A Time to Celebrate

Today, along with millions across Japan, I watched live coverage of a plane landing in Tokyo. It wasn't much of a show. The occupants came down a set of steps, looked overwehelmed, then went straight into a waiting bus with well-curtained windows. But I paid close attention, even when the camera was zooming in on the plane's windows, trying to appreciate the moment. The passengers were the five returning children of the abductees (the children of the Japanese who returned from North Korea last year after being kidnapped and missing for years). I've been thinking about those kids. Their return is going to be a news sensation in Japan, a land of fast rising celebrity idols and instant fads. I can't imagine the adjustments they are already facing, and I almost feel sorry for them. I hope they don't find themselves "free" in Japan and afraid to go outside. I also couldn't help wondering how long it will take for them to stop wearing those little pins on their lapels (required by all citizens of North Korea). It took their parents awhile to work up the courage to appear in public without theirs. Anyway, this is a big day for those families...except for the one whose husband deserted from the US army during the Korean War. She'll have to wait and see her husband and daughters in Beijing. And, of course, there are the families who were told last year that their abducted relatives had died of "natural causes."

As I watched this event begin to unfold, I was thinking. It seems like one of those moments when you've been through times so rough that you can only compare them to hell. Then you find yourself standing on the other side, at least for a moment. I imagined the parents and their kids. I can't really place myself in their shoes, but I would think that they are feeling emotions that go beyond words. It's strange that 90 percent of a person's life may have been a terrible mess, with so much lost along the way. And yet that same person can feel in one moment a sensation of timeless happiness and a sense that it all worked out ok. Maybe you can't relate, but I've always had the impression that we are always one short step away from either sheer joy or despair, and so much is a matter of perspective in the moment.

In a very small, uncomparable way that I've mentioned in recent posts, my past couple of years adjusting to life here have been pretty hard (or so it felt). Yet I've found myself often lately with feelings of gratitude and peacefulness that just cause me to smile. It's partly about learning more and more Japanese; partly about having a bigger place to live in; partly about my kids growing up so nicely; partly about having friends and having each other. But more so it's about perspective. Each day, through whatever strange or not so strange turns life may take, I find myself in the hands of God. Right now I can see it, although when times are particularly up or down I tend not to.

I'll leave that there for now. I wouldn't have been honest if I said my "positive" posts about life in Japan were all a matter of attitude or aptitude or whatever. As you can see, the pictures above are all from the matsuri. I hope you like them, because I'm sitting on a load of them.

(Feeling Like) A Baby in Japan

This is a continuation of a previous post talking about my adjustment to life in Japan. The post covered a time period ending somewhere in 2003. At that time, I wondered if I would ever learn Japanese. I was in my thirties, well (if not overly) educated, a husband and father -- but I felt like a child, and I was questioning all my "competencies" (many of which I was having to relearn anyway). I tried some strategies to move forward with Japanese. I started meeting with a couple of language partners (one paid, one free) to practice more conversational Japanese. That was ok, but I didn't see much actual progress. Slowly my kids got bigger, and life became slowly managable again. Our apartment had stairs leading to the entrance, and my wife needed help to get in our out with all three kids. So in the Summer of 2003 we started looking for a house, and then a friend gave us a tip that led to our present location.

When we moved a few things changed. We ended up in a bigger house (not "big" by US standards, but pretty big for Japan). It's much more childproof with space for the kids to move around. We're further from a train station than before, but we live practically alongside a quiet, pretty river. Finally, I was able to connect with a very good professional Japanese tutor. It's hard to belive how much my language has improved in the past six months, and I give lots of credit to her competent teaching. Plus, I met a friend at Starbucks, and we have been meeting once a week for conversation (half in English and half in Japanese). I can't put in words how good it is to connect with a real person and form a friendship in Japanese. Thanks Isao!

I'll stop here for now. A couple of days ago I wrote about going to my wife's "jikka" because my sister-in-law had a baby. You can see a couple of the baby pictures above. My twins were born in the same hospital, and you can read all about their birth here. My wife was also born in the same hospital. The doctor who delivered her founded the hospital, and his son delivered this baby (and ours). I've also included two more pictures from the matsuri: some inflatable manga character toys and the odd looking local "mascots" (I think) who made an appearance in the parade.

Question for You

If you have a minute, please leave a comment and tell me how the pictures look on your screen. Are they too light, too dark, just right etc? It's possible that my monitor needs adjustment so that my "corrections" work on your end. I've never adjusted my monitor before, so any advice on this would be appreciated. As long as I'm asking, I'll appreciate any other comments about the site design. Thanks!

Jikka in Japan

"Jikka" is an important place in Japanese life. Your jikka is the place where your parents (and possibly grandparents) live. The Kanji forming this word mean: "real/true" and "home." It doesn't exactly mean "home town," because if your parents move then the jikka moves with them. Or if you lose your parents, then you don't have a jikka. There are other words, though, for your birth place or the place where you grew up. I read recently that the Japanese live their lives looking back, in a sense, at the people who they "owe" for their present life (mainly their parents and grandparents). This is in contrast to Americans, for example, who usually look forward and, in some cases, don't want to owe anything to anyone. Anyway, Japanese look to their jikka as a source, and with a kind of loving "obligation." When they are scattered from their homes (as many are in Tokyo), there are a number of times when you naturally return to your jikka: New Year's Day, the Spring school break, and "Obon" in August. Women also commonly return to their jikka when giving birth. Usually they go without their husbands for about three months, which covers both the waiting for birth and recovery periods.

Anyway, we returned to my wife's jikka this past weekend, because my sister-in-law had a baby girl. (Breaking with custom, she "returned" to her husband's jikka to have the baby.) We hopped in the car on Saturday and drove about three hours to Kanagawa (on the other side of Tokyo).

My wife's jikka is in an old fishing town in Kanagawa. At first impression, it's not much to see. The buildings are sort of drab and brownish/grayish. The one park is a forlorn little patch of dirt with a slide that's perpetually sticky (only a parent will understand this). It's a beach town without the fun. My wife's mother's side of the family was in the fishing business for generations. They did pretty well and used to own a section of the beach plus some of the hills overlooking the ocean. But over time the fishing families disappeared one by one. Some retired, and some moved to the next town up the road where they have a small harbor. At one point, the family sold the land surrounding their house to the current neighbors. Then, almost 30 years ago, my wife's grandmother sold the last of their "tangerine mountains" to pay for her son-in-law to study abroad. My wife still gets sad mentioning that. When I first came to Japan with my wife, about six years ago, I took a walk down the beach and found an old woman painstakingly folding and putting away reams of fine nets with thick, agile fingers. Her husband was a few hundred meters off shore in the boat fishing some more. Every morning they had a routine -- he fished and she handled the gear. It was amazing and tiring to see. When we came back again two years later, I found out they had finally retired. That was the last fishing family in town.

The pictures above are: 1) some sport fishermen on the beach (people fish there all the time, but this time they were actually catching something), 2) an early art experiment by my daughter using her legs as a canvas (standing on the doorstep of the family home), 3) a bucket with some fish (Saba, a kind of mackeral), and 4) my daughters, Mari and Maika, on the beach.

My next post will have baby pictures of my new niece!

Dark Days, a Festival and a Phone Call

Recently, someone commenting in the blog asked if I am always happy about living in Japan. That comment was a surprise. Actually, the past two years have been some of the hardest years of my life. When we moved here I couldn't even count to 10 in Japanese. One month after we arrived I enrolled in language school. At the same time, my wife found that she was pregnant with twins. I quickly learned that Japanese is much, much harder for an English speaker to learn than Spanish or German. Maybe it's because I was older this time around, but nothing made sense to me in classes. To multiply my frustration, over half the students in my lowest, beginning level class seemed to already speak the language. We learned Hirigana and Katakana in two weeks, and then started adding 5 Kanji (Chinese characters) a day. That is, three students in the class were learning all this from scratch, and the rest were reviewing. For the first six months here I felt like the worst student in my class. Outside of class, though, I had come to Japan excited to learn by immersion. I was planning to wander the streets, meet people, and use my limited language. By these means, I would learn rapidly and deeply the natural way. The only problem is that noone wanted to talk to me (if you could call what I did "talking"). Well, at least it felt that way. The young guy who ran a local coffee roasting shop was very nice and talkative. He didn't speak ONE WORD of English, I think. I don't know if he understood "yes" and "no" for example. Nor could he speak simple Japanese. He talked full speed and waited patiently for me to answer. He was really a great guy, and all my preparation for language learning would have said, "Hang out with him!" But I didn't. Instead, I spent long hours in Starbucks working painfully through page after page in my textbooks. I enjoy hanging out in coffee shops, and I got to kind of know the staff there pretty well. Anyway, that was my life for about six months, and then it got harder. My wife gradually needed more and more help. Then the twins were born, and we just managed to keep everything going. I dropped out of language school for about three months. I took Level 3 of the Japanese language proficiency test (given in December) and failed. At that point of my life I felt like my life at home was hard (though I loved my family and the twins!), my progress in learning Japanese wasn't going forward fast enough (would I EVER be fluent, I thought), and I wasn't making any signifant friends with Japanese guys. I had a couple of friends who weren't Japanese, but for better or worse I refused to lean on those relationships.

I'll use the next couple of posts to finish bringing this story up to date...

On another note, the other night I was sitting in my little, tiny "closet" office typing away when the phone rang. My wife asked me to get it, so I did. The caller was quiet, but I could hear something -- some little noises, someone talking, a TV... I leaned over in my chair and said, "It's coming from our house." My 1 1/2 year old daughter had somehow called me using my cell phone. It's actually not the first time, and who knows what other people she has called. Anyway, I decided to take a couple of pictures this time.

I took the other two pictures when I arrived at the festival in Odawara (over a week ago now). The little girl was passing out flyers at the station. It was raining outside when I arrived and took the bridge shot. Japan has an abundance of red bridge photo opportunities... More festival pictures are on the way soon.

Mother's Day and a Private Bath...

Happy Mother's Day May 9 (Sunday)!

This is really a convoluted way of reminding myself. I'm terrible with remembering important dates and celebrations. My wife is an amazing mom, and she works very hard to give our kids a great childhood. Actually, we figure that with the money they'll save on therapy they can take care of us in our old age. Ok, seriously, we have a public "ofuro" (bath house) in our town that is pretty new and really nice. I was thinking of taking my wife to a nice restaurant, but we couldn't find a baby sitter for tomorrow. Instead, maybe a better gift is for me to watch the kids for a couple of hours and send her to the bath house. For those who don't know, taking a bath in an Onsen (hot spring bath house) or Ofuro (regular bath house) is the traditional way to escape from the stresses of life in Japan. The bath is normally like a big, shallow hot tub. You clean yourself FIRST using a little shower. Then you sit in the still water and relax! Sometimes you go by yourself and enjoy silence, or going to take a bath with friends is considered a social, bonding time.

This pictures are:
1) A Mother's Day flyer in a mall. As with all imported holidays in Japan, Mother's Day is particularly loved by retail stores and flower shops.
2) A detail from a poster featuring moms painted by their pre-school children.
3) A large (mural sized) poster that you see outside of Comme Ca Ism, a children's clothing store that is popular in Japan. I've always found the crying baby image pretty disturbing when I'm "shopping," but I guess the point is to notice the comforting father. It's a French store. A very expensive one.
4) My kids. I took this picture last weekend by the beach near Odawara.

I'll be posting festival pictures soon along with some better content (it's about time I took this exploration of Japanese culture more seriously again).

My recommended blogs of the day are Sinosplice (always a good read) for the humorous description of coloring his hair with "temporary" spray in China, and About Joel (don't miss the May 7 entry).

Carpe Deum - Children's Day, or Boy's Day in Japan

Today is Children's Day (Kodomi no Hi) in Japan. Originally, it was "Boy's Day" but the name was changed to "Children's Day" in 1948. Note the significance of the date. I imagine it was changed because there was no "Girl's Day," and it was an effort in the "democratic spirit" of those times to expand the celebration. All over Japan the day is celebrated by flying the Carp kites shown above. It's also traditional to eat certain kinds of mochi (rice dumplings) and rice cakes.

So in the spirit of the day, and for the sake of a bad pun, I want to wish all children everywhere: "Carpe Deum!" Sieze the Day!

I took the picture of the boy at the Houjiou Dai Matsuri this past weekend. I have about 100 pictures from the weekend, and many of them came out very well. It's going to take some time to run the best one's through Photoshop, but you'll see more and more (and then lots) turning up soon.

"Squeezable" Japanese Toy

We went to the supermarket yesterday and found this interesting toy. As the advertising says, it's squeezable. We didn't buy one. I don't know if I'd really want one of these suddenly appearing at the wrong moment. Perhaps you can relate? That's my oldest daughter in the first picture and her cousin demonstrating the squeezability in the second picture.

Japanese people have a funny relationship with the human body. You could say they're much more open and natural with their bodies and less modest than many other cultures about nudity. For example, people bathe nude in Onsens (hot springs) and public bath houses. Most onsens and public baths are divided male and female, but there are still a very few "co-ed" public baths in some isolated areas. Many praise the Japanese for their "openness" in such matters. But don't rush to cheer. On the other hand, there is an obsession with pornography and the outright degradation of women (and girls) here that sometimes rivals the imagination.

I don't want to spoil the humor of this innocent moment above with such things, but sometime later I'll spend more time of this subject.

The Passion of the Christ in Japan

The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's movie about the last 12 hours of Jesus' life, opened in Japan today. The movie was originally intended to open in just one theater (in Shibuya), but it opened in about 100 theaters instead due to all the publicity generated from the film's controversies in the USA. I went to see the 1 o'clock show. A friend bought our tickets early, which was good because the show was sold out. The first show also sold out, and I would assume the trend continued in the evening. Today was the first day of the month, so movie tickets were "just" 1000 yen (about $10). Plus it was Saturday and next week is "golden week" (a major national holiday when many people don't have to work). We'll see if the movie becomes a surprise hit here as well. Japanese people have a general interest in Jesus, just like Americans are interested in Gandhi and other historical figures. But most of what the Japanese know about Jesus comes from school, and the knowledge doesn't run deep. Probably the majority of Americans would at least generally understand what is happening in The Passion, but in Japan the purpose of Jesus' suffering (and this is according to my wife) will probably go over the heads of almost everyone. Some will just see the movie as a very graphic historical account of a cult leader who pushed it to far and got killed. Others will be confused and wondering why Christians make such a big, bloody deal of Jesus' death. Just as in other places, Japanese Christians have been organizing to give out literature and attempt to explain the film to those who don't get it.

I want to hold back from writing too much about the movie, because so much has been written already. I recommend the review by Siskel and Roeper and the cover story in TIME Magazine entitled "Why Did Jesus Have to Die." The TIME article is excellent in my opinion. (You must be a subscriber to read the TIME article online, but you can read it for free in a book store near you, or perhaps far from you...)

Personally, I thought the movie was an amazing achievement. It's powerful art; courageous film making; and an honest, effective attempt to communicate what is written in the Bible. Today I left the theater moved and thinking about much more important and life changing things that if I'd seen, say, "Kill Bill" or some romantic comedy. Those kinds of movies laugh at life and death and offer an escape or fantasy instead. This movie portrays death and yet contains hope and life. It's not "hope" because Tom Hanks (in Saving Private Ryan, another famously "violent" movie) rises from the carnage and saves the day by giving his life to hold a bridge. In movies like Saving Private Ryan, I think, we are invited to place ourselves in the film and re-envision ourselves as potential heros by proxy. Mel Gibson has attempted something more than giving us a better vision of ourselves. Beyond that, you'll just have to see the movie for yourself.

BTW, I took the Koi picture posted above in the river near where I live. I took the picture of the houses from the path along the same river. I was inspired to try a few Koi pictures after seeing this excellent example at Antipixel.