, rice and tempura, and sat at traditional low-to-ground Japanese tables, very in-tune with our museum visit.

Lucinda's red-letter day

Lucinda had a great day today in reading and swimming. She has always been cautious about new challenges, but I think her kindergarten teacher's approach - that "Ms. Amies wants you to make mistakes" - has given her a heap of confidence to try new things even if she can't do them immediately.

First, reading. Her teacher bumped her up two reading groups today to join the girls in the top level, which is just thrilling for her and for us.

When she started kindergarten, Lucinda knew the alphabet and letter sounds, but she showed zero interest in trying to read, and I think she was surprised that other kindergarteners were already excellent readers. It had not occurred to her that other children might do what she could not.

Nishimachi and her teacher, Penny Amies, take a very structured approach to reading. Reading and handwriting homework every night. Flashcards. Letter "blends". Lucinda gradually picked it up, but had trouble recognizing - scanning - letter combinations without getting stuck. (My main contribution was to suggest putting letter combos - th, sh, ch, ee, ea - on flashcards, to groove them in her brain.)

And in the last 2 weeks, her reading ability has just exploded. Suddenly, she is reading quickly and fluently - and enjoying reading in a way that will stick with her for life. She sees words more broadly, recognizes a longer list of words instantly, and sounds out mystery words with confidence. Ms. Amies noticed, too, and rejiggered the reading groups to put Lucinda with Lani, Saki and Emily, the class's three strongest readers, and a few other kids, too.

Next, swimming. She's been sharing a private lesson every Thursday with another kindergartener, Sylvan, at the Tokyo American Club. Lucinda started swim lessons last summer, but her teachers in Seattle were tougher with her, and I often had to press her to do those lessons at all.

But today, after a month of no-cry lessons, Lucinda did two of the three tests required to be a "Super Swimmer" - to swim by herself in the pool. She did one lap (25 meters) - dog-paddling, but a lap is a lap. And she treaded water for 30 seconds. She still has to retrieve a flipper from the bottom of the shallow end; she hadn't ever tried going completely underwater before, so we started practicing today.

Lucinda's other new, entirely self-taught talents: Jump-roping forward and backward. Next milestone: Lucinda's 6th birthday party - 1 week from Sunday - at our house.

Sports Day

When I was a kid, we had "field day" every spring on the dusty playfield behind my public elementary school in Littleton, Colorado. We ran races and did the tug-of-war and softball throw, etc., with a strong emphasis on individual performance, with ribbons awarded even in the youngest grades. Does that still happen in American public schools?

In Japan, schools have "Sports Day," and what we've seen so far is a very different, team-oriented approach to sports - for young children anyway.

Arno's preschool had its sports day on a baseball field near Willowbrook 10 days ago.


Arno and his mates in Umi class, all dressed in red, did the "origami relay" (grabbing origami off a clothesline), the sack race, and the egg/spoon relay (Arno clamped his hand over the plastic egg on the spoon as he ran). Also, the three-legged run, done with his Aussie friend Ceinwyn...


...the throw-crumpled-paper-in-baskets game...


...and the parachute game.


Lucinda's school held its sports day at a (very empty) former Olympic stadium about a half-hour drive from Nishimachi.



The children in grades K-9 were tasked to the blue or white team (the school colors), and each team's points were tallied throughout the day. Lucinda was on the blue team.

The first event was the tug-of-war, grade by grade, which meant 30 kindergarteners lined up on each side of this big rope.



Lucinda and her friends pulled and pulled (and even got small rope burns)...


... and L was thrilled when her blue team won. (She tends to avoid games involving winning and losing - but the truth is, she does like to win.) Celebration ensued.


Next, the kindergarteners ran the 50-meter sprint in groups of about 10. At the end of each heat, the fastest handful of kids received a snip of colored ribbon, and the overall results were tallied for the blue or white team. Lucinda was baffled and a bit upset that she didn't get to hold a ribbon. (I'm sure she was thinking: It's not fair! Why doesn't everyone get the same thing!) But she was mollified when no one kept the ribbons, which were passed on to the next grade of competitors.

Then the kindergarteners had a series of relay races in 4 teams (2 blue, 2 white) of 15 children. Each child did the skill - running forward, jogging backwards, sack jumping, walking with ping-pong ball in spoon, etc. - and returned to sit down in incredibly tidy lines.



I could see that different children excelled at different skills, and I liked the team, rather than the individual, focus. Lucinda told me today that the Blue team - her team - won the day.

A sad anniversary

My very good friend, Lauren Terrazzano, died one year ago today at age 39. This photograph of Lauren with her husband, Al Baker, was taken on Bear Mountain in March 2007, one year after they were married. She died two months later.

Lauren was a phenomenal journalist and my excellent friend since we were in graduate school together. We spent many hours commuting from Manhattan's Upper West Side to Newsday's office on Long Island - telling stories and jokes and obsessing about our careers.

Lauren was diagnosed with lung cancer in August 2004, when she was 36. She fought it off with chemo, surgery and radiation in 2004/05, and a second time soon after she and Al were married. In the last half-year of her life, Lauren wrote a column called "Life, with cancer" that drew readers from across the country. The New York Times also featured her in this story about young adults with cancer.

I miss you, Lauren. I think of you often and wish you were still with us.

Mother's Day

My mom, Sheila, just returned home from a weeklong visit with us in Tokyo and, wow, do we miss her already!


We shared a Mother's Day excursion to busy Shibuya on Sunday while Blaine took Lucinda and Arno to the Tokyo American Club. The kids behaved horribly on the bus that day, but I didn't have to deal with it - my Mother's Day present.


Lucinda is especially close to her grandmother, who is teaching her how to knit and sew and needlepoint. On Monday afternoon, when we were all gloomy about Grammy's departure, Arno suggested that we draw pictures and send them to her to cheer us up, which we will surely do.

Thanks for the visit, Mom! We'll see you this summer in the U.S.

Everyday Japan

Here's another look at unusual groceries we find in Japan.



From left to right:

A Yakult "probiotic" drink in a tiny 65ml bottle, which is sold in packs of 6, 8 or more. Google tells me that it's a "fermented milk drink" made by fermenting skim milk powder and sugar with the beneficial bacteria Lactobacillus casei Shirota strain. Lucinda really likes them.

Italian whipped cream in a spray can. It's a much smaller package than a typically mega-American version.

And mayonnaise, which squirts out of this very-thin-plastic bottle, to eliminate bulky trash. A British website called Japan Centre ("Japan delivered to your door"), tells me that it's called "QP Kewpie Mayonnaise." Turns out it's made with rice vinegar instead of distilled vinegar to better match Japanese cuisine. (Which means that my sister, who has a wheat allergy, could maybe eat Japanese mayo?)

Pass the butter

While poorer nations around the world are struggling with food shortages and steep price increases for food, I've only noticed one oddity in our food supply: a sudden butter shortage.

This Asahi newspaper story says there's been a decrease in raw milk production in Japan and an increase in the use of available milk for drink and cheese production.

Butter was relatively expensive here anyway - typically $6 for a half pound. But a month ago, I started to notice empty shelves in the butter section, even in the big grocery store Nissin, which never runs out of anything.


You could still find some butter - French butter - priced at an astonishing $20 per pound!


I shopped around and nabbed six packages of Hokkaido butter from a local convenience store, which should be enough for several weeks. I think the price increases are here to stay, up to about $15 a pound for domestic butter.

Everyday Japan - school uniforms

You can't walk down the street here without noticing what children wear to school - and how different it is from what most American schools require.

1. Most young Japanese schoolchildren wear brightly colored brimmed hats to school every day, along with navy shorts year round for boys. The caps likely make the children more visible to drivers - useful because children travel to school by themselves by age 6 - and they also identify their class within a school.

Last week at Shinjuku Gyoen, a park, for Lucinda's field trip, I found a good way to illustrate this very visible fashion statement.






2. Young children sometimes wear smocks in parks to keep their clothes spotless. And even preschoolers carry backpacks and sometimes 1 or 2 other little bags with them.



3. Private school uniforms, for all ages, are ubiquitous!

Sailor uniforms are fashionable here for girls, plus knee socks and penny loafers. Elementary-age schoolgirls (whom I haven't managed to photograph) often wear navy-blue brimmed hats with ribbons; their mothers, who take them to and from school, are equally well-dressed. Boys typically wear military-style jackets or blazers with gray slacks and loafers or sneakers. They almost always carry identical school bags, too.

Traveling in groups as they often do - on the street, in the subway - they look like flocks of birds. I saw these students near the Tokyo Sea Life Park, an aquarium where Arno's school had a field trip.

Dog ate blogwork

I am so behind on my blogging, eek. In part it's because we go to a lot of new places here, I take photographs, and then it takes me much too long to post a travelogue with pix. Or the kids have vacations - like the current 5-day vaca for Japan's "Golden Week" - and I don't have as much time to contemplate life or describe what's going on.

So what is going on? My mom just arrived tonight for an 8-day visit. She planned it at the last minute and got a seat with her United miles - and we are thrilled to see her. She and my stepfather were here six months ago (hard to believe it was that long ago) and the children were counting down the days and hours this week to her arrival.

Golden Week - from last Friday thru this Tuesday - is a time when Tokyo empties out and nearly all Japanese go on vacation. It is very quiet around here. The vacation's timing also synchronizes with end-of-school activities: last week, Lucinda's school had a "spring festival" on Tuesday when parents accompanied kindergarteners to do crafts all morning, and on Thursday, the kindergarten took its only field trip, to Shinjuku Gyoen, a lovely park we've visited before. (I went along for that, too.)

I'm also doing more editing (for another 2 weeks) for Kateigaho International Edition, the English-language magazine about Japanese arts and culture. Then we have just five more weeks of school to mid-June. Upcoming: "sports day" for Arno's and Lucinda's schools, and in June, Lucinda's birthday party, which must be planned. Impossible to believe that our first year here is almost over.