Maia loves Anpanman

MVI_6344
Originally uploaded by sarahfrederick1

Here's Maia back in Boston enjoying the Anpanman show. She loves Baikinman (Bacteria Man).

Big Welcome Home

Well, we got back at the end of July. I didn’t really finish my Japan blog posts, and will soon post a bunch that are already drafted. Including my other superhero entry and information about places to play with toddlers in Kyoto.

But just an update:

By the end of the year in Kyoto Sam speaks Japanese slightly better than English, definitely with a more perfect accent. Maia is really just taking off in terms of speaking, but most of her words are Japanese, including the new sentences she is starting to produce here in Vermont where we’ve come to recoup from the trip. She understands a lot in English, and is also picking up things quickly that she hears around her like “OKAY!!” and “ABCDEFG.” Seeing letters (or Sesame Street characters) she often says “ABC ya” Meaning, “it’s the ABCs” in Kansai Japan dialect.

We survived the flight back though with some crying and Maia beating the head of a passenger in front of us with a free fan from McDonald’s. Sam only fell asleep during the last 30 minutes of the 12-hour Pacific flight and had to be carried off the plane by a lovely Japan Airlines stewardess. Probably to the envy of many adults, but I had too much to carry to take photos of this for posterity. American Airlines sitting me separately from the kids and then criticizing me for that (having a different last name) was a nice welcome back to American service culture. US immigration and customs were really nice, and allowed my huge collection of children’s curry rice and furikake (season packets to sprinkle on rice). I suppose stuff decorated with Anpanman couldn’t be too dangerous, though I don’t know about the Bacteria man ones...

Last week I decided to embrace being back by going to a Walmart. Sam had the appropriate expression on his face:


The cereal aisle was as big as our entire Fresco supermarket in Kyoto.



The tofu was not quite the same – I think its expiration date was more than a month away, while tofu in Kyoto is generally eaten a day or two after it is made. (If you don’t like US supermarket tofu, you might like Kyoto tofu.) Analogies would be a Keebler artificial strawberry wafer and a pint of freshly picked strawberries, except I suppose that the strawberry wafer is closer to tasting good and also less healthy than the bad tofu. Speaking of strawberries – I also found this interesting product.

They don’t have that in Kyoto, even though they try to make soy milk everything for the tourists (soy latte, soy milk donuts, and so on).



And the Oreo section was bigger than ALL of the shelf space at our favorite local Kyoto bakery, Croix-Rousse, which had better baguettes than we can usually get in Boston and nice selection of sandwiches on sesame rolls with filings like pate de campagne, smoked salmon, or roast pork. It’s run by a chef and his pipe organist wife who met when they were in Lyon. OK, Woodsville, NH isn’t the cultural capital of the United States, or where such a couple would end up, so this is not a fair comparison. And I must admit that I bought a package of Oreos and ate most of them. This is a comparison between a Japanese package of Oreos that I bought in Narita Airport and an American one.



The price is pretty similar – around $2.50; size more than twice as BIG.

But Sam intelligently chose to eat three ears of sweet early corn.


And go swimming when it wasn't too cold!

Characters 1: Anpan Man

Maia is saying more and more words and short sentences now, but among her very first words was "Anpanman."
Bean Paste Bread Man!

Not unlike Elmo in the US, Anpanman is a ubiquitous (and sometimes LARGE) character with mysterious appeal to very small children, whether they have seen the show or not.


At Hirakata Amusement Park

So what is anpan?


"An" is an ingredient in most Japanese sweets, a paste made from adzuki beans and a lot of sugar. "Pan" is from the Portuguese for bread. The original was supposedly created in the late 1860s in Tokyo in an attempt to make bread more appealing to Japanese tastes. Apparently, the key change was not putting an paste into the bread, but rather using sakadane, usually used in the making of rice sake, as the leavening for the bread. Thus was born Anpan

I have eaten anpan at the shop most closely connected with its origins - Kimuraya. Their anpan really is yummy. A friend 20 years my senior pointed out that the price has stayed close to 100 yen per bun for a long time (a bit more than a dollar) but the buns have gotten smaller and smaller.

In the animated show and related books and comics, various carbohydrate characters and bacteria battle it out. Anpanman's motto is "Love, Justice, Bravery" and indeed he is brave and loved by all. Some of his good friends are Melonpannachan (Melon Bread Girl), Karepanman (Curry Bread Man - hot-tempered but good), and Kuriimupanda (Cream Bread).


Baikinman

Our antagonist is Baikinman (Bacteria Man) who, along with his henchmen like Kabirunrun (mold guys - especially popular right now during the humid early summer), try to rot food and kids' teeth. Among the slew of tie in products are, of course, toothpaste and antibacterial ointment. There are over 1200 characters so I won't go into too much detail. But along with the main groups of bacteria and fusion bread products are some rice based characters and noodle based characters. They are generally good people, but sometimes have friction with the other starch groups. I am not clear on the potato side of things, but maybe if I buy the encyclopedia it will tell all. There is also "Akachan Man" (Baby Man), whom Maia is checking out here.


Melon Bread Girl, Roll Bread Man, Baby Man (and her sidekick bottle)

Along with the usefulness for public health (there was a lot of talk at schools about Baikinman during the Swine Flu outbreak), I expect a great appeal of Anpanman is the way it taps into one of the master narratives of Japanese identity - adaptation of the foreign to the Japanese context, from the reworking of Chinese characters to the Japanese grammar to western philosophy to food. To have rice battling it out with bread, the usual dichotomy, would be too obvious. A hybrid bread product is the perfect good guy and easy to have affection for.

An interesting aspect of the show that I don't think would go over so well in an American kids show is when characters eat each other. It's kind of scary when people eat out of the donburi bowl heads of some rice characters.

And of course bread goes stale, so Anpanman has to be rebaked on a regular basis. So as not to go to waste, he pulls chunks off his head an feeds them to his friends!

Anpanman is the creation of Yanase Takase (1919- ) of Kochi Prefecture in Shikoku. Supposedly he had dreams about anpan while fighting as a soldier in WWII. Last year was a big year for Anpanman since Yanase began writing the stories in 1968 and the television show Sore Ike, Anpanman came on the air in 1988.

In March, during a week off at my job we went on a family trip to Shikoku island. Because of the Yanase connection Japan Railways runs a number of Anpanman decorated trains for the express trains on the island. If there is space, you can even reserve seats in the Anpanman car, and we did this for one portion of our travels. Maia kept pointing at the ceiling and saying "anmanman," and this is how we knew that she could say this word. Some young women were riding the Anpanman train and taking photos on their cell phones. I thought maybe going on their graduation trips down memory lane.







We skipped the Anpanman Museum near Kochi since it was inconvenient to get to with two small kids, but our bean jam friend was ubiquitous anyway.

Months later, Maia is still an Anpanman (and anpan) crazy, while Sam is making what seems to be a typical Japanese four year old's shift to hero shows like Kamen Rider and Shinkenger. He's never liked anything with an in it, but he will eat curry bread and is really hooked on Anpanman furikake. These are packets of flavoring for rice made of dried seaweed, sesame, fish, and vegetables. Two bowls of rice and two packets of that and he's all set for breakfast. They are pretty salty but apparently one packet has the calcium of 50 ml of milk. And he still is a sucker for Baikinman, who is a dirty but lovable anti-hero. The stories make something positive of his perseverance in trying to do in Anpanman and win the heart of Dokinchan who only has eyes for Shokupan Man (White Bread Man).


Dokinchan


White Bread Man

Irony

The kids were up at 5:45 AM so I got an early start on the day.

Maia's hair is getting pretty long. I bought some cute hair elastic and put her hair in PIG tails for the first time.



Lunch boxes (bento) are a big deal here. Sam takes a lunch box (bento) on Fridays only - the other three full days each week he gets a school lunch. Lately we have just been putting in food he likes without worrying about making it very cute. But I saw a cute photo of a PIG for a bento made of ham and carrot.



I have a cute two layered lunch box with an interesting saying written on it.



The mother of one of Sam's favorite girlfriends from school gave him part of a huge watermelon, so I put some in the second layer to go with the message about fruit on the lunch box. It was a pretty nice composition.

Proud of my accomplishments - might even fit in a cup of coffee, newspaper skim, AND shower before taking them to school - I go to get the paper. It says that SWINE flu (here called "Shingata influenza" - new form of influenza) has hit Kyoto, an elementary student in our ward of the city. Schools and youchien in two wards only will be closed and that includes Sam's. Daycare centers are open, but there's no point in Maia's taking the risk of going if Sam's home.

I guess I will get to see Sam's reaction to his swine food at home while I get to look at Maia's swine do. Sweet fruits!

Say Yes

I have a spring resolution – or maybe early summer resolution – to catch up on various planned posts. When out and about I often take photos and compose blog posts, but somehow the evening is always too short…

Anyway, one piece of news that's WAY out of date is that Maia did get into public daycare in December. I think I won't get into where it is until she is no longer going there, but it is a great place. For the price of a week of daycare in Boston she receives a month of full-time care with warm lunch and warm teachers.

In the end, the key to the system, as to many things, is knowing that the answer will be "yes" before you ask the question! So after asking around (other mothers, Kodomo no miraikan service desk, and the welfare desks) and also calling the list of centers directly without giving up, you find a potential spot and THEN tell the welfare office that you want that place. If you don't request it on the form, they won't tell you there is an opening there, no matter what you tell them verbally. And also, it's worth knowing that although there are only three obvious spaces on the form, you can write down more than three requests. Anyway, once I heard there was a spot in a commutable place and requested it, it was all settled in a few days. I have to say, I don't think the welfare office was very helpful at first. And the other problem is that people in Kyoto have low tolerance for long commutes (compared to Tokyo, I mean), so people assume everything is too far. But the cost and quality are excellent.

Maia has a lot of buddies her age, mostly boys, and has learned all sorts of songs and good behaviors like washing her hands with soap, putting on her own shoes (almost), and putting on her own pants (well often two pairs of pants with one leg on each leg). She bows when people greet her or gives her things. She is slowly learning to talk, mostly Japanese or words in both languages like "cheese" and "corn." While walking she sings the My Neighbor Totoro song "Sampo" – just the line "Arukou."

And indeed she loves to walk (aruku no dai suki)!

(Wisteria at Byodoin)

Fat Burning Commutes 2

Here is the character for Kyoto Bio-diesel (see Fat Burning Commutes below).



The new goal for the city is to have buses that run on 100% tempura oil in a few years. I wonder if the Kyoto appetite for fried food will keep up with it?

Ritsumeikan School

In late February we went to Uji. Usually one goes to Uji to go to the famous Byodoin (on the ten yen coin), commune with the Uji chapters of The Tale of Genji, or drink green tea which is grown here. But we went to participate in a free ceramics making class with some other students in my program. Sam got to make a creation, and it will be fired and sent back to us. This took place at the Ritsumeikan middle and high school. Ritsumeikan is a prestigious private university in Kyoto, and like many such schools they have feeder private primary and secondary schools. There being nothing else around the area, we went to the school cafeteria for lunch, and it wasn't bad. Sam said he wanted to have his photo taken with some young women who turned out to be the baton twirling team. When we approached them he fled, but Maia was willing to have her photo with them, though she seems to be viewing them suspiciously.


Chris continued his tantanmen trials, Sam had udon as usual, and I had some fried chicken. Maia nibbled on all. It was not bad for the price.








Sam's creation was pretty impressive. No pedestrian bowls or cups for him! He got quite focused on this, and kept his lucky pumpkin hat on throughout.




While I assisted with the clay, Chris walked amongst the baton twirlers stretching with Maia until she fell asleep.



On the way back we looked for a coffee shop with cake, avoiding the Mister Donuts where Chris had a "honey glazed" donut that tasted more like butter rum and stale oil. Yuck. We walked a long ways down to a low-end mall that had a coffee shop (pretty yummy cake) within a supermarket. Their meat turned out to be very cheap compared to our central Kyoto area market, so we bought some beef and Chris made burgers for Sam. You can read about the elusive hamburger (not hambaagu) at Chris eats Kyoto One Delicious Year: Not Quite Like Home.

Fat burning commutes

Our house, each childcare facility, and workplace are each in different areas, so we have tried lots of methods of transportation. In our circumstances a local would definitely use a bicycle with two children's seats attached. (A few would use a car, especially on rainy days. We don't have a car or want to drive here). Kids would probably wear helmets but not the parents. Adults sometimes wear helmets for sporty bicycle use, but use with the usual "Mama Chari" like I have it is pretty rare. When I happened to ride by the City Hall when there was a cameraman taking footage of the bike lanes on the side walk, the director spotted me coming and I heard him say "get a shot of that foreigner with the helmet!" Not only do I fear for my own head, I definitely do not feel confident enough to carry my kids, helmet or no. I know it's probably safer than when we drive in the US, but I've seen too many people tip over their bikes that are off balance with the weight of children. For a short period it was illegal to carry two children on a bike, but it was revoked; it was just too difficult for many parents to get their children to preschool.

Luckily I have found that I can park my bike and ride it to school after dropping off the kids. Most of this ride is away from cars and is an amazing birdwatching experience along the river.



Not to mention pretty good exercise.

When we are with the kids our most common choice has been the bus. Maia recognizes the icon that gives us preferential seating:




Some locals get irritated by the buses, mostly because they can suddenly become very crowded with tourists in certain seasons or the day of some event on that route. And there is usually at least one major tourist destination on every route. But from my perspective it is pretty amazing that the buses almost always arrive on the minute for which they are scheduled and move along the routes quickly (and they don't wait for people running for the bus). A pretty neat thing about Kyoto buses is that 20% of their fuel is recycled frying oil! Kyoto has embraced its role in in the Kyoto Accords and tried to make "Eco" both a buzz word and reality. Under one initiative, they started urging the collecting of frying oil from restaurants and individual homes around the city which is then processed and added to the bus fuel. This program has been used since 2000, and Kyoto City created their own standards to regulate the fuel content. Http://www.japanfs.org/en/pages/025875.html

It being Japan there is of course special mascot figure for this program.

Unfortunately the national transportation bureaucracy just came up with its own diesel standards which do not allow for such a high cooking oil content, meaning the buses are now only 5% tempura oil fueled instead of 20%. People are worried that this will get people out of the habit of collecting the oil -- it's not exactly easy to get your used oil into a can and lug it to a collection point. Deep frying is a really popular cooking method here, though we don't use it much at home. Still we often partake of the amazing fried chicken (kara age) at a nearby low-end restaurant, with hopes that we can make up for it with other healthy eating and exercise.

This leads to the other commuting method - walking. Really you can walk anywhere in central Kyoto in under and hour. My cell phone has a pedometer, and I find that even when using trains and buses, I end up walking over 10,000 steps a day. I don't know how far that is, but it sounds impressive! Because of all the walking and shrinking hips that result, my pant cuffs are all wearing out.

Maia and Sam love to eat and can get away with it. Here's Sam topping off a huge meal of carbonara and meat covered pizza (at LEAST one adult serving combined) with a four scoop bowl of gelatto!



And Maia always eats with some food in each hand, and maybe some on her nose.

Stage Fright?

The latest Youchien event was the Happyoukai, an annual recital, where each class performs a play and something musical. Given the painful spectacle of the Undokai in the fall, we dreaded this pretty heavily. Sam's role was as a bear in a play about making a sponge cake out of a giant egg that has fallen into the forest. He was supposed to say "Suponji keeki ni noseyou" (let's put it on the sponge cake) and then put the green whipped cream on the cake. He talked about this quite a bit at home and played at cake making and on. He would sometimes say his line in a loud voice, and also ad lib a bit, changing it to "nosete kudasai" (please put it on the cake) or "keeki ni noseba" (why don't you put it on the cake - in a rather detached way). Or with some nonsense endings. He also said other people's lines. But he never said the line in any practice at school and told me that he could do it at home but not at youchien. Sure enough, he didn't say it during the performance, though he did actually stand on the stage (minus the bear ears) and carefully put his green cream on the cake.




He didn't really want to come back on stage and for the final eating of the cake and he was a little unclear about how to exit the stage causing some nervous moments for his parents as he peered over the front of the stage as if about to jump. But there was no crying or thrashing at least. For the songs he just sat looking bored and picking his nose while all the other kids sang or shook an instrument. It looks like he just doesn't know the songs, but in fact his silence is quite deliberate and stubborn. He said in Japanese "Sam doesn't do that" and "Urusai" (noisy and irritating).

Well, I guess my son is not meant to be a child star. But he did enjoy when they made a TV show on our street a few days later.

Like at undokai, I was truly amazed by the performances of the 5 year olds (equivalent age of US kindergarten). In their skits they said complex series of lines as they went back in time to see the era of Shinran (played by a little girl) to better understand his accomplishments. The final number performance was an amazing taiko drum performance in which all of the kids at that age participated. I could have imagined it maybe as the recital of a special drum class, but that the entire age group could take turns doing a pretty complex set of drumming rhythms and movements was impressive. I recall that at the same age, I had the starring role in our Christmas play as Mary. This just meant I sat holding a plastic baby doll, usually fighting over it with the boy playing Joseph. This was definitely more impressive!

Ebi Fry

For the end of 2008 beginning of 2009 we went to Tokyo.

Walking along the edges of the hordes going for their first temple visit of the year at Sensôji, we played in open areas along the Sumida River. The Asahi Super Dry building is one of the modern landmarks of the Asakusa, Sumida Park area. It is one of two Asahi buildings designed by Philippe Starck (the gold and silver one to the left is supposed to be a mug of frothy beer). It is, some say, supposed to represent foam being blown off a frothy head of beer. Or perhaps an Olympic flame in honor of the hard work of the developers of Asahi's beer "Super Dry." It is more popularly known as "the golden turd." My friend worked in the building for awhile, and she said it was quite an interesting sight to watch a special crew polishing it! We asked Sam what it was, suspecting the usual observation, but he said it was "ebi fry" (breaded fried shrimp). He really wanted to go up inside the "ebi fry."


Alway, putting a positive spin on things. Or else just hungry.

Hmm

One of Sam's classmate's mothers keeps saying we should get Maia Japanese modeling jobs since she's cute and the magazines often use foreign models. The fact that she's had a runny nose for what seems like months might be one obstacle to that. But based on this, I think Pro Wrestler might be more in the cards for her!



Women's pro wrestling is, or last I knew was, really popular in Japan. Perhaps some remember that the notorious Tonya Harding was offered a job in Japan along those lines after she was booted from figure skating.

This is not to suggest that Maia is not quite the elegant young princess. She now does a sort of bow/curtsy type of thing when you say "konnichiwa" (hello) or "arigato" (thank you). And when you walk through a crowd she waves both hands and looks around smiling at the adoring masses.