Sea Turtles

Alex is interested in the oil spill in the Gulf coast.
He wants to know who did it and who the bad guy is.
He wants the bad guy dead.
Well if BP dies, it will cause major financial crisis in the UK which will eventually affect the US economy, but that is too complicated to explain to him.
So I agree that the bad guy should die.

Once we are happy about bad guys dying, we turn our attention to the victims.
He is worried about the Sea Turtles.
He is worried about good Sea Turtles dying.
I have not asked him about the bad Sea Turtles. That would be too complicated.
He wants to help the good Sea Turtles..
So we talked about donating our time or resources for the cause.
He is in Japan, attending school & camp so cannot physically go there to help.
I don't think they would find a 6yo much useful anyway but I keep that to myself.
He wants to send lots of Dawn washing liquid but I am sure Dawn takes care of that.
So we are left with sending money.

I explain to him how I send money to charitable organizations.
He becomes interested in my organizations but then realizes that none support wildlife.
He gives me grief for the entire time we are eating dinner why I do not help wildlife.
I agree to match his donation just so he shuts up.
I am totally losing this game.
I think he is going to grow up to be a great fundraiser.

So we find ways to raise money.
Selling cookies door to door does not seem to work.
The neighbors are not really a friendly bunch and some have told me straight out that they do not like children.
This coming from a country of people who are discreet and reserved.
These people have dogs instead, which is prohibited in this apartment building.
This coming from a country of people known to be honest.
Hmmmm.

So we look at his room and ponder how much space is left for him to fly his "Lego Republic Attack Cruiser built in 2 days without help" (that is the official name).
So much toys. And even more in storage.
We open his closet and 4 sweaters fall out.
So much clothes. And even more in storage.
We look at his bookshelf with overflowing books.
It's a lego / book sandwich everywhere. And more in storage.
We drag out the under-bed storage and find DVDs we have never watched, and will never watch in the future, with long-lost Lego pieces stuck among them. Do we have more in storage?

Time for belated spring cleaning.
Ken wants to get rid of the storage room too.
It's costing him a fortune now that I switched jobs to a lesser paying but nobler one.

We start with private placements.
Since Alex is comfortable with these people, he demands an outrageous price.
They fade away.
Shocked, he give some away free.
The he is shocked he is not making money.
He learns that doing business with friends is not easy.
A humbling experience at the ripe old age of 6.

Then we move onto Craigslist like sales.
Finally it's working.
He is aiming to raise US$ 200 for the Sea Turtles.
Since he is giving away 50% of his proceeds, that's going to take a heck of a long time.....

Run run run!

People in NY generally don't run unless they just mugged someone or are at Macy's thanksgiving sale.

Here in Tokyo, it seems to be mandatory.
You never know who's going to come out of the corner running so you need to be vigilant.
These people are not joggers.
They run in their normal attire.
Age, gender, profession nor shoe style matter.

Most common reason for running seems to be "to catch the train".
This coming from a country where trains run in 3 minutes interval ON TIME.

When Alex and I first started commuting to preschool, he kept asking "why are they running?"
It was such a different sight compared to where he was from.
Now he seems to enjoy the show and counts how many are running (too many!).
He has been knocked over a few times because he got too close to a running Tokyonite.

Thought to snap some pictures of them running, but they are too fast!

Japanese Potty

"mommy, there are no potties!"
"Yes there is, this is a toilet. See the blue man and pink woman on that board? That means there are potties here"
"I don't like pink woman room. I want to go to blue"
"Well daddy's not here today so you are in here with me"
"but mommy, pink doesn't have my potty!"
So I go into the offending stall and find this.  

I go in the next stall and find the same thing.
This is Tokyo, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, at a fairly upscale department store to boot.
Why am I facing this?

Japanese potties are basically a hole in the floor with half a dome to cover 1/6 of the oval hole.
I refuse to understand how to use it and instruct Alex to do so as well.
I completely forgot about their existence until Alex came running out of the stall.
"mommy, can I go to blue man room?"
He's 4.
Should I send him off to a public toilet on his own?
The only "western style" stall is out of order.
He is near tears with the hole potty.

Come to think of it he is becoming pretty rigid about trying out new things.
He didn't want to try out the new mango orange muffin that cost me $5 this morning.
Maybe this is a good opportunity to instill the idea of overcoming challenges.
So I drag him in the stall, and have him squat over the hole.
I am not sure if we are even facing the right way, but he aims inside the dome, assuming it's a splash guard.

MISSed!
He pees ON the dome.
The liquid trickles down the dome onto the floor running towards his shoes.
I lift Alex to avoid any contact but Alex was not done yet so the pee was now showering the wall.
Ooops.
Disaster in progress.

The stall is so small that there is no other choice but to put Alex down in the puddle and let him finish his thing.
He understands the situation and now he is peeing and crying at the same time.
"I want to go to blue room!!"

This toilet has been the de facto standard for many years.
At the same time the Japanese have been known for their longevity.
One needs to squat to do her job in this toilet but I cannot imagine an 80 year old being able to do that.
There is a janitor's closet within the ladies room so I clean Alex's shoe there.
He's still sobbing at the ordeal and not happy about the fact that he has to wear the shoe I hosed down.
Mercifully there are no people waiting to use the toilets so I throw a bucket of water in the stall we trashed to wash things down.
The rest has to be dealt by the janitor.

During all of this, not a single person came in.
It's 1:30pm, when the toilets are usually crowded with people who finished lunch at one of the restaurants.
Alex and I leave the Restaurant floor to go down to the Luxury Brand floor.
There is a long line of people coming out of a corridor.
It leads to the ladies room.
We cut the line and go in, pretending to just wash our hands, and find out that all the stalls have regular toilet bowls.
Aha! So even Japanese, young and old like the "western style" toilets.

Japanese Packed lunch

Happy New Year everyone.

Alex started school last week and I was so glad because he was driving me bonkers by asking me when he could go back to school, 20 times a day (nearly every 30 minutes), for 3 weeks.

It has been 3 months since I have officially started packing lunch for Alex.
It was great at first.
Lots of frozen bite size lunch food in Tokyo in the freezer section; all you have to do is nuke 'em and pack 'em. They even have frozen blanched spinach nicely tucked in a 1 x 1 plastic nukable container.

All you have to do is take the package out of the freezer, cut one container off (about 8 containers connected loosely in 1 package), add some salt or soy sauce and throw it in the microwave.

They sell cute lunch boxes too (Alex has "Thomas" and "Cars", of course) and all I have to do is figure out how to configure these various containers with various prepared food in them in the box so they fit, and throw in a rice ball or two (easier to make than sandwiches, actually).
Alex was just so excited getting food in a box that he was content with it for 2 months.

Then he started comparing his lunch to his classmates'.
He noticed that others were far more elaborate than his:

• He noticed that sausages weren't merely boiled, they were somehow morphed into octopuses or flowers.
• Rice balls weren't just rice flavored with a sprinkle of salt carelessly squashed together in the box. They were Elmos, cookie monsters, soccer balls and bunnies.
• There were smiling eggs and Pokemon cheese.
• Koala meatballs and star sandwiches.

Packing lunch is a competitive sports here.

By the second year of packing, most moms (and I stress moms here, since in this society, these things HAVE to be made by moms, no one else) make it into an art form and the respective children open their lunch boxes proudly in the hopes of attaining the highly coveted "best lunch box owner" status.

You see the idea is, the better the lunch box content, the more that child is cherished and loved by his/her mom.
Under this guideline, Alex was literally an orphan.

And so, to keep within the spirit of his classmates and their ever so creative moms, Alex started to demand "spider webs", "froggies", "backyardigans" on his lunch and I started to oblige.

I don't want him to grow up and think 20 years later that he has some obscure issues because I didn't pack him good looking lunch.

I have spent well over $30 investing in silly lunch making gadgets like Nori punchers (punches a face into a nori), animal rice shapers (shapes the riceballs into elephants, fish and bears), swordfish toothpick (a tiny blue plastic swordfish in which it's "sword" part acts as a toothpick - I line up edamame on this; alex thinks it's hilarious), Ariel partitions (wax paper partitions with Ariel printed on it - he's in love with her right now), Winnie the Pooh Nori (Nori pre-cut into Pooh) etc and these stuff are taking up an entire cupboard.

Think I'm losing my mind?
This is what I am up against.

and this

and this

and these are just the tip of the iceberg.

I thought I didn't have to deal with this crap if I had Alex in an American school.
Apparently, blond kids at his school get a pass even if their lunch is just a jelly sandwich and a banana (low status) that comes directly out of a bag (even lower status).

However, there are different expectations for kids with Asian moms and an American style laissez-faire packed lunch may ostracize the child from classroom society.

"Mommy, I was the only one who didn't have a face for lunch (meaning a face somehow designed on a rice ball or sandwich or boiled egg or whatever). Everybody was talking about their faces and playing with them!! I didn't have a face....nobody played with me"

I am having such a hard time taking this seriously.

One of our neighbors, who has 3 school aged kids besides her preschooler told me she wakes up at 5am every weekday to pack lunch. She also packs snacks, makes breakfast, checks the kids' belongings and drives the kids to 2 different schools before having to comeback home.
However if she didn't have to pack lunch, she could get away with waking up at 6:30.
She's been doing this for 12 years. She has an MBA from an Ivy League. You'd think she'd have all the logistics figure out by now to maximize efficiency and shorten labor time. Nope, even she - who did operational management - cannot escape the mundane labor intensive work of packing a Japanese lunch.

I can't live like this!

Understanding Japanese

My hearing ability in Japanese has never been that good, but for the past decade or so, since the only Japanese I really listened to in NY was my husband's, which was often grammatically incorrect, it has deteriorated considerably.

So I go to a supermarket named "Peacock" and am asked something by the cashier. I ask her to repeat and she obliges. I still can't understand.
In NY, when the sales assistant asks something when you are paying, they are usually trying to sell a credit card.
I guess the correct answer in the Peacock situation is "no" as well.

So from then on I just say no, whatever I am asked.
I don't know what I am being asked anyway, so what have I got to lose besides some opportunity to open a line of credit?

Well, I finally realized after several months that I lose the privilege of getting a plastic bag for my stuff.
Why didn't I even notice this for so long??

Japanese love stereotyping

In the past few weeks I have noticed that there is so much blatant stereotyping going around in Japan it's nauseating.

I go to an electronics store to get something for my computer.
The shop assistant gives me a leaflet saying "this is really popular with women because it's easy to understand"
So, like we are dumber than men?

I am getting a new cell phone.
You will be amazed at the offerings here.
There are like 500 styles, seriously.
The shop assistant shows me several styles, telling me "For the ladies, I think these designs are nice"
No I am not interested in leopard print or pink crystal. I want chrome.
"Oh, those are really popular with men. Are you sure that's what you want?"

I shop at a supermarket.
They were giving out freebies to taste.
So I take one.
The guy handing it to me tells me that "young women all love this".
Well, I'm not your typical young woman and no, I don't like it, is what I said.
Yes confrontational, a social suicide in this country to be saying something like that in public, but these seemingly harmless stereotyping are so annoying.

Yet to find Silver Lining

I have somewhat settled in Tokyo with more than half my things still floating across the pacific.

According to studies by University of Maryland/BBC collaboration, a United Nations thinktank (forgot the name) and some big-shot Asian research center, the Japanese are the most pessimistic nationals in the world. This is not only about the economy, but outlook in life in general. Each study verified this individually with extensive studies and surveys, at different times.

Kind of brings you down if you live there, doesn't it?
Before leaving NY, I'm thinking, okay I'm going to find a silver lining in Japan.
But I have to get hit by these studies that a friend in Washington DC sent me.
The studies have been proven to me, much on an individual level after I have arrived, starting with neighbors all the way down to the potential babysitters I am interviewing.
I desperately need prozac right now. This feeling of depression is contagious.

There is so much I am confused, irritated, and plain dumbfounded about and on top of that, I found out I don't understand half of what the people are saying.
It's like I am in a foreign country.
Wasn't I fairly proficient in Japanese? I mean, I have a husband who speak to me in Japanese!

I found something similar to FreshDirect, delivering groceries on a 2 hour window of your choice, and I realized I made a mistake when checking off the desired delivery time.
So I called customer services to ask if I could change the timeframe and the girl says yes, and she walks me through the change, reconfirming every single order I made, thanking me each and every time for each of the 30 items I ordered, and then after I finally moved delivery time to 4 hours later, she asks me if I wanted anything else, I say no, and then she thanks me for calling and informs me that they won't be able to deliver on the requested date. I am like, so what were we doing for the past 20 minutes? Did I miss something? She said something about procedure, but I just didn't understand.

I'm told at Alex's summer camp that Alex NEEDS to wear socks with his water sandals. I asked why and was told it's dangerous without socks. I asked again recently and was told he can catch a cold without socks. I am ignoring the socks order, but am wondering if I am really hearing things right.

Now onto the bright side of things.
Although they lack a lot of organic stuff, the selection of heat and eat food is amazing.
If I go to a supermarket and wanted to get a ready-to-eat-after-nuking risotto, I can find 15 types of them on the shelf.

I have already conquered 5 flavors. Still 10 to go and that is just rissotto.
They also have curry with rice, short pasta, long pasta, chinese fried rice, rice porridge etc.
There is a perpetual curry fad in Japan, and there are many famous curry restaurants.
The restaurants hook up with manufacturers, and make their own branded ready-to-eat curry, complete with rice.
I have tried out 4 curries already, it will take until September to conquer all.
There is a whole aisle dedicated to this semi-junk dish (god knows what's in them to get that shelf life!).
Since curry is my favorite food, working from home and nuking my own lunch has never been better.

Then if we move on to the fridge/freezer section, there are numerous ready-made food; all you need to do is pop it in the oven.
I have been saved with the frozen "lunch bites" that they sell.
Chicken nuggets, mini-sausages, fried fish cakes, veggie patties, rice balls, pastas, veggie derivatives that are in bite size and ready to stick in the lunch box.
They are shaped in moons, stars, cars and flowers and for Alex, who is miserable in camp, these lunch are the highlight of his day.

I went to a "western" supermarket today (named so because they sell foreign imports) and found Huggies pull-ups with "cars the movie" design on it.
Although Alex has graduated his night time diapers a few months ago, his bed and waterproof liner are still crossing the pacific, and I can't afford to have accidents on the mattress we are borrowing right now, so I am having him in diapers. He's not happy with the Japanese one so I grabbed the huggies.
At the cash register, the woman announced cheerfully that it was $40.
WHAT?
It's 21count. Not like they have 60 in them.
It's less than $20 on amazon.
I was frozen there for a while.
I went back and checked the price; she was right.
And for your reference, a single bounty roll is $5, a bottle of San Pellegrino is $4, Frito-lay chips (large bag) is $10, a GE monogram stovetop with oven that yours truly had in her rental building is 10grand (not that they sold that there) and a pedicure is anywhere from $70 to $180 (and this is just a run of the mill nail salon).
Bloody expensive.

Where is my prozac?

Tokyo Buses

The bus stops.

It’s in front of the bus depot.

2 men run toward the bus.

They wait in front of the bus, standing straight, hands by their sides, as if they are soldiers waiting for the general to walk past by them.

The bus driver takes off his name plate from the holder above his seat (if there is a complaint to be made by the passengers, they know the drivers name), bows towards the passengers and gets off the bus.

Another driver in identical uniform climbs in, bows, attaches his name plate and sits in his seat.

The other guy who accompanied him in running climbs in, faces the passengers, bows and says “Our apologies for delay, thank you for waiting, the bus will start now, have a nice ride”.

This guy and the driver who ended his shift are standing on the sidewalk, heads bowed deep down until the bus speeds off into oblivion.

MTA straphangers, eat your heart out.