Yukata shopping

Lucinda was on vacation this week, so we hung out together while Arno was in school. Here's a report on our adventures on Monday, shopping day:

First Lucinda wanted to buy a "yukata," a cotton kimono, so we went to the Oriental Bazaar store on Omotesando (the major fashion street).



The store is tacky compared to neighbors like Bulgari, Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton, but it's an easy place to buy reasonably priced, decent-looking Japanese pottery, toys, chopsticks and kimonos.

A saleslady helped us find the proper size (Lucinda is 5 but her yukata would fit a Japanese 7-year-old) and we learned how to tie the sash. The sandals weren't very comfortable.




We brought home a pink one that I'm sure will turn up in a later post.

Post from Lucinda

"I am learning how to read. I like the food here, especially eel, but I haven't had a lot yet. We only went to a few restaurants that had it.

"I really especially like the desserts here, like the ice cream. The milk is a little less sweeter than in Seattle. I wish I could have some chocolate milk, but there is nothing like that. My mom really likes the green tea ice cream.

"I wish I could be a hula dancer. My friend Naomi is taking lessons. Naomi is my friend and we're going to have a playdate tomorrow.

"Arno and I don't wear diapers any more at night.

"It is fall in Japan. There are a lot of people here, almost a google people. Google is a number. It is very high. My friend Kaila in Seattle taught me that.

"I'm going to look out my window for ideas about what to say. We don't know any of our neighbors yet. We have a red mailbox. And my grammy is sending me postcards."

At home

Tonight Lucinda said, "It feels like we're living at home."

Me: "Why?"

Lucinda: "Because we have been living here for a while. And I am making some friends. My friends are Celine, Naomi, Claire, Kyrie and Samantha. And Catalina and Emily and Sam and Jean."

The Lamborghini neighborhood

What are the demographics in our neighborhood, Nishi-Azabu?

Here's one good indicator: Lamborghini Azabu




Click on this photo for a better view of one potential customer, who is wearing enormous sunglasses and a miniskirt. The unfashionable photographer is reflected in the window, to the right, in khakis and sandals.

Origami of the week

Lucinda's Japanese teacher, Hayashi Sensei (Hayashi is her last name, and Sensei means "teacher"), shows the children a new origami every week. The folding patterns build on previous designs, and Lucinda memorizes them and practices at home.

It's so Japanese, and so clearly tied to her Japanese school experience, that I'm adding a new blog feature: "Origami of the week".

This is what she brought home this week.

A cat:



And a tulip:

Only in Japan

A man came to fix the dishwasher today. Before he left, he said, "I'm sorry" and bowed to me.

Movie night

Blaine has found a new movie-downloading service: Jaman. For $1.98, he downloads a movie for a week's rental and we watch it over a few nights. They are all independent films, not Big Hollywood.

Tonight - Friday night - we and the children are watching "Kintaro Walks Japan," a documentary about a 20-something guy who, yes, walks the length of Japan's four islands. It's pretty neat. You can watch the whole 1 hr doc via Google.

Last week, we watched two films that we both liked: a darkish Danish movie called "Prague" about a cold-fish Dane who takes his unhappy wife to Prague when his father dies there. And a pleasant Norwegian film called "Import-Export," about a Norwegian guy who wants to marry his Pakistani-Norwegian girlfriend. (The Variety reviewer I've linked to didn't like it, but we did.)

We can see major Hollywood movies in theaters (anything with Brad Pitt, basically) but not much else. Apple's downloadable movie list is tragically lame. Why haven't the studios made their catalogs available yet?

Flying by

Wow, the week is flying by, and I haven't spent much time blogging.

Now that the basics of home and school are set up, I'm realizing how different this life is for me than the career-focused American world that compelled me in NYC and, to a lesser degree, in Seattle. Sometimes, this feels like a 3-year vacation - until I have a kid-intensive afternoon and evening, bath, bedtime, that is.

What am I doing with my time? This week I'm spending three mornings at Lucinda's kindergarten to update a library database, making use of my computer-assisted reporting skills. Afternoons at playgrounds with the kids' school friends. A few trips to the gym. Grocery shopping and cooking, a coffee or two with friends. Trying to book a Christmas holiday to Guam or Saipan.

It's surprisingly easy and relaxing to live this way - especially when the kids are at school - but I think I feel better about it because I've chosen to do it in this way, in this place, for a limited stretch of time - a domesticated vacation, I guess.

Is it still part of feminism, to slow one's career and choose this? I'm not sure, but it's an interesting subject to debate.

Multi-culti

On Saturday we went to Nishimachi's annual International Food Fair, a fundraiser for Lucinda's school that is organized by the parents' association, Tomo no Kai.

Parents sell lunch and desserts in booths arranged by nationality, which gives you a sense of the student population: American, Japanese, Chinese, Latin, Israeli, Irish, French, Australian, German, Indian, Filipino, Hawaiian and Italian. Plus Starbucks, speaking the universal language of overpriced coffee.

Some snapshots:





The homemade Chinese dumplings filled with beef and chives and served with a spicy soy sauce were delicious - and the Chinese booth sold thousands of them!



Students hawked "kakigori," shaved ice with sweet syrup.



The American booth (which I forgot to photograph) did a booming business in lowfat cuisine: hamburgers, nachos, Domino's pizza, chili and my cornbread muffins!), Dippin' Dots, candy, and homemade brownies and chocolate-chip cookies.

We were entertained by these hula dancers.





Now Lucinda wants to take hula lessons.

Fine Dining

Instead of hiring a nanny, as we did in Seattle, we've assigned a much smaller childcare budget to a Saturday night babysitter. This gives us a chance to try some of Tokyo's estimated 80,000 restaurants, in a competitive foodie culture that demands creative recipes and fresh, seasonal ingredients.

Last weekend, we wandered into an average-looking Italian place called Bernini, and had a completely delicious supper.

I ordered risotto with porcini mushrooms. Here are the mushrooms, pre-risotto, on display.



To assemble the dish, our server brought an enormous wheel of parmigiano-reggiano to our table and shaved cheese from the center. Then she blended the cooked rice and cheese on the cheese wheel!




Juicy mushrooms landed on top.



Blaine had wild boar with piquant cabbage.

Politeness

Back to Tokyo... I've seen another example of Japanese politeness this morning from my kitchen window.

I'm at home making corn muffins for Lucinda's school's International Food Fair tomorrow. It's a fresh, sunny day out, and my kitchen windows are open.

Just now, a street-construction truck pulled up outside our house, and a worker came to my door to apologize, in advance, for 2 minutes of jackhammering.

Presidential heights

So fun! The Washington Post's White House reporter, Peter Baker, mentioned one of my old Newsday stories in his campaign blog today. (Okay, so it's near the end, whatever.)

It's a piece I wrote in 2001 about how Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani fudge their height on their drivers' licenses. (My former editor, Les Payne also based a recent Newsday column on the same article.)

Giuliani claims to be 6'0" but is probably 5'9"-ish, and Bloomberg claims he's 5'10" but is more like 5'7". I covered the 2001 NYC mayoral campaign for Newsday and spent months watching and listening to these men - and I could tell something wasn't right because I'm 6'1".

I've gotten more mileage from the height story than from hundreds of others I've written, which shows how crucial it is for newspapers, especially, to factcheck what public offficials say about themselves - even if it's a matter of a few inches.

Littleton vs. Moses Lake

Today Blaine and I tried out our brand-new membership at the Tokyo American Club. We rode our bikes to TAC, as it's called, for a midday workout in the gym.

When you live in the expat bubble of international schools and investment bankers, as we do, TAC is part of everyday conversation. Most moms in my world belong to TAC because their husbands' banking, hedge fund, legal, manufacturing, tech, etc. companies pay for membership in the corporate "package."

(Hey, I'm not crying in my soup here because the Washington Post makes our lives very pleasant - thanks, WaPo!)

To some who don't join, though, TAC is a symbol of close-mindedness, a place where lame Americans flee Japan and Japanese culture to dine in mediocre restaurants. And (some say) where unhappy expat wives go to drink the day away.

I did my reporting, and asked members and non-members what they think of it and what they use it for. And I decided we should join.

Why? 1) The gym; 2) Childcare while we're at the gym; 3) The big outdoor swimming pool; 4) Makes our lives easier; And 5) did I mention the pool and Tokyo's sweltering summer heat?

So Blaine and I had a big debate about TAC and, like many of our discussions involving luxury vs. practicality, this boiled down to advice from an ex-therapist about managing coupledom: It helps to recognize that each person comes from a different "country," that is, a different family, a different way of seeing the world.

Our "countries" are Littleton, Colorado (my suburban hometown) and Moses Lake (the rural Washington State town where Blaine grew up).

Moses Lake sees the 1 million-yen pricetag and the masters-of-universe membership and thinks, Are you kidding?

But, but, but - Littleton can rationalize all of that away. We are nanny-free. Our life here is heavily subsidized. A basic gym membership for both of us would cost $250/month - without anything for the kids. And wouldn't it be great for me to take the kids swimming when I'm solo parenting on weekends?

In the end, Littleton wore down Moses Lake - or maybe I just drank the expat wife Kool-Aid?

I plan to make the most of our expensive investment - without running up the bill. Blaine still isn't sure we've done the right thing, though he did seemed to enjoy the gym today...

A new writer in the family

Lucinda has now learned to write the lower-case alphabet. (The small "v" below each letter is how Lucinda copies her teacher's checkmark for doing it right.)

As the class transitions into reading, her astute teacher, Ms. Amies, has assigned our first parental homework. We must help Lucinda practice letter sounds that sometimes confuse her, such as e, q, and v vs. y.

I don't remember how I learned handwriting, but I like the Nishimachi approach: they group letters by the root shape. The kids started with "magic c", which led to a, c, d, e, g, o and q. Another group was n, h, r and m. And v, w and y.

Lucinda is also left-handed (the only one in our family) and we'll see how that affects her writing as the year goes along.

Train wreck president

And speaking of Mr. Bush, did you read or hear about the town hall-style meeting Bush held in Pennsylvania earlier this week? He tried to explain the "philosophy" behind his veto of the S-CHIP bill to fund children's health insurance.

His gibberish at this event is perhaps only slightly less astonishing then his belief that explaining what he thinks - or, as he says, how he makes his decisions - will change any minds about the value of what he actually does.

My sister is on NPR!

My sister, Rebekah Kowal, who is a dance history professor at the University of Iowa, is in a Morning Edition story on NPR on Fri 10/6. She attended a Barack Obama event and was interviewed by David Greene.

Becky is interviewed at the end of the story - and isn't she articulate! She would be a lucky find for any reporter, because she reads, she can express herself, and she's an educated, undecided voter (deciding between Obama and Hillary) in Iowa.

I have been thinking positively about Hillary, but this story changed my mind a little bit: that is, why shouldn't we vote for hope, instead of voting for a political sledgehammer?

Of course I can't be sure, but if Obama wins the Dem nomination, I don't think there are enough people/racists who would view his blackness as a more definitive quality than his ability to solve the trainwreck left behind by our current president.

Komaba Park

Last Wednesday I visited Natasha Caryl, whose husband, Christian, is Newsweek's correspondent here.

The Caryls and their children, Timothy and Sasha, live near Komaba Todaimae station in southwest Tokyo. I loved seeing a neighborhood with a more human scale - two-story modern houses, quiet streets, and more sky - than our expat haven with its big luxury apartment buildings. After coffee and pastries, we took a short walk to Komaba Park.

Here is Natasha outside the gate.



Inside the park, which was once owned by the aristocratic Maeda family, we first toured the family's traditional wooden Japanese teahouse (top photo, on the left). Naturally, you leave your shoes at the door to keep the tatami mats clean. The back door frames a lovely garden with enormous carp in a pond.





The guide showed us the tea room, which is ordinarily closed to the public. She pointed out the woven ceiling and inlaid, painted, wooden doors, which were wonderfully illuminated by my camera-flash.





Around the corner, about 20 Japanese people were sketching the family mansion. Do Americans ever sketch anything?




This building and some of the trees are more than 100 years old, which is very rare in Tokyo. This estate escaped significant WW II damage and American generals lived in the stone house during the postwar US occupation.

In surrounding trees, we saw enormous spiders hanging out in 3-D webs. Google tells me they are Nephila clavata spiders - about 4 inches long, including their legs.
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Afterwards, Natalia walked me back to the train and we stopped at "Playmoland", the Playmobil store, the antidote to nature.

What a Tree!

I saw this gorgeous old tree in Komaba Park, on a walk with Natasha Caryl (her husband is the Newsweek correspondent here).

More on the park later...

Trailing Spouse - Burma edition

We thought Blaine might leave for Bangkok this weekend to cover the Burma aftermath.

(Burma, Southeast Asia and Australia are part of the empire I call Greater Blainia.)

So I'm faced with an unexpected moral dilemma: If the Burmese govt maintains its brutal crackdown, repressing millions of people, Blaine will likely not spend as much time covering that story. If Burma opens up, freeing millions of people, Blaine will probably spend weeks and/or months there - a definite challenge for us in Tokyo.

For now, we think he'll be in Tokyo for a few weeks, at least, now that the Korea negotiations are done for now.

Am I worried that Blaine could go to Burma and risk arrest or worse? A Japanese photographer was shot to death there last week.

Blaine probably couldn't get a visa from the current govt. He went there in 2000 and wrote a series of A1 stories for The New York Times, and I'm guessing that someone in the former SLORC knows how to use Google.

Trailing Spouse - Korean Summit edition

Blaine has been in Seoul all week to cover the summit between South and North Korea - find his many WaPo stories here. He'll be home tomorrow after lunch.

But we've had an improved week of solo parenting. I've gotten the morning routine better organized, so I can get them out the door by 7:55 a.m. The children love school right now and don't stall on the way out the door.

After school, I've been taking L and A to a playground to fully wear them out. We're having cooler, fall-like weather here - finally! - and that is great playdate weather. Then an early dinner and bedtime by 8pm.

Now, if only I could stop reading news websites to get more sleep.