The Dullness of Everyday Life February 2, 2008
Posted by Kristen in Gripes, Healthcare, Japanese Culture.add a comment
Sometimes days, even weeks go by in which I have trouble finding anything to write about. Every day brings something new and notable about living in Japan, but what do I choose? What do I write about? And what about those periods in which everything seems just boring and dull, just ordinary everyday life? What do I write then?
The past few weeks have been busy and tiring, filled with ordinary struggles of everyday life. Illness and taxes.
First, the illness. Mark’s.
On a business trip to Hong Kong at the beginning of January, he came down with a bad cold which quickly turned into laryngitis. A few days before he returned to Japan, his lower right leg started to swell up. By the time he got home, he had lost his voice completely and his leg was red and puffy. He went to work anyway, but by the next day his leg was hurting and he decided to go see a doctor. The doctor at our nearby clinic thought he should go to the hospital, so we ended up in the emergency room on a Friday evening.
I was struck by several differences between this hospital and the ones we’ve visited in New York. First of all, the main entrance to the hospital was closed at 5:00 pm. By the time I joined Mark at 6:30, it seemed totally dead. The hallways were dark and I had to enter through the single small emergency door. And then there was no drama at all. No bleeding injuries, no ambulance arrivals, no drug addicts. Just a few tired-looking people sitting in nice, clean rows of padded straight-backed chairs.
The first several visits to the hospital were frustrating and discouraging. There was a lot of back and forth between doctors, more visits to the clinic and to the hospital, and prescriptions for antibiotics and pain relievers. The clinic doctor thought it might be deep vein thrombosis or an infection, the doctor at the hospital thought it might be gout but gave him antibiotics anyway. Still, the redness began to spread above his knee and he was getting increasingly worried.
Finally, a week later and again on a Friday, I joined him at the hospital after yet another unsatisfying visit with the doctor on call. This one had told him to take more of the same antibiotics and go home and rest, with instructions to come back and see a specialist 6 days later. With the infection spreading northward, we didn’t much like those instructions. So I decided to be a pushy American and I called the clinic to enlist their help. They were initially hesitant because the doctor who had seen Mark the day before wasn’t there that day, but soon agreed to have another doctor call and speak to the one who had just examined Mark. It turned out she was able to speak directly to the infectious disease specialist at the hospital who agreed to see Mark that same afternoon.
What followed was one of those astonishing only-in-Japan episodes. We walked back over to the walk-in clinic, where we had been told to go and make an appointment. The nurse met us in the hallway and asked, “Green-san?” (pretty obvious who the non-Japanese people are!) It was 11:30 am and she told us that the doctor could see Mark after 1:00 pm, so we should have lunch and come back then. We assumed we’d have to wait an hour or two after our return to see the doctor. Mark saw her at 1:05.
Here’s what she said, and what seems most likely:
The infection is most likely caused by streptococcus bacteria, probably from the sore throat. The initial dosage of antibiotics they gave him was the Japanese dose, and since he is so tall (!) and weighs more than 60 kilos (132 pounds) (!), they should have given him DOUBLE that dosage. She recommended treating it with intravenous antibiotics for several days.
Mark returned to the hospital every day for 8 days to get his IV. The doctor popped in to see him on several visits. He was impressed with how thoughtful, patient and attentive she was. And we were both humbled by her continued apologies for her poor English—which was, of course excellent—since we are both incapable of even basic communication in the language of our host country!
Many people I spoke to about this drama gave me dire warnings about the poor state of medical care in Japan. They offered up their favorite specialists or suggested we consider going abroad. In the end, though, I think that Mark got better care here than he would have in the U.S. After the initial confusion, he certainly got more attention. And the cost of the visits to the hospital were shockingly low: one day he saw two separate doctors and had the IV administered, and the total bill was about $60. That’s the total bill, without Japanese health insurance. That’s the amount we’ll submit to our insurance company for payment. Clearly, we’ve got something really wrong with our system.
And the taxes?
Well, that’s what I got to tend to as soon as Mark was back on his feet. Round One of the big, ugly task of filing taxes for two separate countries. Yes, we do have an accountant to help us. But that never seems to be much of a help for me, as you still have to track down all the relevant data and put it in order. The first part involved figuring out the sum total of all the money that we transferred into Japan from foreign sources. Sounds simple enough, until you realize that this includes items paid for in Japan from a credit card that was paid for out of a non-Japanese bank account. And this is how we pay for a large portion of our expenses here. Fortunately, I had remembered this part from last year. And so I had been pretty vigilant about separating our Yen and U.S. Dollar charges on separate credit cards. And I have all of that data conveniently stored in Quicken. But then I read on to the part where it asked for the total in yen. And all my data was in dollars. And the exchange rate dropped rather dramatically during the year. Good grief.
Thank goodness for Excel and for all my years of experience with historical rate tables and lookup functions!
Hinamatsuri March 3, 2007
Posted by Kristen in Holiday, Japanese Culture, Kids.2 comments
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.
Returning from Hiatus January 19, 2007
Posted by Kristen in Food, Holiday, Japanese Culture, Kids, Kyoto, Travel.add a comment
Somehow it seems that with this sort of thing, the longer you go without doing it, the harder it is to start again. Kind of like exercising. When I started working on this entry, it had been one month since I last I last published. Now it has been almost two! I find it to be a real challenge to both live my life here–to explore and experience Japan–and also to chronicle it for friends, family and posterity. How do real writers do it?
And so, without further ado, here is a condensed version of our holidays:
Christmas. Santa Claus came and brought Japanese gifts and stockings. The children were spoiled once again and had a grand time. Juliet, delightfully free of expectations, was a joy to watch as she encountered each new toy with surprise and wonder. We made our traditional Christmas dinner of meat fondue.
Mark had to work on the 25th, so the rest of us walked to his office and had a Japanese lunch on the 39th Floor of his office building, overlooking the city.
The major holiday was the New Year, when the entire city seems to shut down for 3 days. We started out with a sushi-making afternoon on the 31st, trying out the new sushi cookbook Mark gave me for Christmas. It turned out not to be too difficult and came out great! Isabella was the experienced sushi chef, having tried it out on a school field trip to an amusement park called Kidzania where the kids get to try out different real-life jobs (see pictures here and read about it in English here here). She insisted on rolling hers up by hand without using a bamboo mat.
After a few quiet days at home, we headed to the train station for our first journey by 
Shinkansen to Kyoto. The train seems very ordinary and doesn’t feel much different from a regular train, but the journey takes just over 2 hours (this would be more impressive if I knew the distance travelled, but I don’t!). We soon learned why most Japanese ship their bags ahead of time rather than carry them on board: there is very little room for luggage on the train! With Mark’s help, we managed to heave our big suitcase precariously onto the rack above the seats. (You can see in the picture how small they are.)
Our first sightseeing outing took us to Rokuon-ji Temple and its shimmering Golden Pavilion. The building is entirely covered in gold leaf and its image is reflected in the surrounding pool. Although you can’t go inside, we spent quite awhile walking around the beautiful grounds.
I think it was here that we found this delightfully whimsical set of statues all dressed up for the New Year. I think they are the statues of the ancestors, awaiting their New Year’s mochi) treat.
Next we moved onto Roanji Temple which has a beautiful and serene Zen rock garden and a lovely pond. My photos can’t do justice to the rock garden, so check out the link and read about its history! We pondered this sign for awhile. A Zen message?
The next day, we visited Nijo Castle. Although the original castle was built by the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1602, it was destroyed by fire. The current building was once part of the Kyoto Imperial Palace and was moved to the site around 1890. A bit confusing. We were able to walk through this building and see the beautiful painted panels and ceilings in the interior rooms. Some rooms were set up with life-sized figures depicting palace life. I was amused by the scene showing an audience with the shogun: everyone is seated kneeling on the floor, facing him. What distinguishes his status and privileged position is that he gets to kneel on a cushion and rest one arm on a wooden armrest. Now that’s luxury! Another fun feature of this castle is its “nightingale floors” which squeak under even the softest sock-clad tread in order to alert the inhabitants of any intrusion, even by the nearly silent Ninja. It makes for an interesting effect when all the tourists are passing through.
On our last day we visited Kiyomizu-dera temple, 
tucked into the hills on the edge of the city. You approach the temple up a road lined with shops then climb up the stairs to see the beautiful buildings and view the peaceful wooded hills beyond. It was especially nice to be able to see out, beyond city and buildings. We can never see beyond the city in Tokyo. We also enjoyed visiting the shops on the street below and found several beautiful pieces of pottery to bring home.
We had a couple of memorable meals on this trip. The first was in the Japanese restaurant at our hotel. We had a table in a private room, which was ideal with Juliet, and ordered one of their set menus. There were many different courses, perhaps 7 or 8 in all, each small, beautifully arranged and artfully presented. There was sashimi, some cooked fish, many kinds of pickles, new and unusual vegetables. One course had salmon roe presented in a tiny hollowed-out orange peel. Juliet especially liked these! There were many things we didn’t recognize, but the only thing we all refused to try was the sea urchin offal. Given the choice, I think I’d take a pass on that one again.
Our other fine meal was in a Japanese restaurant recommended by the hotel. It was a small restaurant, old and wonderfully atmospheric. This time we sat at a low table, which would have been ideal with Juliet–except that it was the kind with the pit underneath to make it easier for people who are unused to kneeling. I spent most of the meal worrying that Juliet would fall into it! She had a grand time, though, crawling towards the sushi bar and making friends with the sushi chef. We enjoyed some fine sashimi again and wonderful grilled meats, plus an outstanding rolled omelette.
After two and a half days, it was time to get back on the bullet train and return to Tokyo. Unlike our trip to Saipan in November, this time it was not so difficult and confusing to come home. We had a quiet weekend at home before the workweek began and Isabella went back to school after her luxurious 3-week winter break. After all that time, Juliet was sad to lose the company of her big sister.
People watching on the subway November 29, 2006
Posted by Kristen in Japanese Culture, Tokyo Adventures.1 comment so far
I like riding the subway because it gives me a chance to observe people up close. Because we live in an expat neighborhood, I often encounter Americans and other foreigners when I walk around near home; on the subway, I’m quite often the only non-Japanese person.
In some ways, everyone looks alike. They all have black hair, except for the women who have lightened thiers to one of a few shades of dark brown or auburn. They all have “Asian” eyes. I have been thinking about this for some time: what is it that distinguishes the eyes of Asian people? They’re brown; they’re narrower and less round than ours; they have a little fold of skin on the inner corner. It’s hard to characterize, yet we recognize them immediately by their eyes. What do our eyes look like to them? Are they noticeable for being large, round, blue?
Despite the sameness of a few obvious features, they all look completely individual and distinct from one another. When I look at their faces I can pick out many of the same “types” of people I might see on the subway in New York. We tend to describe people by their hair and eye and skin color, as though those are the things that differentiate us from one another. It’s interesting to see that these are really not the things that set us apart after all.
Today I saw a young woman on the subway who was well-dressed, with her hair neatly styled, a perfect manicure, and makeup. And her teeth were crooked. What a surprise! When was the last time you saw a young person with crooked teeth?
A City Scene November 15, 2006
Posted by Kristen in Food, Japanese Culture, Tokyo Adventures.2 comments
I stumbled across this yesterday when I was out shopping. I thought it was just too silly for words, so I had to share it. It seems they think St. Nick is a Kentucky Colonel!
Lunch Box Woes November 9, 2006
Posted by Kristen in Food, Japanese Culture, Kids.add a comment
I would never make it as a Japanese mother. During my Japanese lesson this morning, as lunch time approached, I mentioned I was getting hungry. My teacher said that she was hungry too, as she gets up at 5:30 every morning to make her daughter’s lunch for school. I asked what she made today. Here’s what she described:
pork, cooked with onions and spices;
broccoli;
weiners and beans.
I asked her, did she make all of this fresh today, from scratch? Yes, she said. Do you do this every morning, I asked? Yes.
Wow. I’m a failure at lunchboxes.
After a few weeks of packing sandwiches in Isabella’s old lunchbox, we got her a kid’s bento box lunch set. Hers is a Hello Kitty set that has two stacking plastic boxes, one with a divider. I used to pack her a whole piece of fruit; now, she tells me I’m supposed to cut it up into small pieces and give her a little pick to eat it with. Today I gave her a hard-boiled egg, so I peeled it and cut it into quarters. When I told this to Noriko, she said “oh, you can cut it in a zigzag pattern so that it looks like a tulip.” Good grief! Now I’m supposed to be making decorative hors-d’oevres for my 8-year-old daughter’s lunch.
The lunch-box section in department stores is huge: besides the boxes, there are little bags to carry them in, chopstick sets, forks and spoons, and all kinds of cute little containers and dividers for putting cute little things into the boxes. Part of me feels woefully inadequate; but another part of me says, “Give me a break! Don’t they have anything better to do with their time?” There are even magazines devoted to creative bento box ideas.
For the record, tomorrow’s lunch is leftover gnocchi from tonight’s dinner, broccoli, mixed vegetables, and an orange (peeled and divided into sections). Okay, so I just put the vegetables into the box frozen and let them thaw in the refrigerator overnight. A lazy American has to take shortcuts somewhere.
