Summer Project: Gardening

Now that I have caught my breath, I am ready to begin tackling my epic maternity leave laundry-list. This mega list has its own sections and subsections. I won't share all the glorious details with you since I don't want to bore you or jinx myself. But I think I am safe sharing the section headed Summer Projects as they are kid-related and I suspect that is what most of you tune in for.

I have wanted to start a little container garden like, um, forever. Being a band of traveling gypsies, it is hard to overcome my resistance to putting any kind of roots down, literal or otherwise. Now that I am home and have more time to consider things properly, I decided that there was no time like the present for starting a tiny garden. Mainly because gardening is good for the kids on many levels and because we live in the hottest concrete jungle in Japan so we really need that bit of green.


So here we have tomatoes, peppers, basil, bitter melon, and sunflowers. Each kid has their own plant to tend: Nico chose the pepper, Colette has the basil. Sebastian's are the sunflowers, his favorite flower being a summer child. Also, we can use any seeds from the flowers to feed the hamsters later.

I am caring for the tomato and bitter melon. The bitter melon will hopefully stretch upwards on the netting, their lush vines forming a 'green curtain'. It is our contribution to setsuden, energy saving in a reduced-nuclear Japan. Another summer project in the making.

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Yesterday we went to our local Shinto shrine to exchange our hamaya and do a mellow version of hatsumode. Now we have our new dragon arrow hanging inside the door, warding off the demons but encouraging the good fortune to enter our little abode. We also picked up a little ceramic dragon bell to add to our collection. We are quite the menagerie come April: a snake, two goats, a dog, a cow, and a dragon.

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明けましておめでとう！Happy New Year!
We got our year started with steaming bowls of ozoni, served in special Oshogatsu Pokemon bowls, of course.



Then we were off on a Mama-venture, code for trips that involve lots of travel and little planning. Sebastian said he wanted to see mountains and Nico said he wanted to see snow so without further ado, we were off to Nagano.

We lighted in Nagiso, a small town known for lovely onsens and their tradition of wood turning (i.e., making beautiful bowls and trays from the local forest). There is also a trailhead for the Nakasendo, an old post road that connected Tokyo to Kyoto. I thought that is where we could get our bit of mountain-intake but Nico's wish for snow came true and we were not wearing snowshoes (or boots for that matter) so we had to content ourselves with walking around the small town.

Nagiso looks like it would be very nice to visit, you know, on a non-major holiday when everything was shuttered. They had a pedestrian suspension footbridge that crossed the town's namesake river, the Kiso. The kids played for a bit in a park where they were obviously preparing (though there was no one there) for a bonfire with a daruma perched on top of a tall stalk of bamboo.
The kids had at least fifteen snowball fights while we were in Nagiso, which was really exciting for them.






In the end, we took an express train home as the sun was setting and ended up eating fast food for dinner. This was another highlight of the day for the kids since fast food has been somewhat banned from our diets.

All in all, a good start to the year. Here's to 2012! (she says, raising her glass of water) The best to you and yours in this new year!

xo

Shopping as we do...

We went for some supply shopping (running out of cleaning supplies) and arcade game playing. The mall is not too far from us so as much as I am not a fan of triple decker shopping complexes, in the winter an enclosed area that meets all of our random needs is quite nice.

The mall wasn't so crowded, as most people were probably at home cleaning and preparing for the New Year. The only place that was booming, really, was the supermarket. Traditionally Japanese people like to make special bentos called osechi filled with all sorts of auspicious delights that will make them healthy, wealthy, and wise for the coming year. Everything is made ahead of time to allow for the cooks of the household to have a reprieve from their duties.
We have discovered that in the city people are more likely just to order their osechis instead of slaving over the stove for days before the holidays. Some people just make a few of the dishes that they like, particularly the black soybeans and mochi. We don't really make anything besides for the ozoni, a soup that everyone eats on the first morning of the New Year. It is supposed to warm you up when you return from the midnight visits to the shrines and temples.

There was another side to the crowded supermarket, less festive but practical. The shops will be closed for the holiday, the only days when they close for the whole year. This is something that we have learned the hard way requires attention. In super convenient Japan, you become really soft as a shopper since if you forget something then you can always go to one of the hundreds of convenient 24 supermarkets and convenience stores in your neighborhood. Thinking ahead for your next three days' meals and other necessities can strain your creativity if you are such a soft shopper, as we are.

This brings us to another resolution. We are going to give up our soft, city ways and adopt a more traditional method of planning our (healthier) meals. Recently I discovered a Saturday morning organic market on my way to work and last week I took Jason and the gang to see it. He was, as I expected, impressed. All sorts of lovely vegetables and foodstuffs that you cannot find in the stores, right there being sold by regional farmers for the benefit of us urban-dwellers. We had tried to order a veggie box from a local organic supplier for a bit but since it is a bit of a gamble we often wasted a lot of the contents (particularly if it was a good week for something like onions). I also like the idea of taking the kids down to see the loveliness in person and run around with the farmers' kids and other young customers. And since it is only two train stops away, I think it will blend into our weekly routine quite nicely.

2012 is all about living the life we want and I think including this reformed habit will make the coming year and all those that follow full of health, a little more wealth, and hopefully a bit more wisdom.

The Artful Blogger

With only 2 days left of 2011, I suppose it is time to reveal some of my resolutions for the coming year. One of them includes this blog and another, Hakanasa. I know I have been a neglectful and often absentminded blogger. I have had second thoughts about maintaining a blog, about spending so much time online. But now with the other shorter forms of social media, I have become quite fond of the blog. It gives me room to breathe and share. This blog in particular serves the practical purpose of connecting our daily family life with our distant friends and family. So one of my resolutions for 2012 is to post here daily, even if it is just a photograph and a caption. I want to become more disciplined and I want to have a better record of our time. I have an offline project such record-keeping corresponds to but I will save the details for another day. So starting on the first, each post will be numbered by the day of the year and if I am faithful, by this time next year the title of the post will be 364. More than my current total of posts in my entire five year history of blogging.

As for my other blog, Hakanasa is a space for me to share things that are of a more Tiffany-centric nature. Things about Buddhism, education, ecology, literature, and art + craft. It will resemble my journal more than this blog does but not in an intimate teenage way. In my offline journal (aka a spiral bound drawing pad), I keep newspaper clippings, sketches of things that catch my eyes, laundry lists, and ideas that need to be saved for later. It is a cumbersome thing with scraps of paper and dried leaves slipping out if opened too quickly. The online version will hopefully be less messy though I make no promises. I started it because I feel that my online identity is a little stunted and I wanted a room of my own to define myself better. With four(!) kids, such a place is inconceivable offline so I am looking forward to moving into the new blog and making it my own space. You are welcome to visit if you wish. Beware though, I will not be as guarded as I am here since when I write on this blog I am supremely conscious of the fact that my family is reading and I tend to be inhibited. Over on Hakanasa, I will post blind to the idea of my potential audience.

As for the name, Hakanasa, it is a Japanese term that I became enamored with last year as the cherry blossoms floated on the warm breeze despite the collective mourning period we were suffering through after March. This post has a little more on the term and my blog will favor the third definition.

I'll drop by tomorrow with some more resolutions. Until then my friends, take care.

Creating a Life

The last posts of 2011 will be mostly reflective, which maybe is okay since due to laziness I omitted writing about a lot of our happenings this year. Gomen.

(picture of Buddha drawn by a creative student at Nico's school for the annual school festival)

This year I was determined to be actively creative. I was successful in creating more crafts, drawings, and stories than I was in 2010 but I still didn't meet my own targets most of the time.

There was the Etsy shop that morphed into a fabric shop (we're on vacation from supplying the world with lovely fabrics for the time being).

There was the postcard exchange that started with a huge number of participants, dwindled to half and now I, the organizer, am busy trying to catch up for months of missed postcards.

There was a novel that turned into, well, a novel. I wrote it in one month, including edits and a nasty bout of the flu. I'm not saying it is great (really, it is not) but it is complete. My first book, well ebook. It was more about getting it finished than making a masterpiece. I think that it has cleared the way for better writing. Given me hands-on experience of the practice of writing and overcoming my tendencies towards being overcritical and subsequently giving up on my work. I know I should be embarrassed about it but I have made a mission of reading all of my favorite authors' first works this year and I can tell you with certainty that the first work usually is, in a word, crap. The most meaningful lesson I gleaned from writing the book and working on the other projects has been that diligence and determination are really huge factors in generating success. Being talented is nothing compared to steady, unflinching hard work.

And lucky for me, I have a whole year ahead of me to hone my work habits. I am really excited about the days that are before me, just waiting to be created.