Rainy day in Hakuba March 24, 2008
Posted by Kristen in Travel.2 comments
Today I’m writing from the lobby of our hotel in Hakuba, Japan–a town in the “Japanese Alps” near Nagano. We planned to have a week of spring skiing here instead of taking a long trip further away in Asia. It seemed like a very good idea when we planned the trip, but now things don’t look so good. After a rather cold winter, things have warmed up significantly over the past couple of weeks. Our first day of skiing was Saturday and I think it was the warmest day I have ever skied. We kept having to stop and take off more layers, and I began to feel sweat drip down my back when riding up on the chair lift. Still, the snow was surprisingly good and the sky was a beautiful, completely clear, deep blue. Alas, I forgot to bring my camera that day. Yesterday it was cloudy but still very warm. Today it’s raining. And so we’re spending the day at the hotel and hoping that tomorrow there will still be some snow left on the mountains. It is Monday. We have paid for hotel rooms through Friday night, and have 4 more days of lift passes.
So now we’ve had two days of skiing in Japan. What is it like to ski in Japan, you ask? Of course, in many ways it’s the same as skiing everywhere. Except that everyone else is Japanese and you can’t read the signs. I was surprised to find in the area we were skiing this weekend that there was no place to sit outdoors. On a gorgeous sunny day like Saturday, I expected to see lots of people outside. If this had been Italy, we’d probably have seen half of the people sitting outside suntanning in T-shirts. Not here. Is it too much like loafing, I wonder? Is skiing okay, as long as you’re working?
Though it didn’t really seem like it at the time, I guess we got in some good exercise yesterday. Some of the trails were pretty challenging with the warming conditions and my thighs did some real work snowplowing behind Isabella on some of the narrow switchback roads. I discovered the real consequences of this at dinner last night.
We had a wonderful sushi dinner in a local restaurant, seated at a low table in a tatami room. Juliet was free to pop up from the table and run around, sneaking behind the screen to the next room (which remained unoccupied). The fish was excellent and the proprietor very friendly. They had a full English menu and he spoke some English, but seemed delighted to find that Isabella could speak Japanese very well (and Mark and I could stumble through a clumsy dinner order). He wanted to know where we were from. When we said America, he wanted to know which part. I told him New York, and he made a face. He came back a few seconds later and asked in Japanese if we were Mets fans or Yankees fans. Mark replied “Yankees” with no hesitation, which produced a big smile and much goodwill. The Japanese are very proud of their countryman, pitcher Matsumoto.
I was feeling very pleased with myself for managing to stay seated on my knees for much of the dinner. Wow, I thought, look how Japanese I’m becoming! Just at the end of the meal, Juliet had to go to the bathroom. So I unfolded myself and tried to step down to put on my shoes. I couldn’t stand up! A full day’s skiing followed by an hour on my knees proved to be too much for my middle-aged American leg muscles. The proprietor got a good laugh out of my stumbling walk. Though his laughter was friendly and good-natured, I imagine it will make a good story for him to tell his Japanese customers.
Soon I’m off with Isabella to the friendly neighborhood conbini (convenience store) and/or 100 yen shop, in search of some amusements for an unplanned day indoors. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and we’ll give it one more shot on the mountain. And then we shall see. A visit to a nearby castle en route back to Tokyo, perhaps? Ah well, these are the perils of spring skiing.
Exotic dinner at home, familiar food in an exotic place March 5, 2008
Posted by Kristen in Asia, Food, Travel.add a comment
Another pair of adventures: an exotic dinner at home, and familiar food in an exotic place.
For my birthday dinner a few weeks ago we decided to make Shabu-shabu, which is a sort of Japanese fondue. I bought a special tabletop portable gas burner just for this purpose. Having an open flame on the dining room table is, like many other things in Japan, it is a little alarming in its lack of American-style safety mechanisms. Yet you can get a good rolling boil in the pot that lasts a long time. Into the pot goes water and a piece of kelp, which is removed just before the water boils. Then you dip in paper-thin slices of meat (often beef, but we used pork) and a bunch of other things: Chinese cabbage, leeks, tofu, chrysanthemum leaves, shiitake mushrooms. The meat you can just swish around a bit, but many of the other things are dunked in and left to simmer. When they seem done you fish them out with chopsticks, dip them in a sauce, and eat. We had one sesame sauce and another made with rice vinegar, soy sauce and mirin (sweet rice wine). For such simple ingredients, it was really outstanding!
Following our homey Japanese weekend, we set out on another adventure abroad. Mark had an extended business trip to Hong Kong which straddled a long weekend for Isabella’s school, so we decided to join him for a few days. I’ve now travelled alone with the girls several times internationally and I think I’m getting a handle on it. There’s no getting around the fact that it takes a very long time to get anywhere from here. We took the subway to the train to the airport, leaving the house about 4-1/2 hours before our flight. It turns out that the train is a good way to travel with children because there are interesting things to look at, they can get up and move around, you can buy snacks from the cart, and (I learned later how very important this part is) you don’t get carsick. Check-in and security are wonderfully civilized here in comparison to U.S. airports. Sometimes (and this was one of those times) I’m even taken out of the regular line and escorted to the front because I’m travelling alone with children. The flight is 5-1/2 hours. Amazingly enough, that no longer seems to be such a long time. And so we arrived at the hotel about 11 hours after leaving home. The room at the Landmark Mandarin Oriental, where Mark stays for business, had a huge round tub. The girls were delighted to frolic in there together at the end of the long day.
Hong Kong is an interesting place. This was our second visit, and I still don’t quite know what to do with the kids there. There don’t seem to me to be any obvious tourist things to do. After living in Tokyo, the city doesn’t seem so exotic to me. A great many people speak English, and it seems you can use English in any of the shops and restaurants in the Central part of the city. Many signs are in English, and products are labelled in English as well. Going to a drugstore here makes me feel a bit like a kid in a candy store: I can finally read the packages, so I want to buy everything! This time we took a ride on the Star Ferry to Kowloon again. At about 40 cents for adults, it’s one of the best tourist bargains anywhere. While there, we also visited one museum and spent some time in a children’s English language bookstore. The city is always changing, making it continually new and hence less foreign. I was astonished to see how dramatic these changes can be: Mark has told me that they keep adding landfill to extend the waterfront, and the shoreline has moved quite some distance out since he first began visiting in 1989. Here’s an example of the expansion in action, as we watched from the walkway to the ferry. Next time, this walkway will go over solid highway.
Here are the girls posing in front of giant inflatable models of the mascots for the Beijing 2008 Olympics
We also visited Stanley Market on the South side of the island. En route there in the taxi, I was reminded why train travel is so much better (see above). And I was reminded of the conflict between travelling light (I was wearing my only pair of jeans) and being prepared! After cleaning up and calming down a bit, we enjoyed a nice walk around the market and beachfront. It was much prettier than I expected. I think it wasn’t the case even 10 years ago, but now in addition to the market filled with very inexpensive shops, the waterfront is lined with several attractive restaurants. Mark and the girls climbed on the rocks for awhile and we enjoyed some very welcome sun and warmth.
Mark and I had dinner one night with a couple of his former colleagues from New York, who moved to Hong Kong in January as expats. It was a lot of fun to have a regular dinner out with familiar people from home. We ate at an Italian restaurant which felt as if it could have been in New York. The menus were all in English, the waiters spoke perfect English, the portions were large, and they insisted on continually assaulting us with enormous pepper mills! How strange it felt to travel further into another strange and exotic country and yet feel closer to home.
Weekend in Hanoi September 25, 2007
Posted by Kristen in Asia, Travel, Vietnam.1 comment so far
Last year we didn’t manage to do nearly as much travel in Asia as we would have liked. So we decided to start this school year off with a trip as soon as possible. The third weekend in September was a long weekend, and we decided to go to Hanoi, Vietnam.
The decision was very deeply thought out and scientific. It went something like this:
Mark: “Let’s go somewhere interesting in Asia for the long weekend.”
Kristen: “Okay, where can we get to in 3 days?”
M: “South Korea, China, Hong Kong and Vietnam.”
K: “Vietnam sounds cool. Let’s try Vietnam.”
M: “Should we go to Hanoi or Saigon?”
K: “I don’t know, which one do you think we should go to?”
M: “Hanoi is in the North and so it may be a little less hot; it’s also smaller and less spoiled.”
K: “Okay, let’s go to Hanoi.”
One of the reasons we didn’t travel very much last year was that every time Isabella had a day or two off from school, Mark had to go on a business trip. And lo and behold, it happened again. Mark had to be in Hong Kong for 10 days spanning the weekend we wanted to travel. It was time to take the leap and try out traveling separately. On Friday night, Mark flew from Hong Kong and we flew from Tokyo, arriving a few hours later. On Monday night, Mark left us to return to Hong Kong and we headed home by ourselves. It was a tiring flight of nearly 5 hours each way, and the return flight was a very short overnight. But it worked, and nothing went awry, and now we know that we can manage a family trip to an
exotic destination even if we can’t travel together.
It helped a great deal that traveling within Japan is easy and comfortable. On Friday afternoon Juliet and I picked up Isabella at school and went to Ikebukuro Station to catch the express train to the airport. Isabella and I go through this station every week on the day I pick her up from school, so (though it’s big and can be confusing) we know it well. The train was exactly on time, comfortable, and a nice lady came by selling snacks. Juliet was happy to be able to get up and move around. We had no suitcases with us because I had sent ours ahead by takkyubin, a wonderful delivery service in Japan that allows you to send pretty much anything, anywhere. When we got to the terminal, we just went to the appropriate counter and gave them the receipt, and they handed us our suitcase. We then had to roll it only a short distance to the check-in counter. And here in Japan, they still treat mothers traveling with small children nicely: we were even allowed to check in at the Business Class desk.
We arrived in Hanoi at around 11:00 pm local time, which was 1:00 am Tokyo time. This was when we hit our only real snag of the trip: the hotel did not have adjoining rooms as we had requested. So Mark bunked with Isabella and Juliet and I shared a room. Not ideal, but it worked. Our hotel was the beautiful and historic (Hotel Sofitel Metropole), built in 1901. Our rooms were in the old part of the hotel and still had many beautiful original details. The lobby was decorated with items such as an old Louis Vuitton steamer trunk, and the house phone was a working antique. After about five minutes of ooing and ahhing at the elegant furnishings, we all collapsed into bed.
We spent the next two and a half days exploring the city and gazing in awe at all the new and surprising sights. Here are some of the things we found most interesting:
Most everyone rides motor scooters. My very non-scientific survey put the ratio of scooters to cars at about 30:1. It was very common to see two or more people on a scooter, and parents often rode with small children standing up. This boy is standing on the running board, but we saw many toddlers standing on the seat between their parents.
Much activity takes place right on the street. Here is a typical local restaurant: the kitchen is the table on left, and the diners sit on small plastic stools on the sidewalk. There is an indoor part as well, but no one uses it; they prefer to be outside.
And here is a restaurant in transit: the twin baskets hold both food and stove, ready to be prepared wherever she chooses to set it down.
Stores as well were often little more than a display case at the edge of the sidewalk. I guessed that this was a convenience store.
The city is lush and green. This large lake is right in the center of town, surrounded by trees.
It was funny to see shops selling Communist paraphernalia, especially for those of us who grew up during the Cold War.
We went to see a traditional Vietnamese water puppet show at the Thang Long Water Puppet Theater, which was really interesting and entertaining. Set to traditional Vietnamese music, the show is done entirely in the water with puppeteers standing behind a screen and maneuvering brightly painted wooden puppets on long sticks. We got the impression that they perform the same set of 10 or 12 scenes each time. There was a boat race, there were snakes, a pair of dancing phoenixes, sparklers, dancing fairies, and a monkey that climbed a tree. This website gives a complete explanation, along with pictures. (You may even be able to view a Quicktime video of the show, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work.) Unfortunately, Juliet found the very first puppet to be scary and so she hid–first against my shoulder and later folded up completely in my lap–for the entire rest of the show. I was very sorry she was afraid, especially since I was sure she would have enjoyed much of the rest of the show. Here’s one of the pictures I managed to take while holding her (I love my digital camera, but I still find it a big challenge in difficult lighting situations!).
We visited the excellent Vietnam Museum of Ethnology on our second full day. We were surprised to find that in addition to the very interesting exhibits on the culture of some of the many different ethnic groups within Vietnam, there was also an area devoted to tremendous difficulties in the lives of ordinary people under the Communist regime. One area displayed a recreation of the apartment of a mid-level government official and his family, consisting of 4 children and mother-in-law. The apartment was about 300 square feet. The placard (written in English and French as well as Vietnamese) explained that the family raised pigs in the bathroom in order to make extra money, a common practice at the time not only in the country but in city apartments as well. Although we’re all raised to believe that our country is the most free and open in the world, do we have museums that are this explicitly critical of the government from the recent past? Visiting a place like this certainly gives one perspective.
Travelling with a two-year-old gave us the excuse to head back to the hotel after lunch and chill out by the pool. It was a nice mix of exploring and relaxing, especially for the girls.
We enjoyed several good meals. Although I would have liked very much to try out one of the places such as the one pictured above, I wasn’t willing to risk anyone getting sick (and it would be impossible for me to take care of the children and travel alone if I picked up a nasty bug). So we restricted ourselves to “tourist” restaurants, which were still absurdly cheap. One of our dinners came to about $14 for all of us, including two beers apiece for the adults! We ate lots of spring rolls and fried noodles and Mark enjoyed some of the local specialty pho, which is a soup with chicken and rice noodles. I was surprised to find that the rice was quite different from Japanese rice: the grains are much smaller, and it is considerably less sticky. Oh, and the coffee! I loved the coffee. It is very strong, and is served with sweetened condensed milk. On the last day we had lunch in a restaurant where you get to sit in chairs made from rickshaws.
There are still not a lot of tourists in Vietnam, and we saw very few other Westerners. The Vietnamese people were friendly and open and many stopped to look at Juliet, often touching her or even pinching her cheek. They would ask us where we were from and seem generally interested in talking to us. It was an interesting contrast to Japan where we are also very different from everyone else, but where people rarely talk to us and often don’t seem to notice.
On Monday afternoon we bade Mark farewell from the poolside and he headed off to the airport for his flight to Hong Kong. We were able to keep one of our rooms until late in the evening (that is, by paying for an extra night), which enabled me to manage the midnight flight back to Tokyo. The girls and I splurged on a hotel dinner and then they watched TV in the room while I packed. We left for the airport at around 9:00 pm and encountered our only rain of the weekend in the form of a dramatic thunderstorm en route. It was then that I realized the main disadvantage of travelling by motor scooter, as I watched our fellow travellers on the highway huddled under ponchos! The cab driver made a token effort to overcharge me for the trip, but didn’t persist when I challenged him. At $10 for a 45-minute drive, though, it would hardly have been a crime. Dressed in jeans for a long airplane trip, we perspired as we browsed the few airport shops in the barely air-conditioned small airport. Finally we found ourselves on board our very comfortable JAL 747 where Isabella soon busied herself with her individual video screen and Juliet, after half an hour of cartoons, fell fast asleep.
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.
Saipan November 11, 2006
Posted by Kristen in Kids, Travel.add a comment
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 . . . .
Beginnings October 8, 2006
Posted by Kristen in Kids, Language, School, Tokyo Adventures, Travel.add a comment
It seems that it’s about time I started recording some of our adventures and thoughts about our new life in Tokyo. A blog seems the best way to do it. Here, then, begins my novice attempt.
To start, I’m going to cheat a bit and copy from some emails I sent recently. Chances are, you’ve already read what follows. I apologize for the repition; still, it makes this a more complete journal.
How it all began . . . .
Here we are, at last, settled in Tokyo. Mark was given the opportunity to move here for a few years to head up computer system development in several areas for the Asia region of his company. We think we will be here for about 3 years. We are really excited to have the opportunity to live in Japan, especially for the opportunities it will give for Isabella (who will be 8 in a week) and Juliet (now 14 months) to learn a new language and experience another culture. Once we made the decision to relocate, we had to move fast in order to get Isabella settled in school as close to the start of the year as possible. Here’s what we’ve been up to!
After the possibility of this move first came up in mid-June, we had a whirlwind of a summer. Following a trip to Glacier National Park with the Poppele family and a short visit to Seattle to visit friends, we returned to New York to begin the enormous task of preparing for the big move. We came to Tokyo for a week in August to look for housing and find a school for Isabella. Back in New York, we spent some time at the summer house we had already rented in Croton-on-Hudson and tried to see friends and tie up loose ends. We spent Labor Day weekend in Mayfield, Kentucky with Mark’s family. Isabella began the school year at her old school in New York while I tried to sort through all our worldly possessions, figure out Juliet’s vaccination schedule, get fluoride vitamins, take a truckload of stuff to Goodwill, sell the car (making 2 visits to the DMV in the process), and plan a farewell party for Isabella, just to name a few things. It was a crazy couple of weeks, ending with 3 nights at the lovely Holiday Inn Chinatown after our furniture had been packed up and sent to storage. Our New York apartment is now empty and awaiting tenants to whom we hope to sublet.
We left New York on Saturday, September 16 and arrived in Tokyo on Sunday the 17th.
We were able to move right into our apartment with rental furniture, dishes and linens. Then we began the enormous task of getting settled here! We applied for our residence permits. We got the all-important cell phones. We have finally bought some furniture of our own and expect it to be delivered next week. Isabella has started school and Juliet is enrolled in a class at Gymboree. We have found a Japanese babysitter for Juliet. Mark had just begun to get settled at work when he left on Saturday for a business trip to New York.
Every day is an adventure, and usually exhausting. It is very frustrating to be unable to communicate, and even more frustrating to be unable to read! I went to the drugstore to buy lotion, and couldn’t find any. Dozens of bottles labeled in Japanese, and no clue as to what they contained. Some things are easier, such as baby food, which has helpful pictures of the ingredients on the label.
Isabella is in 3rd grade at the New International School. She has Japanese as an Additional Language every day. Her regular classroom has a both an English and a Japanese teacher, and lessons are given in both languages. Every child learns violin as part of music class, so she has been working hard on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The curriculum revolves around themes and they are currently studying the ocean. In the first week they made an enormous accordion book with the help of a professional artist. The school is not close, and she has a bus ride of more than an hour each way. It is a long and tiring day. But she has made several friends and is happy at school, and we are delighted with the opportunities it provides.
Juliet has a terrific new babysitter named Noriko. She is the mother of an 8-year-old boy and lives nearby. She and her husband are separated and she wants to work to become independent, so she’s babysitting while studying at home for a license in early childhood education. She will speak to Juliet only in Japanese, and last week went to the library to get some Japanese picture books for them to read together. She’s also an enormous help to me. Last week, I planned a furniture shopping trip by myself to Ikea (more on that adventure later!) and asked her somewhat casually if she knew how to take the train there. The next day, she arrived with the instructions written out in complete detail: which station to go to, which side of the street to enter on, the exact fare, and every single stop along the route written out! She’s a real treasure and I feel incredibly lucky.
Mark and I will begin our language lessons soon with the JAL Academy (that’s JAL as in Japan Airlines–I guess they have to train a lot of people in Japanese!). We will each have a teacher who comes to us a few times a week. As it turns out, it is pretty easy to get around here without speaking Japanese (unless, of course, you want to buy lotion). That’s nice for now, but it means we will have to put a concentrated effort into studying if we really want to learn the language. And we really do! I want to learn Japanese just for the fun of learning a new language, and so that I can talk to people here and learn more about the country. And if we’re here long enough, I really want to send Juliet to a Japanese preschool. That means I’ll have to be able to communicate somewhat with the teachers. I hope if I start now, I’ll be able to do that in a few years.
