Thoughts on Language February 14, 2008
Posted by Kristen in Kids, Language.add a comment
Of course language is on my mind a great deal these days. When we made the decision to move to Tokyo, I fantasized about spending all my spare time studying Japanese and adding another and much more exotic foreign language to my repertoire. How cool it would be to talk to real Japanese people in their own language! I might even learn how to read, I thought.
In the beginning, it was easy to work hard. It was very exciting to learn something new and thrilling to be able to put words together in new and strange ways, and to be understood. It was a major breakthrough to be able to direct a cab driver to my building, and a crucial one too—since there are no real street addresses in Tokyo and you always have to give directions. I have also mastered the crucial and tricky counters and so I can count two when describing pizzas (nimai), pencils (nihon), kittens (nihiki), people (futari) or any general thing (futatsu). I can order in a restaurant and say “for here” or “to go”. I can ask “what is this?” on a menu and sometimes I might even understand a wee bit of the answer. This was useful in a sushi restaurant recently when we were served something which apparently came from the abdominal region of some kind of fish. And I can read a few kanji, even sometimes useful ones like “restroom”.
Yet as time went by, I got tired. The novelty wore off. And there were fewer and fewer circumstances in which I had to be able to speak Japanese in order to get what I needed. But mostly, I was tired. Each time I dropped Juliet off at school and rushed home to meet my tutor, newly confused and ill-prepared, I felt tense and anxious. Finally I decided it was time to take a break. And so for the last two months, I have not had a single lesson and haven’t learned any new words. I feel bad about this. It makes me feel weak and unmotivated. It makes me feel like a bad guest in my host country.
And yet, I ask myself, what was I gaining by learning Japanese?
And this leads me to a related question, which is: why do we learn language in the first place, and why would we want to learn more than one?
Juliet is now 2-1/2 and is talking up a storm in English. She seems to do very well in Japanese as well, though I’m not the best judge. She took her first big leaps in language over last summer when we were in the States. When we retuned to Japan, I noticed that she was speaking mostly in English to Noriko. She seemed to understand just fine when Noriko spoke to her in Japanese, but she would respond in English. Gradually she stopped, and now I hear her speaking only Japanese. I find this very interesting because Noriko speaks English very well, and Juliet hears me speak to her in English all the time. Yet she seems to accept that Japanese is the language Noriko uses to communicate with her. After the initial transition, it doesn’t seem to be any more difficult for her speak Japanese than English.
A few weeks ago I took Juliet to a birthday party for one of her English-speaking friends. Almost all of the guests were English or American, but there was one Japanese mother there. Her husband was English and their baby understood both languages, though I think she was not yet talking. I was chatting with her in English when Juliet came over to us. She picked up a toy that was on the floor and asked the Japanese woman, “kore nani?” (what is this?). To the best of my knowledge, she had not yet heard the woman speak Japanese.
So I’d love to be able to say that my daughter is completely bilingual and so brilliant that she can determine which language to speak based solely on facial features and/or accent. But of course it’s not that simple, and the pattern is not consistent. Another day we had a Japanese friend of hers from school over for a playdate. Her friend understands very little English and I’m sure they only communicate in Japanese at school. The mother spoke to Juliet in Japanese and Juliet answered appropriately, yet she persisted in speaking English to her friend. I found this very strange, since it seemed clear to me that the little girl had no idea what Juliet was talking about. But on the other hand, she spoke very little. I wonder what would have happened if her friend had answered in Japanese?
And then there are the funny and slightly humiliating instances in which she refuses to listen to me speak Japanese. If I try to say a word in Japanese (for example, pointing to a strawberry and saying “ichigo”), she will correct me (“no, Mommy, that’s a strawberry.”) I wonder what she’s objecting to. Is it because I just don’t say it right? Or is it because the word doesn’t match the person? I tend to think it’s the latter, because if I ask her what Sensei (Teacher) would call it, she will say “ichigo”.
She never gets mixed up, but I have heard her use a Japanese word when she doesn’t yet know the English one. They were learning the names of animals in school, and one of the animals was a camel. I didn’t know this, and the word “camel” had never really come up in conversation before. Then one day we were looking at her Sesame Street word book together and labeling the things on the “C” page. She pointed to the camel and said “racuda” I thought she was saying “it’s a duck”, and so I corrected her and said “no, that’s a camel.” The next week was a special observation day at school and the teacher took out the animal cards they’d been practicing with. Up popped the camel and the children chimed in “racuda” along with the teacher. I felt silly about having corrected her, and yet I realized that it was part of the process of separating the two languages. She didn’t say “camel” to the teacher, but now she knew that “camel” was the word to use with me.
Obviously, we use language to communicate. It is also obvious that young children learn language very quickly and can even learn two at the same time. I know that a large part of the reason I find it difficult to learn Japanese is that I’m no longer a child. But it’s also true that I don’t need to use it in order to communicate. I can get what I need, make friends, talk to my family, eat, sleep, shop, everything—all by speaking my native language or by using my few words of Japanese. I think that a huge part of our drive to learn language is the need to connect with other people. Children are making new connections all the time, creating friendships, trying to figure out their place in the world. As adults, we have already made our most important connections—especially if we are married and have families of our own. And we have the flexibility to seek out other people who speak our own language and make friends with them.
We know that children who move to a new country are able to pick up the new language and speak almost as well as a native, yet adults do not fare so well. But children are also immersed in schools and have a great need to make friends. Adults who move to new countries often go with their families or can form communities of others who speak the same language. What would it be like, I wonder, to go alone as an adult? What if you had to make friends and go to work and do everything in a new language? How long would it take to learn, and how well would you learn it?
Juliet’s School Picnic May 15, 2007
Posted by Kristen in Kids, School.add a comment
At the beginning of April, I finally did it: I enrolled Juliet in a Japanese preschool. I’m so glad that she has the opportunity to learn Japanese and it’s an interesting adventure for me, too, to be a part of a Japanese school. I still speak very little Japanese, so it can be a challenge at times. Noriko picks Juliet up from school and gives me messages from the teachers, and she translates the notes for me. If I have something important to tell them in the morning, I look it up beforehand and write it down (I still have to say it, however, since they can’t really read Japanese words written in Roman characters). So far it’s going smoothly.
I have found some of the routines of the Japanese preschool, called hoikuen, to be interesting and amusing. Here is the list of items Juliet needs to have at school each day:
- indoor shoes
All children wear these in school, including Isabella. This is how they keep the floors clean without having the kids running around in their sock feet. The shoes are kind of like Keds, lightweight white canvas sneakers.
- a smock, with elastic at the neck and wrists
To keep the children clean during lunch, as well as for art projects.
- a towel with a loop
Also a Japanese school staple. Every child has his or her own towel which they use every day and bring home to wash. No paper towels or hand dryers in the bathroom. Very frugal and environmentally friendly
(Note – public bathrooms here often have no towels, either. Most people carry a small towel or handkerchief in their pocket or purse and use it after handwashing.)
- a placemat
For lunch.
Everything had to be labelled with her name, in Japanese. I asked Noriko to do most of them so it would be as neat as possible, but I did label the backpack myself. Here’s what “Juliet” looks like in Katakana:
ジュリエット
(It is pronounced something like “Jurietto,” which is about as awkward in Japanese as it is in English. We have taken to calling her Juju at home, and that seems to be catching on at school as well. Even Juliet can say it, which is incredibly endearing.)
The new school year begins here on April 1, so it’s been about a month and a half now. Last week was their first outing: a picnic with all the 1- and 2-year-old classes at Shinjuku Gyoen, a large and very pretty park in Tokyo. It was a beautiful and very warm day and the children all seemed to have a good time. I found it to be very different from any of the outings I had done with Isabella in New York. Though it wasn’t strict or rigid, it was all carefully planned and everything was done together. I also noticed that all of the rest of the people I saw in the park that day were on some kind of group outing: children in matching uniforms, adults with matching ribbons pinned to their shirts, walking together or eating together or doing some organized group activity.
Here’s what the day looked like for our little ones:
When we arrived, we set up our picnic mats in a shady spot under some large trees. This is what a typical Japanese group picnic looks like:
Soon afterwards, we all stood in a circle to sing a song. I think it was their regular good-morning song. Then we sat down again to socialize and eat a snack. Then there was an organized game. Here’s what the 1-year-olds got to do: The teachers set up two long ribbons several meters apart, with a row of balls in between. The little ones stood behind the first ribbon, then walked to the middle and picked up a ball, and then walked on to the second ribbon.
It seemed just the right level of difficulty for the little ones, and they managed to do it with help. Juliet was very happy with her new ball.
There was more free time, for sitting on the mats or playing with the balls, and then the teachers rounded everyone up for a walk. I had no idea where we were going, and ended up carrying Juliet for quite a distance. We ended up on a bridge over a lily-pad covered pond that was inhabited by a large number of turtles. The teachers had bags of crackers and gave one to each child, to feed the turtles. (Juliet tried to eat hers first, and had to be gently coaxed to toss it over the side!) It took some time to ensure every child had a chance, as the bridge was small and the group pretty big. Finally, we moved on to a tree that they had hung with origami necklaces for the children to “discover.”
Finally we walked back to our shady tree to eat lunch. I had packed Juliet’s bento box with a cream cheese and jelly sandwich cut into small squares and I had some cut up fruit for us to share. My Japanese friend Mari had packed traditional lunches for herself and her daughter: rice in one compartment, and in the other, several separate tiny cooked foods–a rolled omelette, a hot dog cut to look like a squid, and a tiny piece of fried chicken. Yes, I asked–she cooked it all fresh that morning.
Here are Juliet and Mari’s daughter Mion, who have been friends since last fall in Gymboree and are now in the same preschool class together.
All in all, it was a nice day and an interesting experience. It is very clear how important group activities are to the Japanese. Group outings like this are common not just throughout school years but into adulthood as well, in the form of company outings. Although the planned activities were simple and age-appropriate, they were all carefully choreographed and everyone was expected to participate. It didn’t give me the feeling that behaving differently would be frowned upon; it simply seemed that it was not an option. I wonder if I would have the patience to endure years of these outings, if we were to live here for many years . . . .
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.
Branching Out November 21, 2006
Posted by Kristen in Kids, Language, Tokyo Adventures.add a comment
I started this post over a week ago, then got overwhelmed with preparations for Thanksgiving. Here, belatedly, are some of my recent adventures getting around this unusual city.
A couple of weeks ago, I went in search of an electronics store to buy a webcam and headset for my computer. I decided to go to one called Bic Camera, because I’d been to the store before and I have a “pointo cardo” (they’re really into point cards here). I set out for Shibuya, thinking that was the location of the store I’d been to before. It turned out this was a different store, and I wasn’t sure where to find it. I wandered around for awhile and tried to just enjoy exploring without worrying too much about finding anything. This worked for some time, but then I began to get annoyed because I really wanted the webcam and headset. I found a map near the subway station and located the store on the map. I set off in what I thought was the right direction, but couldn’t find the store. So I checked the map again, and found another location for the store in another direction. I walked up that street and looked, still to no avail. I walked many blocks, knowing it was too far. This is when I stumbled upon Colonel Sanders as Santa Claus. Finally, I found a policeman and asked him. He pointed me back in the direction I had come and added helpfully “right-hand side”. By this time I was determined to find it, so after walking back several blocks, I began walking slowly and looking for electronics. I listened closely. At last, I heard it: “bic-a bic-a bic-a bic camera!”, that inane little jingle that they always play outside the store. I looked up, and sure enough, there it was: The sign. Plain as day. Written in katakana.
It had never occurred to me that the sign would not be in English.
(Okay, in my defense, most big stores have signs in English–even those wtih Japanese names like Takashimaya.)
Another day, I decided to walk to the American Club. I had been told by a couple of different people in my building that it takes about 25 minutes to walk. I had never tried before, and thought it was time. Why had I never walked this relatively short distance in the 2 months I’ve been here? Well, because it’s nearly impossible to find things in this city. Why?
There are not street names in Tokyo.
Okay, to be fair, there are some major avenues that have names. Think University Avenue, Franklin Avenue, the West Side Highway, Broadway. But most streets are tiny little windy roads that are barely wide enough for 2 cars to pass and usually have no sidewalks. And they have no names. So you can look at a map, but you can’t actually find any of the streets unless you have really good spacial reasoning, which I apparently don’t. I took my map with me on this walk and I still got lost several times. But I persevered. I even asked directions from a Japanese person, a friendly-looking woman with young children. Later, lost again, I asked a policeman who spoke very good English. He directed me in a very roundabout way that didn’t seem to make sense according to my map. I asked if I couldn’t go a more direct way, and he said no, that wasn’t the way people go. So of course, being the stubborn, independent American I am, I had to try it my way anyway. And he was right: the “direct” way got me to the service entrance of the club with no way around to the front door. I had to walk around several blocks and up a hill with the stroller to finally get to the front entrance.
After an hour and 5 minutes, I finally made it to the entrance to the club. At this point, I hardly needed the workout–but would you have skipped it after all that effort? I went to the gym anyway.
I think I finally have to accept the fact that in order to learn my way around here, I have to be willing to get lost. Many times. This will be a challenge for me because I am very uncomfortable when I’m lost. And can’t read a map. And can’t ask for directions. It will be a good exercise in letting go, I think. It’s time to branch out a little more.
I’ve met some new people in our building during the past few weeks. Two women who live on the floor below decided to host a coffee for all the stay-at-home moms in the building and I got to meet and talk to several of the women I have seen in the elevator and the halls. It was a great relief to talk to new people and make new connections. And of course, several of them have children close in age to Isabella and Juliet. I was especially glad to meet our new neighbor down the hall, who had just moved from New Jersey with two girls, ages 4 and 6, who are also going to the New International School. To top it off, the older girl is named Isabella! The girls met soon after, and have been running down the hall to visit each other almost every day. Even better for my Isabella was getting to meet Rachel, 10, and Hana, 8, who live just downstairs. They grew up in Tokyo with a Japanese mother and an English father and go to an international school nearby. Isabella likes to hang out with the older girls and get help with her Japanese homework. It makes a big difference for us both to add more people to our social circles. And I think it’s great for Isabella to have friends she can visit completely independently. Finally, she can say “Bye, Mom, I’m going to Rachel and Hana’s. See you later!”
Now, if I can just figure out how to get her to come home on time . . . .
A Tasty Snack ? November 20, 2006
Posted by Kristen in Food, Kids.1 comment so far
It is clear that Juliet will have a different childhood from most American children. Today I took her to Gymboree for open play time and struck up a conversation with a Japanese woman I had met in her music class. When we sat down in the snack area afterwards, she gave her child a snack of tiny dried fish. Juliet seemed interested in them, so the other mother offered her one. Juliet loved them so much, she gave us the whole package and she happily munched them all the way home! (The other mom pointed out to me that they are slightly sweet, for children.)
A Day Out at the Science Museum November 13, 2006
Posted by Kristen in Kids, Tokyo Adventures.1 comment so far
Most exhibits were labelled in English at least somewhat, and when they weren’t, we just had more opportunities to experiment. We practiced our katakana, too.
It was really nice to get out and do something fun as visitors in this city. We hope to make lots more visits like this in the future.
Saipan November 11, 2006
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Last weekend we took our first family vacation from Tokyo. We thought it would be nice after the busy summer and difficult move to have a few days on the beach, so we flew to the island of Saipan. I don’t think I had even heard of this island before, and certainly had no idea where it was. It turns out it’s about 3 hours away from Tokyo by airplane, about 1400 miles. It is a U.S. Territory in the same chain of islands as Guam, but politically unrelated to Guam. If you’re interested in learning about its chequered history and current state of political corruption, not to mention appalling lack of labor laws and abuse of immigrant workers, check out this website.
I found it to be a strange little island. It looks American in some respects, with standard U.S. street signs and some familiar stores. But most of the visitors were Japanese and all the signs in the hotel were in Japanese as well as English. Amid the palm trees and tropical flowers, there are immediate reminders of its sad history: places with names like Invasion Beach, Tank Beach and Suicide Point. There is a rusted-out Japanese tank on a platform next to the road as you drive along the beach. I was hoping to find a drugstore to buy a few America toiletries that I had been missing, but there didn’t seem to be such a thing. There is one stretch of upscale stores, along with a Hard Rock Cafe, that seems to cater to the Japanese tourists. But off that clean strip the shopping areas seemed to be little more than poker joints, pawn shops and run-down markets. I walked 40 minutes from the hotel in search of diapers and found it very depressing. When I finally found a market that had them, however, they were very friendly and helped me get a cab back to the hotel.
We missed out on beach time on our first day because our flight was delayed, but enjoyed 3-1/2 days of sun and sand. Our hotel was on the leeward side of the island and the water was very calm; the coral reef created an extremely shallow lagoon that was great for the kids to play in (view some photos of the hotel here). Juliet enjoyed the sand—both digging in it and eating it. We made holes in the sand for her to sit in and splash when they filled with water. (“Juliet soup”) We also spent plenty of time at the pool, where Juliet bobbed in her baby float and Isabella found other kids to play with.
The highlight of the trip was a snorkeling outing to the tiny island of Managaha a 5-minute boat ride away. We left Juliet with a babysitter, borrowed gear, and set out for the day. When you arrive at the island, you have to pay a $20 admission fee; the island closes at 4:00 (who ever heard of an island closing?) There is a gift shop and a restaurant that serves both cheeseburgers and Japanese food. You can lock your gear in a locker and walk down to the beach. The
3 of us donned our flippers and walked into the water. Within just a few yards of the 
shore, we were swimming with parrot fish, surgeon fish, trumpet fish, and our favorite, the humuhumunukunukuapua’a. There was iridescent blue-purple coral and a school of tiny yellow fish that vanished into a web of coral as we approached. And most of the time, we were within 50 yards of the shore and in 5-6 feet of water. It was really spectacular. Here is a picture of Isabella on the beach; the coral reef is right behind her.
Back on Saipan, we enjoyed several good meals together. Isabella joined us for tw
o: one very good Italian, and the other a delicious and entertaining Japanese tepanyaki restaurant. This is the cook-at-your table dinner-as-theater that you might be familiar with from the American chain Benihana. You place your order, then the chef brings out all the ingredients and cooks it in front of you. Isabella ordered sauteed escargots with shiitake mushrooms; we also had asparagus, oysters with shiitake and beef tenderloin. The highlight of the meal was the shrimp fried rice: the chef placed each egg on the griddle, cracking the base to hold it steady. Then he flipped them up one by one into his hat, bent over to drop it into his hand, and cracked it onto the hot griddle. He scrambled the eggs on the griddle and stirred them into the rice. It was a lot of fun, and all the food was delicious.
Isabella made some friends at the pool and had a lot of fun splashing around. One of the girls she met lives close by in Tokyo and we hope to get them together for a playdate now that we’re back. She also loved visiting the resident tropical birds, a beautiful blue macaw and a cockatoo named Freddie. Freddie was very friendly, and if you walked over to his cage and called him, he would move to a part of the cage where there was a little opening in the mesh and let you reach in and stroke his feathers. Isabella was very sad to leave him!
As much as we all enjoyed the sun and sand, we all found ourselves feeling somewhat uneasy throughout the trip. It was hard to settle down and relax and we all found ourselves losing our tempers from time to time. I’m sure part of it was the difficulty of travelling with 2 children and working around a baby’s schedule. But I think there was more to it. There was something about going on vacation from Japan that made it feel more foreign, made us feel displaced and unsettled. And where did we fit in within the mishmash of Japanese and American culture? Should we be eating sushi or cheeseburgers? Should we try to speak Japanese, to practice and be polite, or English, to be comfortable?
When it came time to pack up, I didn’t feel the letdown I often feel about returning from a trip. It felt very different, knowing I was not going back to New York. I don’t know if that was because it is always hard to return to New York (I always think there should be a sign at JFK Airport saying “Welcome to America. F*** You.” It would prepare you for the attitude you’re about to encounter!), or because it didn’t really feel like we were going home.
Once we got back to Tokyo, I think something clicked for all of us: this is not a vacation; this is home. I think we’ve all been sailing along feeling as if this was some sort of extended holiday. The reality has begun to sink in this week, and it was a bit of a shock for all of us. Isabella suddenly felt very homesick and began to say for the first time “I want to go home.” I went to the drugstore on Tuesday to look once again for moisturizer and had another panic. What are all these stupid bottles with funny lines on them? Just give me my Oil of Olay and leave me alone! And why can’t I find Cheerios for Juliet?! It didn’t help that Mark flew off to Hong Kong the morning after our return or that Isabella came down with a bad cold and a fever on Thursday night.
But now it is Saturday. Isabella is recovering after staying home one day from school. Mark has returned from Hong Kong, bringing me both Oil of Olay and Bailey’s Irish Creme. Mark and I are planning to go out to dinner tonight, and Isabella has a call planned for tomorrow morning with her best friend Sophia in New York. Hopefully, next week will be easier. And if it’s not, I made some really good chocolate sauce for ice cream last night and there’s lots left over in the refrigerator . . . .
Juliet’s first Japanese Word November 10, 2006
Posted by Kristen in Kids, Language.add a comment
Yesterday morning at Gymboree music class, Juliet handed her blankie to the teacher (see the picture below) and said “dozo.” This means “here you go” in Japanese. Yippee!
Her words in English so far include “baby,” “ball,” “no,” “okay,” and “oh-oh.”
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.
