Goodbye Golden Week.

It's the end of Golden Week, the late Spring bank of national holidays that we are lucky to get here in Japan. It is rainy and cold outside but inside we are baking cookies and finishing up homework. It has been a good holiday week, low-key but enjoyable.

We went to nearby Miyajima twice (seven tram stops away): once in the evening when the shops were shuttered and we saw the main hall of a Buddhist temple packed with a silent audience watching a priest retell a parable in song; again yesterday for kodomonohi (children's day) but to the other side of the island where it is crowded with trees and deer and we feel decidedly more at home.

I also managed to make tracks on my new project and clean my bedroom, banishing the cardboard boxes that had been lining the walls since the move.

It has been the first proper time off since starting this new job. I was on probation for the initial six months and was not privileged to have any paid leave during that time. Most weeks I work Monday through Saturday. This means that I have not had much time to really think about what I am doing, where I am headed. In some ways, this has been nice as it has meant just following a routine, sinking into the moment rather than overthinking things like usual. 

And yet this Golden Week has given me the time I really needed to reflect and consider. And what I realised, well, that will have to be saved for another post. 

Hope you all are well. 

Take care.

母の日

Today is the first mother's day since this happened.

Let me share a little antidote that illustrates how much my husband loved his mom.

About a month after we first met, we took a hitchhiking, greyhound-bus-riding road trip. We stopped by D.C. to check out the Matisse and from the museum, my then-new boyfriend called his mother to check in with her. She was visiting her sister in the hospital at the time in Massachusetts but my boyfriend had been concerned about her and wanted to make sure she was having a safe journey.

This was very impressive to me, seeing a twenty-two year old guy take the time from his adventures to call his mama.

In our closet, we have a ton of little presents that he had collected for her, gathering them for a box that never got shipped. He was always thinking of her, making sure to buy anything that he thought she would get a kick out of. He talked to her via the computer several times a week. The conversations were usually long, both of them wandering into the dangerous territory of political debate (she was a staunch Republican, Fox News viewer) but each of them emerging without injury.

In our kitchen cabinet, we have about twenty boxes of Star Wars jello that she sent in her last care package to us. We have a hundred little relics of her from those regular care packages, yarn craft magnets, American flag tee-shirts, plastic Halloween cups. When we move, maybe we will find a way of letting go of the jello and worn out tee-shirts but for now, it is our way of keeping her with us everyday.

Today is not going to be easy but we bought distractions: water guns and sidewalk chalk and bubbles. All to be brought with us to the park on top of the mountain where the kids can run and play freely and we can have enough space to remember a very special mother who will always be missed.

Happy Mother's Day, Alice.

Happy Mother's Day, Alice from Tiffany Key on Vimeo.

Scenes from the week

-The first week back from Golden Week is always a bit vicious but I survived somehow. 

-It was a week without any mishaps (lost paperwork, forgotten homework, teachers calling- well, S's teacher called twice but that is better than everyday).

-This was also the week when we mad cleaned the house since we were due our annual home visits from the teachers. I like the tradition and having a nice clean house at the end of the week is a bonus. Essentially, the teachers drop by for about ten minutes to get an insight into their students' home life and to talk about their progress so far. I am pleased to report that this year's visits went off without a hitch. The kids, it turns out, are indeed alright. (N needs to master long division and C is really slow with her classwork still but she's always the first the raise her hand in class now so that's an improvement).

-That tall gangly kid up there got his head shaved today for kendo (by moi, of course) so this is probably the last picture we will have of him with hair for a long time, since he is really into kendo now. (Did I mention the everyday thing? Everyday he has kendo. E.v.e.r.y.d.a.y..)

-The week saw the start of the 50 day countdown to my Japanese language proficiency exam. It is hard work, my dears. Grammar at one in the morning is not ideal but I need to pass this test. It gets easier the more I study and I actually have gotten to the point where I look forward to my nightly study sessions and have become utterly boring. But July 2 will be here too soon so I must straighten my nerd cap and go forth.

-We had a wild storm hit us today, lightning, flooding, the works. And it is still going. 

-Speaking of storms, oh my, America. Can't you give a gal some rest? Seriously. You know it is bad when American political news gets into the elementary school newspaper. My, oh my.

-I'm going to get some more coffee and return to my studies. Hope you all are well. 

xo

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Golden Week

Everything has been a mad whirlwind of activity since school started back up. It turns out that junior high school is intense. And then there is still elementary school matters and kindergarten matters and work matters and studying for the big Japanese test matters and scheming to move matters. I get dizzy just thinking about my to-do lists.

So it was a great relief to have a proper sunny Golden Week last week, a bank holiday of three days wedged up against the weekend to make five solid days of no work or school. We didn't travel off the island (Sebastian has kendo club everyday which makes it hard to go anywhere) but managed to enjoy ourselves all the same.

Golden Week from Tiffany Key on Vimeo.

xo

Giving Thanks

The dinner is finished. It was a small affair consisting of just me and the kids. Our menu was good for us: a tofurky, Syracuse salt potatoes, blanched green beans with a shoyu butter sauce, matcha ice cream, and persimmons. Now the kids are before the television, finishing up the Star Wars trilogy that they borrowed from their grandmother.

Since we are international nomads, our traditions for holidays like today are not like our neighbours'. We only do two things the same every year on Thanksgiving, here and in Japan. We talk about what we are happy for (a little bit easier of a concept for the younger two) and we collect our centrepiece from around the neighbourhood before we eat. It is a very small tradition but it is one we enjoy very much.

Among the many things listed during our gratitude rundown (including being able to live here with support from our family) was a shared excitement for the move ahead of us. For those of you who have not yet heard, we are moving back to Japan at the end of March. To be exact, we are moving back to Goto. We are definitely grateful to have this opportunity as we really feel it will be the best for everyone in our family.
Another thing we are grateful for that follows the move to Goto is that we are ever so appreciative of all those who support this move both morally and financially. Due to the short amount of time we have to raise funds for the event, we have had to start a little crowdsourcing endeavour (seen up on the right there). The response has been really amazing and we are both humbled and encouraged by everyone's support.
And last but not least, I am grateful for you, my darling reader(s). I am so glad you stick by me and my words and random thoughts. It truly means a lot and I will do my best to make this place worthy of your attention. Like by writing a little more often than every four months...

I hope you American readers are having a warm and safe holiday with your loved ones. And for the rest of you, I hope you are also warm and safe with your loved ones at hand, wherever you may be.

Happy Thanksgiving.

At Grandmother's House

When I was eight, my father's mother passed on. Her name was Daisy Glenda and she had been a tobacco farmer's daughter up in Georgia. She met my grandfather when they were both teenagers and travelled south to Florida where they found work digging up oysters in the Nassau River. They settled in the area and built their house, home, and business on A1A. My grandfather was a hulking legend in our family, a mechanic who once saved his son by actually catching a car before it fell on him.

Sadly, I never knew him as he and my other grandfather both died the shortly before I made my way into this world. I did have my grandmother though for eight precious years. My grandmother was a hardy woman, the mother of five sons and chain smoker of Marlboro Reds. Everything in her house was tinted brown from her smoking, giving all my memories a very distinct haze. To cover up the cigarette smell, my grandmother laid bowls of mothballs around the house which, of course, just made the house smell like mothballs and cigarettes. She was a true Southerner and kept a skillet of bacon grease at the ready. Everything had meat in it, usually floating alongside clouds of milky lard. My cousin Amanda and I spent a lot of time at her house, drawing up plans for our horse farm and chasing never-aging kittens around the backyard that were named things like Smokey or Blackie. We spent hours in our grandmother's backyard, climbing the great magnolia tree or making bridges across the little stream at the back. Our grandmother would call us in for lunch and we would find our food, usually a plate of fried chicken and mashed potatoes, laid out on a towel in front of the television. We would lay on our stomachs and drink cola through a straw as the giant hourglass appeared on the screen, the signal that it was time to be quiet. Our grandmother would sit rapt in her blue and green plaid easy chair as the doctors and rich housewives and sinister ex-boyfriends all plotted against each other. When the program was finished, she would turn off the television, declare the rest of the shows to be garbage, then shoo us out the backdoor again. There we would stay until called in again for dinner.

My grandmother was a gruff woman, almost handsome but not anything approaching pretty. She wore pants most of the time and if she did put on a dress, she still looked like she was wearing pants.
She was an avid gardener. Her yard was full of gardenias and hydrangeas and shrimp plants and azaleas and so many more than I can remember. Her yard was lush and endless, full of grasshopper and honeybees and shadowy places to hide. As a small child it was my whole world.

After she died the land was sold. At first the new owners just parked their landscaping vehicles on it and the yard was desolate. Then they expanded the business, first to mulch and landscaping supplies and now to plants. Since returning, I have sped past regularly but never stopped until today.

The blue and white house my grandparents built and raised sons and grandchildren in remains in tact. Behind it still are the two little sheds and the garage that once housed my grandmother's Grand Marque (a car I thought was by rights my grandmother's car from the name alone as she was called Grandma Key). Many of the trees are still there, giant as they ever were. And amidst these landmarks was a beautiful spread of potted plants, model ponds, gravel, and many more plants.

There is something so right and just about seeing my dearly departed grandmother's yard again full of gardenias and hydrangeas and shrimp plants and azaleas and so many more plants than I can remember. And to see my children run around where I used to play, on the very bricks that she put into the earth, well, I can only hope my grandmother can see that as well.

Homesickness Defined

Since I have become an official adult, I have moved house eleven times. And that is not counting the little transitional moves when I was just waiting for a lease agreement or a roommate or money. Eleven major moves in sixteen years. Moving with children is no easy feat and we seemed to add on an extra one in-between each move in the past few years.

Being such a pro, I know now that there is a natural process your mind needs to embark on. Feeling nostalgic for what you left behind is part of it, despite being annoying to everyone around you in the new place. When we moved to Gotou, we missed Nara. When we moved to Nagoya, we missed Gotou. When we moved here, we missed Nagoya. It is natural to long for the place you so recently called home, for your old neighbors and students. We know that no place is a utopia. It is all about what you do while you are there.

Here in Florida we are trying our best. We are job-hunting (still) and homeschooling and gardening and raising chickens and canoeing and swimming and drawing and having an all-around good experience.

The thing is, in the past decade, seven of those years were spent in Japan. We began to be shaped by Japan, in our tastes, in our outlook. Our language learning was halting but solid and ever-evolving and this too affected our minds and hearts.

I was a professional language teacher in Japan. I was qualified and connected. I knew about my students' strengths and weaknesses and talked for hours with other teachers about these things, things that would bore anyone who is not a teacher, things that bored Jason before he became a teacher. Here I teach part time at best. This last semester I felt grateful just to have a classroom, even if the registered students exceeded the capacity of the room by fifteen. I am on sabbatical from that position now, home with my kids like any working mother ever dreams about, though being fantastically broke as a trade-off.


To be broke with four kids at the age of 34 really makes you think about things. Like how up until recently we all had good health insurance. Health insurance that allowed us to walk into any doctor's office and receive treatment. Health insurance that didn't make me worried or frustrated, just grateful because I rarely ever thought about health insurance except for making sure my card was in my wallet when I went to the doctors'.

I think about how up until recently the kids went to neighborhood schools where I did not have to worry about them being bullied or eating junk food in the cafeteria. Or shot, or stabbed, or kidnapped. Where they were supported not just academically but mentally and physically as well through plenty of recess, PE, art, and music classes. Not to mention the healthy school lunches and sense of cooperation they gained by cleaning the school and serving those healthy lunches to each other.

Up until recently we had bicycles and trains and buses. We had large parks and playgrounds within minutes of our house. We had a castle with golden orcas on the roof. We had a Pokemon center and an organic farmers' market where Jason's student's grandfather sold us rice he had grown and harvested. We had a tiny bright apartment teeming with children, our children, our neighbors' children, random school mates and their siblings. We had fireworks and barbecues in the summer on the street below, we had dance festivals in the school yard behind our house with red lanterns that swayed in the evening breeze. We had our life.

We still do, of course. I am very grateful to be where we are now. To be working on our own projects instead of having to put them off until the weekend or holidays that would go by too quickly. I am able to spend my days with my kids while they are young, while they want to hang out with us still. While they believe in kobito (little people) and explain to us how to trap them (meat and whiskey works well, according to Sebastian). We get to grow an entire vegetable garden that we have to fence in, instead of a little balcony container garden tucked away from the clothes line. We get to watch our chickens devour watermelon then take the remaining rinds to the compost pile. The beach is ten minutes away and the sand is just like white sugar. We are grateful that when the grandparents were in the hospital, we were about to worry about them from the waiting room instead of the other side of the world. When we want to teach the kids about astronomy, we simply walk outside after sunset and the stars are all there.
The thing is, this life we have right now, it is meant to be just a temporary reprieve while we get back on our feet. Yet doing the latter is proving to be harder than anyone ever thought. I have a degree in a field that is very specific and considered to be basically volunteer work in the States. My resume is full of experience that makes me overqualified and under-qualified for even the most menial positions.
I try not to be disheartened by this employment drought. Instead we head out to the garden or take the dog for a walk and hunt for blackberries and fireflies.

Ten years ago we were preparing to move to Japan for the first time. We had no idea what was waiting for us there. Last year we were selling off our worldly possessions. We had no idea what was waiting for us here.

We've been told by well-meaning souls that we need to get over Japan. That that chapter in our lives in over. That our life is here now. That is easily said (and kindly meant) but there is another possibility. There is the possibility that it is not that we are not meant to get over Japan. That it wasn't just about living abroad but about living. About finding a place where two dreamers were able to take care of their kids without being completely broke. And without having to stop dreaming. Where those kids could thrive because even though their biological family was a day away by airplane, they had family in the neighbors and teachers and friends that surrounded them. Where we adults could thrive because we had resources and constant inspiration. Some people are lucky to find that in their hometowns or in a city a few states away. We just happened to find it on the other side of the planet.

So when I say I am homesick, it is not said lightly or with any disrespect for the place where we are or the people who helped get us here. We are not giving up in anyway on our life here in America but all the same, we cannot just get over Japan. It does not work like that.

Home

Home is such a strange term for expats and travelers. Is it where you are from or where you are going? In this house we have multiple definitions for the term, multiple places that qualify. For the kids, Japan is home. Where they were born, learned to walk and talk, learned how to handle chopsticks. Even the oldest two with Florida printed on their birth certificates only really know Japan.

Japan is my adulthood, where I have given birth to two kids and raised the whole lot of them in a tiny apartment. Where I have overcome personal reservations for the good of the whole. Where I came to value precision as much as innovation. Japan suits me in many ways, the wabi sabi aesthetics, the quiet, the appreciation for nature.

Our time in Japan, five years this time, has come to a close. After losing one lackluster job and refusing a few others, I came to the realization that we have outgrown Japan. For now at least. For the way we have been here. Jason and I have figured out the work we need to do in this life and are no longer to delay or sacrifice for a petty security. I cannot justify it any longer. The distractions of being an immigrant are too severe. We need a true stability, a place where we can work on our projects and provide a healthy, loving environment for our kids.

Next month, a few days before Sebastian turns ten, we will fly home. It is to a home that I associate with childhood, a home my children will now include in their memories. We go home to family and friends, to a space large enough to contain us. We go back knowing there is a recession and determined to work and support ourselves by our own wits and hands. Frankly, as much as we love Japan, it is a relief. Jason and I are creatives with four children. Having to worry about visas and language barriers when we just want to get our work done has become frustrating. And the kids are a bit relieved too. They are relieved because we will be homeschooling them so their time will be less regimented. They are sad to lose their friends, sad to leave what they know. They are also excited about the adventure that they consider America to be. They look forward to the strange wilds of Florida, the diversity of people, the chance to play soccer and learn how to surf.

It is a huge change but it feels really right. We are ready to get on with our next chapter. Home is, after all, where the heart is. Home is my family, my work, my friends. These things are not anchored to place. Japan is home, Florida is home, this whole beautiful messed up planet is home. As we progress, humanity will eventually cease to insist on so many boundaries of perceived space. Already many of us consider ourselves to be global citizens, sharing an internationality. For our kids, I have no doubt that they will benefit from a freer world but in the end, I bet they will realize that it is not where you are but what you do while you are there that matters.

Where It's At

So despite my best intentions, I ducked away for what I thought would be a second and turned out to be three weeks. Sorry.

I have been lost in the confusion of job-hunting. The weekend before Nico started school, I lost my job. Or more accurately, I was squeezed out. It is for the best but it has left us scrambling to figure out lots of boring but important things. Like how to stay in Japan or how to pay the electricity bill. We are still working on it and I think I have it almost figured out. It is tricky though because I am sorta getting what I want. I want to work for myself, as a writer and craftsperson. I just didn't plan on it happening so soon. Puts a lot of pressure on my fledgling talents/business. I actually want a day job for a bit longer but I can't seem to find one that wants me.

You see, when a population shrinks that means there are less students and less students means less teachers are needed. Things were different a few years ago when I started my MATESOL, having the degree plus experience was the ticket to a somewhat plush university job. Now those jobs are few and far between and demand publications and Ph. D.s, for a salary that is just a bit above what I made on the JET Program. I've always considered teaching my day job so putting so much into something that would leave me too exhausted to do much more than lay on the tatami when I come home is not ideal. So I already started looking for a new path but I am also in a country where my skills are limited to the classroom. Like many other underemployed/unemployed people, I am overqualified for most jobs and under-qualified for jobs that would have been mine a few years ago. I am obsessively looking for a position and open to moving, though that is not really ideal for us right now. I have actually been job-hunting since August, to be honest. I was more discriminating then but now even the corporate chatty-chat boxes could have me.

It is frustrating but also liberating. I have figured out a way to extend my visa, get unemployment, and insurance to cover us. That is the good thing about living in a country with a social safety net (aka nanny state for my more cynical readers). I'll have three months to push harder than I have ever done before. Haru Aki will be busy, with new designs and pieces added daily. And I also have a list of articles to be written alongside my weekly short story. Now it may seem crazy but really, if anyone is going to pull this off, it is going to be me. You know why? Because this is the challenge I have been given and I don't like the alternatives. So, yeah, that's where it's at.

Wish me luck.
xo

And, like that, Nicolai entered elementary school.

We not only made it to the highly anticipated entrance ceremony, somehow it is already over. I'm pretty sure we just did this ordeal with Sebastian yesterday and yet he tells me that tomorrow he starts as a fourth grader. Though sometimes a little sneaky, he is fairly honest so I guess I have to believe him.

 

For the first time in years there will be two first grade classes at the neighborhood elementary school. Both of them have 30 plus students. In America, I am sure this would not be something to be celebrated but in a country suffering from a rapidly declining population, it is a good sign.

 

Nicolai's new teacher's name is Ruriko-sensei and she is new to the school. Luckily, Sebastian's old teacher who speaks excellent English, will be around to help Nicolai transition to elementary school life. Though his Japanese is good, it is still developing so knowing he will have a little extra support is comforting for everyone (including his new sensei, I suspect).

 

At the entrance ceremony, the sixth grade students led the first graders in which is just so utterly symbolic that you can't miss it. This year, we know quite a few of the sixth graders because when Sebastian started they were just third graders. The benefit of staying in one place for a while has been the honor of watching the neighborhood kids unfold. It all happens so quick, too quick. You can watch it but in one blink they go from babes in arms to thriving, independent adolescents, showing the new class the way.

Early Hanami

Encouraged by the sunshine and clear skies, we set out on the first official day of Spring break to have a little early hanami (flower gazing) picnic. Under the partially pink sakura trees, we spread our plastic sheets and feasted on inari sushi and norimaki sushi. It was still a little chilly and the cherry blossoms were only about 30% open, but it was a good start to the vacation. And afterward why, we played of course.

Happy Spring, ya'll.

The Graduate

With much ado and fanfare, this boy graduated from kindergarten last week. Two years vanished in a poof and now here we are with a genki, semi-literate, functionally bilingual Nicolai. Japanese kindergarten is not for the faint of heart. In which I mean lazy. It is a full-time job keeping up with all the events and activities that go on in a regular school year and before you know it, your kid is bowing to his sensei and singing sayonara to kindergarten. Literally...



We were lucky to be able to send both of the boys to private kindergartens, both valuing that critical stage of childhood by creating an environment that encouraged creativity, cooperation, and social awareness. Academic prowess is not central in the Japanese kindergarten; it is more about cultivating experiences that the child can carry with them through life. Sebastian's kindergarten followed a Piaget approach, granting the children lots of freedom and space for discovery. Nico's kindergarten was a Buddhist school so regular lessons in manners, sensitivity, and compassion were taught in the week.




All in all, it has been a very wonderful experience for our family and I know Nicolai is ready to start school in April. We'll have a year off from kindergarten until Colette starts (we like them to have 4 years at home in English) which will be a good chance to catch up on other aspects of our life.
Then we'll be ready to start round three.

It will be hard at first to get used to this guy being a first grader.

Year of the Snake

Words.
I am experiencing a drought of words.

Or, perhaps, it is not for lack of words to string together.
Perhaps it is just that I have yet to successfully saddle and mount time. There is a bridle in place but my hands are caught and twisted in the reins. I'm being dragged around by a beastly stallion and I don't even have the sense to complain.
Is it a poor excuse? Perhaps.

It has almost been one year since I left teaching full-time. I never knew before how very short a year could be.

It has been two years since the disaster in Northern Japan. Two years since a tsunami washed away thousands of lives and my misconceptions of what I wanted in life.

I haven't been writing here because I have been busy elsewhere but without any tangible results to share. I know that this space is more of a process bulletin board but for my own idea of this online record of events, I would like to try and reach my own bizarre standards. Unfortunately, this means that I try to write here when the computer is free (unusual) and when my mind is clear (unlikely). Essentially impossible conditions in a small apartment crowded with littles.

The first post after an extended break is always the hardest. What do I tell and how much of it should I share?

Maybe if I break it into bite-sized bullet points then it will be simpler:

-Nico is graduating from kindergarten on Friday.
-Nico is starting elementary school in April.
-Sebastian will be a fourth grader.
-From April, I will teach part-time, Jason will teach part-time.
-I started a resin jewelry Etsy shop.
-We don't know how everything will work out.
-We don't know where we will end up. Everywhere is lovely and awful. We can no longer search outside of ourselves for utopia.
- I've been obsessed with this idea of Huxley's: "Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.”
-I cried watching this movie.
-Luca is a full-fledged walker who loves rice and vegetables. He also weighs almost 29 pounds.
-I am not reaching my writing quota. Getting the shop running has taken over all spare minutes. And there were not so many to begin with so I had to make some up. Like the minutes that fall after midnight.
-Jason bought a suit today and was highly disgruntled about it.
-The cherry blossoms will bloom soon. Again.

So, maybe that is good for now. I'll do my best to post at least twice a week from here on. For my own crazy standards, not for you, patient reader. I know that if you are reading this now, you're ready to wait me out.

xoxo

Considering Contamination

For a year and a half, we have had unreal threats intruding upon our reality. Unreal in how they feel, how they currently affect our daily lives. It is hard to feel threatened by something you cannot see or feel. Yet I would say that we are in crisis mode here. We never stopped having a nuclear disaster, the media just stopped talking about it.
There are some really scary things going on here. Mutated butterflies, thyroid abnormalities in children, trace amounts of contamination showing up in our food supply. If you read this blog, you might lose more sleep at night. You should see the dark circles under my eyes.



I have been particularly frustrated by the idiotic way the government and TEPCO have handled this mess, trying to clean it up with filthy hands. The people have finally begun to vent their anger with dedicated weekly protests in every major city and town (six o'clock on Friday evenings, like clockwork-this is Japan after all). They work under the banner called the Ajisai Revolution which is just so telling of what is going on here. The ajisai (hydrangea) is supposed to bring hope during the rainy season and this movement is emulating the flower in its duration and subtly.

As proud as I am of the people and as much as I love ajisai, I think we need a more radical bloom. Or maybe just leave out blossoms all together and have a radical revolution. The government is not looking out for the people. They are protecting profits, a popular political motive found around the globe. Money equals speech, corporations are people and all that bullshit. Where is the free market here in Japan?
People don't want to eat contaminated food and avoid it but then get either bullied into it or blinded to its existence. In a land where the government infamously over-subsidizes farmers, why could we not just pay the farmers to destroy their crops until the land is usable again? Why are school districts on the other side of the nation finding cesium in their vegetables? Just because something is under the limit does not make it safe.



I worry that more is going on than they are telling us. I worry they are taking the typical shoganai approach to handling this while also dealing with corrupt people to sweep this under the rug.

Everywhere on the planet there are threats to our food supply from corn syrup to GMO foods but I think cesium and cobalt have greater immediate consequences. I support farmers in general but I think this is getting out of hand. We are dealing with substances we have no business dealing with. The government is gambling with our lives, our future in a game that has no winners. 

This goes beyond businesses and borders.

This is not something to be brushed off with the standard "It's not the Japanese way".

This is beyond cultural. It is far beyond criminal.

We have taken steps to avoid contaminated food. All of our food is now obtained from the local organic farmers' market except for certain things that we make sure come from Kyushu or are imported. We are strict vegans at home now though the kids are still eating school lunches. We are keeping our eyes open and trying to stay objective. It is easy to become paranoid when the stakes are so high.

We live here by choice. We chose Japan because we believe it offers our children a great deal of benefits such as a bilingual and bicultural upbringing and living in a society that revolves around family. Though we are always going to be foreigners, we have been readily accepted into every community we have live in and have always been astounded by how kind neighbors, friends, and strangers are to us.
We would like to stay here for a long time. We want Luca to experience undoukai (Sports' Day); Colette to have her own doll collection for Hina Matsuri (Doll's Festival); Nico to graduate elementary school; Sebastian to master kanji and sansu (Chinese characters and math). I want to write stories based here, Jason wants to make a video of Gion Matsuri and be part of the sofubi scene. We have plans.
We have a full and happy life here.

We don't want to go.
But we will if we must.

I am grateful we have options. Most people here don't.

In the end, I know we will do what is best for these guys but I just wish I never had such decisions to make.

Hello September.

Well, we are four months into this whole six person family deal and let me tell you, it is something else.

This guy is a gentle giant weighing in this month at 17.6 pounds and 27 inches long. And he's got three bottom teeth rising out of his gooey gums like pearls.

September means that summer is on its way out and school is back in session (thank goodness). It also means that a certain person around here will celebrate her matching digits birthday by taking a trip to Nara and Kyoto with the whole gang in tow.

I love the mild seasons and look forward to cruising around town on our bikes under the golden ginkgo trees.

Hope all is well with you and yours.

Three months in...

I think we'll keep him.

Two of a Kind(red)

These two middle children have become quite the pals. Of course, they each have a strong relationship with their Oniisan (big brother) but it is different from their playful connection. Nico knows better how to treat Colette since he is also a younger sibling; he also has the advantage of a smaller age gap (3 years versus 5.5 years).
Colette brings a whole barrel-full of silliness to the relationship which appeals to Nico's sense of humor (Sebastian also likes silliness but only if he is the producer).
Of course, I have to think that since they almost share a birthday they were bound to be more similar. Each of them have a sense of order and tidiness that skipped my eldest son. They are better at listening but also more willful than Sebastian ever has been. They are also more independent, a trait that comes with being younger siblings perhaps.

Right now it is dinner time and the two of them are trying to out-silly each other with their older brother both scolding and laughing at their antics. I try to imagine what mealtime will be like with four silly siblings sitting around the table without allowing such foresight to turn my hair white. As their mother, I try to find a balance of indulging in their right to enjoy each other's company and the necessity of having them get food into their stomachs. And with this pair, it really comes down to getting Tweedle Dee to focus on his dinner so that Tweedle Dum will, like with everything else, follow suit.

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And just a pregnancy aside, no baby yet but as I am hoping that Luca will choose Saturday evening for his arrival (after Jason comes home from work, no less) then I am not impatient yet. I still have quite a bit of housework (aka nesting) to do before then, progress of which is hindered by the erratic back-to-school schedule which is peppered with lots of half-days (including the unexpected ones like today when I had to haul my big ol' belly up to the kindergarten after Nico's sensei gave me a nice phone call letting me know that my blondie was waiting patiently in the office for me). In the end, I know it won't matter to Luca if the kids' closet is put to rights before he comes home but I also know that once he gets here, all productivity will be suspended for a bit. I am in a funny limbo state right now that involves chores, naps, walking, more walking, and reading Elizabeth Gaskell novels.  I can't really explain the last one but there are a lot of inexplicable elements involved with the end of pregnancy so 18th century stories about the conflicts between the working class and their 'masters' appeals to me right now. Perhaps it is related to the amount of housework I have suffered endured accomplished in the last few weeks.

Sun Day 日曜日

Sundays are the one day of the week when nobody has to go to school or work. I realize that we just had two weeks of straight Sundays during the Spring vacation yet you can't fully value the day until it is sandwiched between six non-Sundays.

The sun rises here just after 4:45 now (Japan does not have daylight savings time) and as I have mentioned before, there is nothing to keep Nico from rising with it. He is a patient fellow and usually takes care of himself quietly until around 5:15 when he makes his older brother join him. With their powers combined, they then decide on which request they can make that will squeeze past our usually strict regulations, made slack by the desire to sleep until a more decent hour. On Sundays though for some reason, they seem to accept the relaxed nature of the day and will instead join me on my futon until that decent hour arrives. It makes the day much better when there isn't a power struggle to be fought at first light.

Today was a typical Sunday of banana pancakes, housekeeping, park visiting, and grocery shopping. Right now the boys are with the neighborhood kids at the nearby park and Colette's eyelids have succumbed to their growing heaviness and she is peacefully napping in the other room. The open windows bring in a warm breeze and the songs of all the flitting little birds, dancing on power lines. The quiet embraces me, enchants me until I too must succumb to an afternoon nap.  Oh, the joy of a good Sunday.