Working mom

I had a terrific week at work last week - but, wow, was it exhausting to rush from school to work to playdates to school to home, and then to cook dinner and get the kids to bed.

Backtrack: I've found this great part-time job here, editing for Kateigaho International Edition, or KIE, which is a quarterly, English-language magazine about Japanese arts and culture. I found them, or they found me, because KIE's exec editor (an American woman, Mary Ord - Hi Mary!) lives in the Seattle area and I met her before we moved to Tokyo.

KIE is owned by a prestigious Japanese family and their company, Sekai Bunka, is sort of like the Conde Nast of Japan, but smaller. They also publish a Japanese language mag called Kateigaho, which is very glossy, heavy paper, super stylish.

I'm editing for KIE, and last week I went to their office for 4 days (Tues to Fri) to help them close the magazine. This is superfun for me because I love editing (more than writing, actually) and I could use editing/production skills I learned almost 20 yrs ago at Aspen Magazine and In Fashion. I was editing English mag stories to make sense, to fit the space, to look right in the space, and working with the creative director and other editors to solve problems with the text and look of each story.

The closing week happened to take place while (1) Blaine was in South Korea and (2) Arno had a school vacation on Monday and Tuesday, and (3) Lucinda had a school vacation on Thursday and Friday. I scrambled around and found childcare for Arno on Tues, and Lucinda hung out w/her closest school friend on Thurs and Friday - and that girl's mother is a saint, as far as I'm concerned!

I rushed to get the kids squared away each morning and then commuted to work on the Tokyo subway, grabbed a coffee, focused on the magazine for 6-7 straight hours, then rushed back on subway to pick up the kids and go home. Full-time job w/traveling husband? This fell in the "be careful what you wish for" department. And I totally loved it.

I also had this great, funny cultural experience: lunch in the company cafeteria. Major publishing companies in the US, like Conde Nast or Hearst, have very fancy cafeterias; Conde Nast's, in the 4 Times Square building, was famously designed by Frank Gehry (I've been there exactly once, for coffee w/a Glamour editor).

So on Tuesday, at lunchtime, I went to Sekai Bunka's cafeteria with some of KIE's staff. It was 350 yen (about $3.50) for a lunch that you'd find in Furr's Cafeteria: rice, soup, beef burger, pickled vegetables, green tea - served by, I swear, old ladies in hair nets. Like a school cafeteria for professionals!

After you eat, you bus your tray. And at the station where you drop off the tray, you pick up each dish and hold it under a spray of water to rinse your food off. Then you (gently) toss the dish into a big vat of soapy water for the hair-net ladies. Rinsing your own dishes?

I said to the cool creative director, Alexander Gelman, "This isn't exactly Conde Nast, is it?" And he said, "No, not exactly Frank Gehry."

Going to work

It should be an interesting week. Blaine is in Seoul, the kids are on vacation for four out of five school days - and I'm actually going to work in a magazine office tomorrow (Tuesday) through Friday. It will be my longest stretch in an office since Lucinda was born in June 2002!

I'm editing for a neat magazine, Kateigaho International Edition, an English-language edition of a glossy magazine about Japanese arts and culture. The stories are written in Japanese and translated into English, and they hire editors like me to smooth the translation and make everything fit into the layout. I learned how to do this at In Fashion magazine, where I worked from 1991 to 1993.

I've arranged for childcare for the kids around school; Lucinda will spend her two vacation days (during the day) with her best friend from Nishimachi, whose mom is an incredibly nice 1st grade teacher at the school. The kids won't be used to me working, and then by next week it will be over until I do it again in May.

Should be exciting, interesting, and it will feel great to work steadily.