Back home

We're home. We took a night flight back to Tokyo and arrived this morning at 7:45 a.m. (A Japan Airlines 747 makes a 16-hour round trip between Narita and Denpasar, Bali's capital, once a day.) We dragged our stuff into our house, Blaine made pancakes for the children, and I took a 3 hour nap!

We had a great trip in Bali - very relaxing, lots of sleep, and we loved being in a warmer climate without the humidity of Tokyo in the summer. The children are getting better about traveling, though Arno lived on pancakes, pasta, and french fries for 10 days.

We spent a week at the Westin in Nusa Dua, which is the equivalent of a gated community for enormous resort hotels, and three nights in Ubud, the alleged "cultural center" of Bali. I took heaps of photos and will write some blog posts about our trip this week, but here are a few of my favorites shots.

Lucinda sipped coconut milk from an actual coconut!


At the Westin, Blaine and I usually read for 1-2 hours every morning in a thatch-roofed pavilion.


Arno at the cliffside Ulu Watu temple.



And this is what I learned on my winter vacation:

- Lots of rich Russians vacation in Bali! The men are huge and hulking, with Russell Crowe's "Gladiator" hair, and the women favor peroxide-white long hair and the flashiest outfits imaginable.

- Being a tourist in Bali couldn't be more enjoyable. Beautiful beaches, well-managed hotels, spa treatments, and it's shockingly cheap - we often spent $36 for dinner for all of us, and we hired a driver for $40 a day. (The traffic is nuts there.)

- As a tourist, though, it's pretty rare to see anything that's authentically Balinese other than, say, people carrying heavy loads of stuff on their heads. Bali is known for its inexpensive, good-quality crafts like woodworking, basketweaving, batik, and silver jewelry. But any impression of this as "culture" is diluted by the craft shops lining the streets in every town near tourist centers. Which doesn't mean I couldn't find trinkets to bring home.

In Bali

We're in Bali - at the Westin in Nusa Dusa. It's one of several hotel resorts along the eastern coast of a peninsula south of Denpasar, the site of Bali's int'l airport.

The 7-hour Japan Airlines flight was thankfully very easy; JAL has great service even in economy class, with decent food, a toy for each child, and a long list of movies to keep everyone occupied. Arno bonded and traded toys with a boy sitting in front of him, making our flight that much easier.

At the Bali airport, we had our first adventure: Blaine had to pay a $200 bribe to the immigration service to enter the country! Though many friends in Tokyo told us how much they love Bali, no one mentioned an immigration shakedown.

Arriving at 10pm, we paid $25 per person for a visa and waited in a long line to present our passports. An immigration agent noticed that Blaine's passport would expire in less than 6 months (5 months and 1 week, to be exact). "So?," Blaine said, with the blase tone of man who's seen to his fair share of third-world airports. We were told that he needed a special visa to enter Indonesia, and he was led to a small office to discuss the situation; the children and I waited for a few minutes and went into the office, where a half-dozen immigration agents were chatting and smoking clove cigarettes.

I took the kids behind a partition to see Blaine, who listened as another official repeatedly explained the situation: Blaine's passport could not be accepted and he would have to return to Tokyo. (Conveniently, the JAL plane was leaving for the return trip in about an hour.) With the kids on my lap, I explained that we were there for a family vacation and would gone in 10 days - couldn't the agent help us? Blaine said he was a journalist on vacation. The man repeated himself, and again, and again. Then, finally, he said that Blaine might come in... if the agent manually entered his passport expiration date as 1 month later.

The kids and I left the office, which I hoped would speed a resolution - fewer witnesses, etc. We waited. Blaine emerged 20 mins later. The man, who was slow to come to the point, had finally written "$200" on a piece of paper and directed Blaine to an ATM. By now it was 11:30pm. The ATM promised dollars but didn't have any. Blaine went back to consult, and was told that 2,000,000 rupees would be acceptable. (The currency is approx 10,000 rupees for $1) He paid, we grabbed our suitcases and arrived at the Westin at 12:30 a.m. The kids were very heroic and didn't whine the whole time.

Since that unpleasantness, we've had a great time. The room is comfortable, hotel staff friendly, the kids love swimming in the warm pools, and there's a fantastic breakfast buffet for $15 for the whole family. We met our Tokyo friends, John Murphy and Rena Singer and their children, at Padang Beach yesterday afternoon for a swim before we found a restaurant w/sunset views. Today, the children are in the hotel's Kids' Club - a big reason why we stayed here - while Blaine and I are hanging out and reading.

I have my camera but can't download to Blaine's computer, so pix will wait until our return to Tokyo.

Age of achievement

I'm turning 41 tomorrow. To celebrate, I'm making gingerbread cookies for Lucinda's winter concert, making a pasta dish for Arno's class holiday party, having a playdate with Arno at a friend's house, and taking the kids ice skating. Then we'll go home, have an early Christmas present-opening, eat a birthday dinner, and pack to go Bali.

I should add here that I've also recently pitched some stories to magazine editors; my sumo story for KIE reminded me how much I like writing as well as editing. But it's true, and I'm only sometimes regretful, that my life in Japan has much more to do with domestic work than with professional work.

So it's been kind of fascinating lately to notice that a handful people I know -- sometimes very well, sometimes very tangentially -- who are my age, are in the news. Mostly for good things, but not always. To wit:

Shaun Donovan, Obama's nominee for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is married to a woman, Liza Gilbert, who is the sister of my good friend from J-school, Anne Gilbert.

Anne Gilbert, meanwhile, is married to Gordon Goldstein, who just published a very well-reviewed (and by Richard Holbrooke, no less) book, Lessons in Disaster, about McGeorge Bundy. (Those Gilberts are pretty spectacular!)

Next, Jason Grumet, who dated a friend of a friend of mine at college, has been advising Obama about energy issues and was mentioned as a possible Sec'y of Energy. He won't get that job, but he may well be the #2 or, almost certainly, very high up in the dept.

When I was watching a 60 Minutes piece about Barney Frank, I noticed that it was produced by Shachar Bar-on, a brilliant guy who is married to another of my J-school friends, Laura Rabhan, who is, herself, an Emmy-winning documentary producer.

And then comes the Madoff scandal. Bernard Madoff, who was running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, apparently stole a lot of money from the Fairfield Greenwich Group hedge fund. The fund is run by Walter Noel, whose daughter, Alix, graduated from Brown in my class (I knew her very slightly) and whose husband is also a top exec in the firm. I can't imagine she's having a very good week.

My point, however, is not that it's all about me. Instead, it's about how many well-educated people - especially but not exclusively men - have, by age 40 or so, very defined, successful lives because they've focused intensely on a profession or subject. Which can turn out well or not.

I should add here that writing about this isn't a self-criticism; it's reality. I'm plenty focused - though not on public achievements - and there's no reason I won't find new achievements by age 50 or 60.

Editorial

The Washington Post has an editorial today (Monday, 12/15) about North Korea based on Blaine's story. The headline: "Three Kernels of Corn." It's worth reading.

Blaine's latest about North Korea...

...is the disturbing story of a 25 yr old North Korean man who is the only known escapee from a DPRK gulag.

It's on the front page of The Washington Post on Thursday, Dec 11, and has been picked up by the Huffington Post, so it's getting lots of attention.

The man, Shin Dong-hyuk, was born in Camp No. 14, ate corn kernels from cow dung, was held in solitary confinement and tortured as a 14-year-old, and watched the executions of his mother and brother. He escaped by climbing over the body of a fellow prisoner who got hung up on an electrified barbed-wire fence.

If you want to read more, this website has an English version of Shin's life story - including a few gruesome drawings he made about his torture.

By itself, Shin's story would be amazing. But Blaine, in his Blainian way, made a larger, more important point: South Koreans have all but ignored Shin because they don't much care what's happening in North Korea right now. And that indifference lessens the pressure -- to the extent that there is any pressure -- on the DPRK to change its ways.

Underparenting

Lately there's been heaps of talk about "overparenting." The New Yorker labeled it "The Child Trap": when accomplished well-educated people view their children as their latest project, as extensions of their successes as adult, and coddle them to distraction.

Overparenting is over-catering to your children and signing them up for every imaginable afterschool activity to sharpen their developing brains, turn them into little geniuses, and set them up for Ivy League educations.

I'm worried that I'm underparenting.

Most 1st graders at Nishimachi have unbelievably busy schedules. On top of 30-60 minutes of homework every night in reading, spelling, math, writing and Japanese, most children have afterschool lessons four days a week. It's typical to hear that these 6 or 7 year olds are learning piano or violin; soccer, tennis or ballet; French or Chinese; have tutoring in Japanese at least once a week, and/or go to Kumon to practice speed-math.

The academic and music training (and pressure to do all of it) may be more intense here than in the US, though, having said that, my 6 yr old nephew, who goes to public school in Iowa City, takes Suzuki piano, scores heaps of goals on his soccer team, and adds up 3-digit numbers in his head.

In any case, knowing and hearing about these other children is making me insecure that I'm the outlying underparent. I keep telling myself that "She's only 6 years old!", but maybe I'm too laid back about Lucinda's schedule.?

This is what Lucinda does every week: She wanted to take hula lessons on Mondays. She has a Japanese tutor on Thursdays. She sometimes has Brownies on Fridays. She doesn't like sports where there's a winner and a loser, quit soccer after one semester last year, and has so far refused tennis. She plays tag for three recesses a day and likes to come home after school to draw pictures, play with her little brother, have a playdate when I can arrange it, watch TV for an hour while I make supper, and do her homework before bed.

Am I underparenting? I'm not sure. Lucinda is doing well in school but not astonishingly so, and I worry that adding new tasks will make her feel exhausted and pressured. But maybe I'm missing an opportunity to introduce her to experiences - especially music or Kumon's math program - that require a fair amount of time and practice? It's a parenting dilemma for the modern age.

Movie tickets

On Friday, which is movie night at our house, we are taking Lucinda and Arno to the movie theater at Roppongi Hills. This is quite rare for us because most American/English kids movies don't come to Tokyo at all or arrive weeks or months after we can rent it on Apple TV.

We're going to see Wall-E - six months or so after it opened in the US.

This is where it gets tricky. The easiest way to buy tickets is over the internet to choose your seats before the theater sells out, as it always does. But Toho Cinemas recently changed its website, and the explanation of which tickets (adult, child, discount, senior) are available at which prices is entirely in Japanese. I guessed at 4 tickets for 1500 yen each, which is probably the adult price; if not, we will have to sort it out on Friday night.

This is the email I received to confirm. Fortunately, I don't have to know Japanese to figure it out.

Kowal Jessica 様

￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
このたびはご購入いただきまして誠にありがとうございます。
Thank you very much for your purchase.

■購入番号 Confirmation Number XXXX　(TEL:080-XXXX-9785)
■映画館 Theater ＴＯＨＯシネマズ六本木ヒルズ　TOHOCINEMAS ROPPONGI HILLS　
■上映日 Date 2008/12/5　■時間 Time 18:40～
■合計金額 Total Price \6,000　■座席番号 Seat Number I-24 I-25 I-26 I-27
■映画名称 Movie （字）ＷＡＬＬ・Ｅ／ウォーリー WALLE/ENGLISH

※チケット発券時には、上記の電話番号と購入番号の入力が必要となります。
*You need the above phone number and the confirmation number
when you pick up your ticket(s) at the vit ticketing machines.

Blaine's latest...

is a dramatic video and story from South Korea about a North Korean defector who gets fights with activists as he tries to launch balloons carrying leaflets criticizing Kim Jong-il. Here's the excellent video and here's the story.

This is Blaine's first experience as a breaking-news one-man-band. He woke up at 6 a.m., talked to the defector, went to the protest, and shot video of the defector arguing with the activists, kicking a man in the head, and launching one balloon. Then Blaine went back to his hotel, wrote a story, edited the video and went to bed around midnight. Eesh!

This is what modern journalism looks like: do everything.

In the US, aquariums like Sea World try to evoke a natural vibe. Not so in Tokyo. I took the kids to the aquarium at the Prince Hotel complex in Shinagawa, where they have a bunch of tanks and a dolphin show.

The Epson Aqua Stadium is at the foot of this tall building.



Up a long escalator, you come to the aquarium part - tanks with fish, of course, and a long tunnel with sawtooth sharks, an odd leopard-spotted stingray, and some enormous crabs.




Then there's the dolphin show. You walk into this stadium with several hundred seats; the stadium smells kinda...fishy.


And there are dancing girls in neon neoprene.


The aquarium hands out yellow rain slickers to people who sit in the front rows (top photo, which is unfortunately dark). As preparation is everything in Japan, businesslike women in gray suits and black pumps (second photo, center) wait with stacks of towels to hand to the drenched.



To share the actual vibe of a Tokyo aquarium - which is not dissimilar from the overall vibe in the busiest parts of Tokyo - I made some videos with my digital camera; not great quality, but pretty funny.

Here are the dancing girls:



I tried to upload the grand finale: a dolphin show on speed with music that sounds like an overjuiced record player and lyrics that are all about "joy and harmony." Seriously. But the uploading isn't working properly, so I'd rather post than wait on it.