It was fun to call my parents in England this evening.
"Did you feel the earthquake? Are you all right?"
Yes, according to the BBC there was a magnitude 5.2 earthquake in England in the middle of last night. England doesn't normally have earthquakes - they're one of those things that may well be regular occurrences in those funny foreign climes, but aren't quite the done thing at home. So usually it's Japan that's shaking, and my mother who's on the phone the next morning trying valiantly to sound unconcerned. The quake was apparently about level 3 intensity in my parents' town, so this time I thought it would be fun if I turned the tables for once.
It turns out they'd slept right through it. Not only that, as they hadn't watched the news yet they didn't even know there had been an earthquake at all. In fact, as soon as she heard the word "earthquake," Mum immediately assumed that there must have been one in Japan and I was calling her to reassure her.
It's actually true to form for our family. The only time Dad ever visited Japan, back in 1992, he slept through an earthquake while he was staying with me in Saitama. And I myself must have been the only person in London to have slept through the hurricane of 1989, when I couldn't understand why public transport wasn't running and there were branches and window glass all over the road as I tried to make my way to work the next morning...
I'm very glad my parents are all right. And next time there's a strongish earthquake somewhere in Japan and they call to see if I'm still alive, I'll be able to tell them not to worry as they've actually slept through one just as big themselves.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Big change coming
When we bought our house, nearly two years ago, Kentaro said that at some point he'd probably have to go and work at a hospital further away than commuting distance, so he could get his specialist qualification as a pediatric surgeon.
OK, I said, that's fine. We'll do tanshin funin.
Tanshin funin is a fairly common Japanese custom. If a man gets transfered by his company to another part of Japan, frequently he'll go by himself, leaving wife and children in the place they're used to. At first I was a bit shocked by this - from a Western perspective it seemed too much like separation - but now, as a homeowner with kids in the education system, I can see why it works. The housing market works differently from the way it does in the UK and the US; houses depreciate in value like used cars, and land prices have only just stabilized after more than ten years of constant decline, so selling a house inevitably involves losing money. And moving to a new area and new schools is hard on children, particularly for biracial families who inevitably attract unwanted attention.
Louise George Kittaka, another foreign wife, has written a fun article about her own experience with tanshin funin in Tokyo Families. Like her, I've come round to the idea that it can be a positive option, so when Kentaro first mentioned the possibility of his having to move the words fairly tripped off my tongue. At that point, of course, it was all completely hypothetical, some far-off future that might or might not roll around one day.
Now that day's coming. Back last summer, Kentaro's boss and mentor suggested he might consider moving to a children's hospital in the Tokai region, about two hours away by shinkansen. In the Japanese medical world, if your boss makes a suggestion like that, it's pretty close to an order. Kentaro went up to see the hospital and meet the people, and came back impressed; they were equally impressed with him, and offered him a job. Initially he'll be on a one-year contract, which may or may not be extendable; as he needs to work for three years in an accredited institution as part of gaining specialist qualifications, he's hoping to stay there that long at least.
The hospital is in a rural area outside a provincial city. There's very little there. There won't be many other English-speaking families, and there's certainly no international Saturday school like the one Kei attends now. The kids will stand out far more than they do in relatively cosmopolitan Osaka (and they get enough comments here as it is). The boys are thoroughly settled into school and kindergarten respectively, and have made friends in the neighborhood as well as getting involved with local activities - soccer club, calligraphy class, piano lessons. The thought of uprooting them to go to a place where they'll almost certainly stick out as the only biracial children, and then to move them again after some indeterminate period, just doesn't make sense.
That's one reason - the good one - that Kentaro is moving up to Tokai while we're staying here. A more selfish reason is that I love our house too much to want to leave it. Since the age of 17 I've never lived in the same house for more than three years at a time, and that only in our last rented place - before that I'd been moving at least every two years, and often after six months or a year. Now, for the first time, I have a place that's at least partly my own (if you don't count the fact that we've sold our souls to the bank to buy it), and ever since moving in I've been determinedly putting down roots. The thought of selling it or renting it out and going back to poor-quality rented housing fills my gut with something that feels like a lead weight. (Any place we might rent would have to be poor quality, as having a cat rules us out with 99% of landlords.)
Kentaro is ten years younger than me, and as we married and had children while he was still a student he hasn't had the chances to travel and explore options that I have. Now he's ready to spread his wings, just when I'm ready to build a nest for the family. I'd never really felt the full force of our age difference until now. But I don't want to try and stop him moving on; it's important both for his career and for him as a person. So for the next one or two years, at least, we'll be living in different places, trying to work out how his next job can bring us together again.
OK, I said, that's fine. We'll do tanshin funin.
Tanshin funin is a fairly common Japanese custom. If a man gets transfered by his company to another part of Japan, frequently he'll go by himself, leaving wife and children in the place they're used to. At first I was a bit shocked by this - from a Western perspective it seemed too much like separation - but now, as a homeowner with kids in the education system, I can see why it works. The housing market works differently from the way it does in the UK and the US; houses depreciate in value like used cars, and land prices have only just stabilized after more than ten years of constant decline, so selling a house inevitably involves losing money. And moving to a new area and new schools is hard on children, particularly for biracial families who inevitably attract unwanted attention.
Louise George Kittaka, another foreign wife, has written a fun article about her own experience with tanshin funin in Tokyo Families. Like her, I've come round to the idea that it can be a positive option, so when Kentaro first mentioned the possibility of his having to move the words fairly tripped off my tongue. At that point, of course, it was all completely hypothetical, some far-off future that might or might not roll around one day.
Now that day's coming. Back last summer, Kentaro's boss and mentor suggested he might consider moving to a children's hospital in the Tokai region, about two hours away by shinkansen. In the Japanese medical world, if your boss makes a suggestion like that, it's pretty close to an order. Kentaro went up to see the hospital and meet the people, and came back impressed; they were equally impressed with him, and offered him a job. Initially he'll be on a one-year contract, which may or may not be extendable; as he needs to work for three years in an accredited institution as part of gaining specialist qualifications, he's hoping to stay there that long at least.
The hospital is in a rural area outside a provincial city. There's very little there. There won't be many other English-speaking families, and there's certainly no international Saturday school like the one Kei attends now. The kids will stand out far more than they do in relatively cosmopolitan Osaka (and they get enough comments here as it is). The boys are thoroughly settled into school and kindergarten respectively, and have made friends in the neighborhood as well as getting involved with local activities - soccer club, calligraphy class, piano lessons. The thought of uprooting them to go to a place where they'll almost certainly stick out as the only biracial children, and then to move them again after some indeterminate period, just doesn't make sense.
That's one reason - the good one - that Kentaro is moving up to Tokai while we're staying here. A more selfish reason is that I love our house too much to want to leave it. Since the age of 17 I've never lived in the same house for more than three years at a time, and that only in our last rented place - before that I'd been moving at least every two years, and often after six months or a year. Now, for the first time, I have a place that's at least partly my own (if you don't count the fact that we've sold our souls to the bank to buy it), and ever since moving in I've been determinedly putting down roots. The thought of selling it or renting it out and going back to poor-quality rented housing fills my gut with something that feels like a lead weight. (Any place we might rent would have to be poor quality, as having a cat rules us out with 99% of landlords.)
Kentaro is ten years younger than me, and as we married and had children while he was still a student he hasn't had the chances to travel and explore options that I have. Now he's ready to spread his wings, just when I'm ready to build a nest for the family. I'd never really felt the full force of our age difference until now. But I don't want to try and stop him moving on; it's important both for his career and for him as a person. So for the next one or two years, at least, we'll be living in different places, trying to work out how his next job can bring us together again.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
I love Skype...
... it means my mother can read the boys a bedtime story from thousands of miles away.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Catching up (3): Kindergarten play
Dan's class at kindergarten got to put on a play and give a musical performance last weekend. It was pretty impressive, especially compared with the daycare performances I've been used to. Maybe "impressive" is the wrong word. "Ultra-choreographed" might be equally accurate.
Until last April, both Kei and Dan attended daycare in central Osaka, where we lived before moving here. Daycare and kindergarten are two different worlds in Japan. Daycares (hoikuen) are run for working parents and comes under the auspices of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, whereas kindergartens (youchien) are officially educational establishments supervised by the Ministry of Education.When Kei started elementary school I tried to move Dan into a daycare in our present city, but waiting lists for good places are long, and he didn't get into any of the ones I would have liked him to go to. So we made the decision to switch him to kindergarten, and were lucky enough to persuade the principal at a highly regarded local kindergarten to allow him to enter at very short notice.
The daycare in Osaka was run by a Christian organization, and they put on a show each Christmas that included both a nativity play by the five- and six-year-olds and a performance of some sort by each class, including the younger children. The plays by the younger classes tended to be rather chaotic affairs, with lots of running around and singing songs at the tops of their voices. Only the oldest class got to say individual lines, and those just in the nativity play. I'd always thought that was fine - the kids enjoyed themselves, there wasn't much pressure, and it was all nicely age-appropriate. I had no idea that more could even be expected from four-year-olds, until the kindergarten play last weekend.
I think I've mentioned before that Dan's kindergarten is very big on "training." You could see it immediately in the way the kids filed in in their identical uniforms to begin the event with musical numbers, standing carefully in their prescribed places and looking straight ahead. A few gave quick waves to their parents, but among the three pages of information that we'd been given in advance were strict instructions not to wave back, as this would distract the children from their performance. Dan found us with his eyes - you could tell from his smile he'd seen where we were - but quickly returned to his concentrated pose.
They played percussion instruments in perfect time to the song "Bibbety Bobbety Boo" and sang a couple of songs before bowing in unison and filing offstage to change for their play, "The Giant Turnip." The turnip itself had been a class craft project the previous term, and was quite impressive in its own right.
I was amazed by how much the kids achieved in the play. Not only did each of them have at least one line of their own to say, there were also several songs and dances by small groups. Dan was one of three children playing the sun. He did really well, concentrating intently and obviously making a huge effort to get his lines and the little group's song and dance right.
The kindergarten had adapted the story so that not only the people and animals but also the butterflies, the sun, and finally the class teacher had to join the line before the turnip finally came out. Then of course they had to end with a final song.
The whole thing left me slightly dazed. Part of me was really impressed that the children had been able to concentrate so well and remember everything they had to do - out of a class of 23, only three or four were too shy or forgetful to get their lines right. Another part, though, was slightly nostalgic for the vitality and semi-chaos of the daycare performances. Should we really be expecting that degree of achievement from three- and four-year-olds? It all felt a little over the top. But it seems that by putting Dan in a "good" kindergarten, this is the choice we've made.
Until last April, both Kei and Dan attended daycare in central Osaka, where we lived before moving here. Daycare and kindergarten are two different worlds in Japan. Daycares (hoikuen) are run for working parents and comes under the auspices of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, whereas kindergartens (youchien) are officially educational establishments supervised by the Ministry of Education.When Kei started elementary school I tried to move Dan into a daycare in our present city, but waiting lists for good places are long, and he didn't get into any of the ones I would have liked him to go to. So we made the decision to switch him to kindergarten, and were lucky enough to persuade the principal at a highly regarded local kindergarten to allow him to enter at very short notice.
The daycare in Osaka was run by a Christian organization, and they put on a show each Christmas that included both a nativity play by the five- and six-year-olds and a performance of some sort by each class, including the younger children. The plays by the younger classes tended to be rather chaotic affairs, with lots of running around and singing songs at the tops of their voices. Only the oldest class got to say individual lines, and those just in the nativity play. I'd always thought that was fine - the kids enjoyed themselves, there wasn't much pressure, and it was all nicely age-appropriate. I had no idea that more could even be expected from four-year-olds, until the kindergarten play last weekend.
I think I've mentioned before that Dan's kindergarten is very big on "training." You could see it immediately in the way the kids filed in in their identical uniforms to begin the event with musical numbers, standing carefully in their prescribed places and looking straight ahead. A few gave quick waves to their parents, but among the three pages of information that we'd been given in advance were strict instructions not to wave back, as this would distract the children from their performance. Dan found us with his eyes - you could tell from his smile he'd seen where we were - but quickly returned to his concentrated pose.
They played percussion instruments in perfect time to the song "Bibbety Bobbety Boo" and sang a couple of songs before bowing in unison and filing offstage to change for their play, "The Giant Turnip." The turnip itself had been a class craft project the previous term, and was quite impressive in its own right.
I was amazed by how much the kids achieved in the play. Not only did each of them have at least one line of their own to say, there were also several songs and dances by small groups. Dan was one of three children playing the sun. He did really well, concentrating intently and obviously making a huge effort to get his lines and the little group's song and dance right.
The kindergarten had adapted the story so that not only the people and animals but also the butterflies, the sun, and finally the class teacher had to join the line before the turnip finally came out. Then of course they had to end with a final song.
The whole thing left me slightly dazed. Part of me was really impressed that the children had been able to concentrate so well and remember everything they had to do - out of a class of 23, only three or four were too shy or forgetful to get their lines right. Another part, though, was slightly nostalgic for the vitality and semi-chaos of the daycare performances. Should we really be expecting that degree of achievement from three- and four-year-olds? It all felt a little over the top. But it seems that by putting Dan in a "good" kindergarten, this is the choice we've made.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Catching up (2): Kachoen
These are some of my favorite recent photographs of the boys, taken on a day out a couple of weeks ago to Kachoen on Port Island in Kobe. "Kachoen" means "flower and bird park," and that's literally what it is - a huge, warm greenhouse filled with colorful flowers and with several areas where you can watch, feed, and even touch exotic birds. It was a great antidote to the winter blues on a cold, wet Sunday afternoon. (Even the penguins were shivering - they're a South African variety, and they liked the Kansai sleet as little as we did!)
Monday, February 11, 2008
Catching up (1): Skating
I'm going to try and post every day or two this week, to catch up on what's been happening with us this year so far. To start with, here's a clip of the boys and Kentaro on the ice, taken in January when we visited Kentaro's parents after coming back from England. Though there's no rink within easy distance of where we live, there's one very close to their house, and skating has become one of our regular activities whenever we visit in winter. The boys' different personalities are really apparent here: Dan toddles quietly around like a little penguin as he concentrates on staying upright, while Kei swoops,cavorts, twirls, and frequently falls flat on his bottom. Solid achievement versus thrills and spills - if this carries on into adulthood, it's easy to imagine who's more likely to have the conventional career, and who is going to have an unpredictable, rollercoaster ride in life. (Note to self: MUST stop pigeonholing these boys according to my own narrative of who they are, before they start to believe it themselves...)
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Better late than never
The mood for blogging comes and goes, but with the coming of winter it's seemed to disappear into hibernation. I love browsing what other people are writing, but never seem to pull the energy together to put anything on myself. And the longer I leave it, the more guilty I feel, so the less I want to think about it. Then things happen that I do want to blog about, but I can't because there's other stuff that needs putting up first, so the list gets longer and longer, and the guilt grows exponentially ... ah, the joys of being an inveterate procrastinator.
So here's some pictures from Christmas in England that will at least start to clear the backlog. OK, we've already been back for six weeks, and a lot has happened since, but hopefully I'll get around to that a bit more quickly once these are up.
I took the kids out of school and kindergarten for the final week of term, and flew back with them to spend Christmas and New Year with my parents. The British Christmas experience is un-recreatable in Japan, and it was something I really wanted the boys to have as part of their childhood memories. The last time we were in England for Christmas was when Dan was a small baby and Kei was three, so neither of them really remembered it. This time they were both old enough to appreciate the tree and the turkey, mince pies and Christmas cake, a party in the municipal hall and the pantomime at the theatre. We managed to fit in seeing my brother and his family several times, as well as making a couple of visits to old friends.
Kentaro used his New Year's holiday to join us just for the last four days. The poor guy didn't even have time to get over jetlag before we had to leave again - but at least he did get to see my parents for the first time in a couple of years.
The Christmas tree.
Making the Christmas cake.
The finished result.
My father carving the Christmas turkey.
What's in the cracker?
A keyring!
So here's some pictures from Christmas in England that will at least start to clear the backlog. OK, we've already been back for six weeks, and a lot has happened since, but hopefully I'll get around to that a bit more quickly once these are up.
I took the kids out of school and kindergarten for the final week of term, and flew back with them to spend Christmas and New Year with my parents. The British Christmas experience is un-recreatable in Japan, and it was something I really wanted the boys to have as part of their childhood memories. The last time we were in England for Christmas was when Dan was a small baby and Kei was three, so neither of them really remembered it. This time they were both old enough to appreciate the tree and the turkey, mince pies and Christmas cake, a party in the municipal hall and the pantomime at the theatre. We managed to fit in seeing my brother and his family several times, as well as making a couple of visits to old friends.
Kentaro used his New Year's holiday to join us just for the last four days. The poor guy didn't even have time to get over jetlag before we had to leave again - but at least he did get to see my parents for the first time in a couple of years.
The Christmas tree.
Making the Christmas cake.
The finished result.
My father carving the Christmas turkey.
What's in the cracker?
A keyring!
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