My Life in Tokyo

Today is Girls’ Day, also known as Hinamatsuri (Doll’s Festival). Japanese families with daughters put up a special display of dolls including the Emperor and Emperess and various members of the court. Isabella celebrated the festival in school by making this origami version of the display, including a bowl for the special hinamatsuri snack:

(Isabella did all of the writing. The four characters on the lower left-hand side spell her name.)

Yesterday, we were invited to a special Girls’ Day party at the home of Isabella’s friend Rimi from school. Rimi’s family is all Japanese but her English is nearly fluent and her mother Misa speaks English very well. So they often socialize with the rest of us Anglophones, which is really great for everyone, adults and kids alike. They have an apartment in the city near where we live, but spend weekends in their larger house which is much further away. I should note that this larger house has 2 floors: Misa’s in-laws live on the ground floor and her family of 4 live on the second floor. Each floor is about 1000 square feet. Then they divided up the small garden to build another small house within it for Misa’s parents. The large suburban house is still very tiny.

We took 2 trains and a bus to get there, and still found ourselves in a completely urban area. I was very relieved to find that the bus had an LED display that showed the names of each stop, in English as well as Japanese. It was the farthest I had yet ventured within Tokyo and I was alone with both Isabella and Juliet. Aside from the fact that Juliet hated sitting on my lap on the bus (and kept pushing the “request stop” button), it went very well. I was very proud of us!

We had a really nice afternoon. The group included 3 other famlies we have gotten to know over the course of the year, part of the small group of English-speaking families at Isabella’s school. There was Severine with her daughters Carla and Elisa, who are French. When they arrived a year and a half ago, the girls spoke neither English nor Japanese (the two languages used in school). Severine speaks English well, and the girls are finally willing to speak a little English with their friends. Then there was Henrietta with her children Arthur (a special exception, he was allowed to come for Girls’ Day), Iffy (short for Iphigenie) and Abigail. Henrietta’s parents are English but she was raised in France, and the children have spent their childhood in Switzerland and Japan. And then there was one more Japanese family. I keep forgetting the name of the mother, who understands some English but does not speak any. Her daughter Akane goes to school with the other children, and she also has a granddaughter Koko who is exactly Juliet’s age.

We ate a traditional lunch including charishi sushi, a sort of deconstructed sushi which consists of vinegared rice in an open dish with various ingredients scattered on top: this one had cooked egg, daikon radish, lotus root and salmon roe. The kids wolfed down some onigiri (rice balls) and ran off to play together while we grownups enjoyed our meal with a bit more leisure.

The real highlight of the day, however, was trying on some of the many kimonos that Rimi’s family has collected over the years. With an experienced grandmother on hand to do all of the complex tying, both Isabella and I had the honor of wearing these beautiful traditional dresses.

Here is the lovely young lady with her elegant hairstyle.

Here I am being wrapped up by Rimi’s grandmother. Although these dresses are loose in the waist and have no corset, they are bound very tightly around the ribcage. Not only is it difficult to walk in one, but it’s rather hard to breathe as well! I was told that it’s very difficult to sit in a regular chair when dressed in a kimono, and much easier to kneel on the floor Japanese-style (which makes perfect sense, of course).

Of course we had to take lots of pictures in the garden.

And here are the elaborate obi (ties):

This picture includes both grandmothers and the other little girls who were willing to try on kimonos, Elisa and Carla, along with their mother Severine.

Isabella was disappointed that the other girls preferred to dig in the dirt! She carefully waddled out to talk to them.

Little Abigail, at 2-1/2, was persuaded to don this adorable robe for a few minutes.

There was one tiny kimono for Juliet and Koko to try, but neither wanted anything to do with it. They were pretty content throwing small stones into a bucket together and otherwise playing in the dirt.

One of the funniest cross-cultural scenes of the day was observing little Abigail, with her blonde curls, giving instructions to Juliet in Japanese as they played together.

At the end of the afternoon, Misa offered to drive us to the train station where we could catch the subway line that comes directly back to our neighborhood so that we could avoid the trying bus ride. It was a comfortable 50-minute ride on the train. As we rumbled along, I told Isabella that this was exactly why we decided to send her to the New International School. We wanted her to have a chance to meet Japanese friends and experience real Japanese culture. What a privilege it was to get to be a part of this day.

Isabella thinks we should invite Rimi’s family over for Thanksgiving next year.