Asphalt playground

When you don't have a backyard, you use what you have for a playground: a flat side street very close to our house.




After a very comfortable May and June, it's gotten into the high 80s during the day; the humidity will be reasonable until early July. Around 4:30/5pm, when the sun is low and Blaine finishes his work, he takes the children outside to ride their Razor scooters and to kick or play "Monkey in the Middle" with a soccer ball.

Baby food

Japanese baby food is so different than American baby food! I saw these at the big Nissin grocery store.

This is my favorite. How many American parents think that their babies would eat sardines?


It's amazing to think how baby-food companies train citizens for the national diet. In the U.S., you often see very sweet baby foods like mashed yams and carrots and, in some brands, bland grains tarted up with corn derivatives.

But the Japanese seem to think that (1) seafood is pretty important and (2) sugar doesn't have to be the dominant ingredient.

North Korean insurance scam

Blaine has a truly excellent story on the front page of Thursday's WashPost: about the North Korea goverment's insurance scam that brings hundreds of millions of dollars into the "hermit kingdom."

Grand Sumo

Last month, when Lucinda and Arno didn't have school, I took them to see one of the three annual Grand Sumo tournaments in Tokyo. It was fantastic. The kids loved it and it was, astonishingly, one of the best bargain outings this city has to offer.

I learned a lot about sumo when I wrote a story about it for Kateigaho International Edition, the arts and culture magazine that I work for in Tokyo. Last October, I went to a sumo "stable" to see an incredibly grueling practice session, interviewed a wrestler named Chiyoshuhou, and ate lunch with a group of the lower-ranked men. Here is my post about my visit to the Kokonoe-beya stable.

Of the six national tournaments every year, three are held in Tokyo. Each tournament lasts for 15 days; in the top two divisions (Makuuchi and Juryo), the wrestlers have 1 match each day. The lower divisions compete in 7 matches each. Those who win a majority of their matches improve their ranking; those who lose a majority slip lower in the rankings. (Here's the tournament website for details.)

The Grand Sumo tournaments take place near the Ryogoku subway station in the Kokugikan arena. There are sumo murals painted outside.


This is what it looks like inside. Google tells me that sumo is deeply tied to the shinto religion and shinto ritual. The wrestlers face off on a clay-and-rice-straw platform that is rebuilt for every tournament, consecrated by priests and off-limits to women.



If you buy general admission tix, you can sit right in front until it gets more crowded. So we had great views all day. I even saw the wrestler whom I interviewed - and he won his match.


Going to sumo is kind of like going to the circus. People order box lunches, beer and sake that are delivered to their seats in large shopping bags. Our lunch was this huge box of Morinaga's Milk Caramels.


At noon, we wandered around and watched lower-ranked wrestlers walk around in colorful cotton yukata and sandals. Highly ranked wrestlers wear more expensive dark-colored kimonos and seem always to be followed around by younger rikishi carrying supplies in plastic boxes. Wrestlers have greased topknots, and the Old-Spice-like smell of the grease pervades the arena.


There are, naturally, all sorts of sumo trinkets to buy - and we bought Blaine the coffee mug on the right.




The main events -- matches in sumo's top two divisions -- begin at 2:30pm. In box seats, before their ticketholders arrived, we watched a procession of the Juryo (second-highest) division. These guys are not necessarily that tall, but they are quite huge - probably 250+ lbs. They get to wear one of the "skirts," which typically cost thousands of dollars (or millions of yen) and are sometimes covered in jewels, when they reach the top two divisions.



Here's one of the matches, captured on my little digital camera. One of the wrestlers might be Bulgarian - definitely not Japanese. Audio from Lucinda: "Why is he choking him? Why is that other guy choking him?"



We left at 3:30pm - 5 hours after we arrived - just as the matches in the top division were about to begin. I'll definitely take the children back and hopefully Blaine can come along, too.

Arno - in Japanese!

It's news to us, but it turns out that Arno can sing the Willowbrook song in Japanese, too.

Arno loves his school

Arno loves his preschool, Willowbrook International School, and he has been singing the school's song lately.



He's feeling kind of sad because all of his closest friends from Sakura/Sakuranbo (cherry blossom/cherry) class are moving up to kindergarten. Most of them will go to Nishimachi, Lucinda's school, but Arno still has a year of pre-K ahead. Fortunately, he's a friend magnet and we're sure he'll be happy as long as there are a few talkative, action-packed boys in his class.

Blaine's latest...

... is about Toyota's new, 3rd generation Prius. He spent a few days last week at a Toyota mfg plant in Toyota City and said the new Prius gets 50 miles/gallon and has been adjusted to suit larger (some might say "fatter") American customers.

It's a little crazy to think about how much money the US Govt is pouring into General Motors and Chrysler, which are just starting to reinvent themselves to build cars w/ better gas mileage. Meanwhile Toyota and Honda are ready to crush them before they get out of the gate. US automakers have been so short-sighted.

In other "Blaine's latest" news, North Korea has sentenced 2 American women journalists to a dozen years of hard labor.

7th Birthday Girl

We celebrated Lucinda's birthday at our house today with 14 of her friends! The girls were incredibly well behaved and nice to one another. Each time a girl arrived at the door, the rest rushed over to welcome her.

There were two crafts: decorating a birthday crown and decorating a wooden picture frame and a postcard to put in it. Some girls went a little crazy with the glitter glue! Blaine ran the games: (1) Simon Says and (2) Musical Statues. The menu was easy American food: PB&J, tuna sandwiches, Lays potato chips (a huge, huge hit), crudites, watermelon and birthday cake.

I made the cake with a very successful recipe from an expert-baking mom at Willowbrook but both layers mysteriously fell when I took them out of our screwy French oven. Fortunately, it tasted great despite its pound-cake density.

When the girls sang a boisterous rendition of Happy Birthday, Lucinda looked as happy as I've ever seen her.

Blaine's latest...

... is a fascinating story about Kim Jong-un, the third son and apparent successor to Kim Jong-il.

Blaine and his South Korean assistant got some excellent details about briefings to South Korean lawmakers by the South Korean intelligence service, plus independent info about how children and soldiers are singing or chanting about the 20-something son and heir.

Blaine finished his story about 18 hours ago and it was immediately posted on the WaPo's website. Oddly, several of his references and even some of the language in Blaine's story pop up in the story that was just posted by the NYT.

Geisha dance

Yesterday Blaine took Lucinda to a neat cultural performance: the annual "Azuma Odori" geisha dance performances at Shinbashi Enbujo Theatre in Ginza. Lucinda found it to be visually and emotionally very interesting.

Here's Blaine's short video of their day out. (Lucinda was also interested in her newly-loose tooth.)



Geisha are entertainers who are well-versed in Japan's cultural arts; they typically peform for businessmen in tea houses. They dance, sing, and play games with clients, but they are not prostitutes. A story in the Mainichi Daily News about two of the dancers (age 19 and 20), who are apprentice geisha, gives a good sense of what they do for a living.

Strawberry shortcake

Blaine and I had our Saturday night date tonight: a workout/swim at the Tokyo American Club, ramen noodle soup and gyoza (fried dumplings) at Shinagawa Station, and dessert purchased in the basement food shop at Wing Takanawa at Shinagawa.

In Tokyo, you almost never see people eating in public, so these perfectly designed desserts are perfectly packed for transport on a train and eaten later at home.

The box:


Inside, there's a small clear-plastic spoon, two cardboard circles to prevent the cake from slipping around, and a small ice pack to keep everything fresh:


And my slice of dessert, which reveals a patiently arranged strawberry pattern within the light, sweet cream and spongecake.


Yum!

Blaine's latest...

...is a flurry of stories about South and North Korea.

Here's today's piece about the very emotional funeral, post-suicide, of former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. Great reporting by Blaine's translator in Seoul, Stella Kim.

And on North Korea, here is:

North Korean Nuclear Blast Draws Global Condemnation, an awesome front-page rewrite of material from correspondents all over the world.

North Korea Test-Fires Short-Range Missiles

North Korea Threatens to Attack South

Lots of action these days in the Post's East Asia bureau!

Blaine's latest...

... is covering the heck out of the North Korean nuclear test. (And that's at least the third version.)

With a 13-hour time difference, Blaine is working very long hours: up this morning at 5:30 a.m. to talk to DC editors and meet DC deadlines for the print edition, and now, at 11:20 p.m. to voice a podcast about the DPRK.

A 3rd year

We recently learned that we are staying in Japan for, knock wood, at least 1 more school year, which is very good news for our family.

Now we'll have more time to enjoy the schools, the great restaurants, our car-free existence, the Tokyo American Club swimming pool, Saturday date night, the city's clean streets, the obsessive trash sorting, no children's television commercials, and the amazing French pastry shops.

Because of severe job cuts, lots of expats here, including many families with a Japanese parent and/or deep roots in Japan, are suddenly packing their suitcases. We're feeling very fortunate.

Global flu

Well, well, well, as my friend Adrienne put it on April 30, when Stevens Elementary School in Seattle was closed for a week to combat seemingly non-existent flu cases in the school:

The H1N1 flu has arrived in Japan, despite the government's aggressive efforts to test and quarantine foreigners arriving on suspicious airplanes.

A bunch of high school kids in Osaka and Kobe have it. And now 2 students -- that is, 2 human beings out of 35 million people in Greater Tokyo - also have it.

So what's the proper overreaction? Lucinda's school has canceled tomorrow's planned Sports Day to prepare just in case the city of Tokyo orders all schools to close indefinitely. The teachers would use the school's website to post assignments for students to complete (and parents to manage), and if this disaster comes to pass, I'm sure all the kid-friendly places (like the Children's Castle or Children's Hall) would also be closed. And we would all go crazy.

Funny eggs

Lucinda told me about this funny short animation series called I Love Egg (www.iloveegg.com) that appears on Cartoon Network here. I think it's from South Korea.

The eggs go to "Egg School" and there are little stories about each one of them. The English translation is a little silly. Here are some frames from the website.




Here's a storyboard, or whatever it's called, in Korean for a short animation called "Revenge."


And a strip called "Good Conduct".

Fruit allowance

"I'll eat six pieces of apple and I'll get six pieces of money!"

So said Arno, who refuses to eat fruit other than grapes, blueberries and raspberries. But he is saving up to buy a Ben-10 watch, and I've offered him a "fruit allowance" if he tries new varieties.

Arno whined and groused, but when we left the kitchen and weren't watching, he ate 7 cherries and then, with a little prompting, ate two slices of apple. This is a huge advance in fruit consumption! I gave him 200 yen ($2) for his efforts.

Lucinda's art

Lucinda loves making art and she's always very confident and comfortable about trying out new styles and media, and Nishimachi has a terrific art program - it was one of the main reasons why, 2 years ago, we decided it was the best school for her.

And today Lucinda brought home a packet of work from school and laid it out on the dining room table like a gallery show. She and Arno laid out the rules for Blaine and me: no eating and drinking in the gallery and no touching the art! Photographs were, however, allowed.

For comparison, here's a self-portrait that Lucinda made 2 years ago, in pre-kindergarten at the Parkside School in Seattle.


Here are the self-portraits she brought home today.




Here's a paint-print made from a layered-cardboard self-portrait - sort of like a Japanese woodblock print.


And, yes, here's yet another self-portrait on a canvas-like board, which was her final project after the 1st grade's art unit, when they studied cave art, the Renaissance, Impressionism and modern art. She gave this painting a title, "Night with Sun."

A day in Ginza

My mother and I had a long walk and some fine window-shopping in Tokyo's Ginza neighborhood last week. Ginza is often compared to Madison Avenue around E. 57th Street. It's a mix of designer boutiques, galleries, and shops that sell jewelry, the finest Japanese classics like kimono and geta (wooden sandals), expensive crafts and other items that are coveted in Japan, like handmade paper. Here are several images from the day:

A top-drawer kimono shop.


A flower shop, presumably for weddings or high-end events...


...with sequins on this orchid and (gilded) lily!


The Ito-ya stationery and office-gadget store, which had a gazillion fancy fountain pens on the second floor. Check out the giant paper clip outside!


This shop sold modern wood-block prints and also had originals and reproductions of ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world") woodblock prints) from masters like Ando Hiroshige.


Takumi, which had carved wooden items and woven tatami mats.


In Ando, a cloisonne mecca, we liked the "green tea and tea whisk" pin on the right (but didn't care for the endless collection of boring vases).



We loved the Kyukyodo stationery shop, an apparent favorite with flocks of aging housewives who clustered outside the front door. Inside, there are rolls of gorgeous handmade washi paper for giftwrapping and craftwork, and all sort of neat paper-y items.




Here's Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton.




A stunning teal gown and matching ostrich-feather bag at Valentino... and then some gray Armani.



The Rolls-Royce at the top was very appropriate, neh?

Lame blogger!

I've been a terrible blogging correspondent, alas. I will try to do better by setting up several posts in advance.

My mom is visiting - the fourth time in 2 years - and we're having a very relaxed time. The children have three days of vacation for Japan's "Golden Week," and we're keeping it pretty low-key. Last week, when Blaine was in D.C., my mom and I made French toast and pancakes on separate nights for dinner, and, wow, the kids loved it so much that they chattered away to Blaine about it when he returned yesterday.

On Saturday, we went swimming at the Tokyo American Club. On Sunday, we went shopping in Yebisu Garden Place for birthday gifts for Lucinda's friends. Today, we went to Kodomo no Shiro (The Children's Castle) so the kids could play in the jumpy-ball thing on the roof. Tomorrow we'll have a playdate at our house.

And when the kids were in school last week, my mom and I went on some walking tours of Tokyo: to Asakusa (a very old, traditional neighborhood) and Kappabashi (Kitchen Town); to Ginza, where we looked in art galleries and stationery stores; and this Thursday, when the kids are back in school, we'll go to Kamakura so I can show her the Great Buddha.