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

Going to Kyoto

At the end of this week, we head to Japan for the school year 2008-09. We thought we'd keep a blog so friends and family can stay in touch. We are new to this format, so please bear with us!

We leave early Saturday, August 2nd and arrive late afternoon August 3rd. We decided the best route would be to take the short flight to New York, and then fly directly from New York to Tokyo (about 14 hours). This makes for the shortest amount of time in the air, and avoids trying to get three-year old Sam back on the plane a second time after, for example, a long flight to the west coast. Our final destination is Kyoto, and there is an airport closer to there (Kansai International, KIX). But there are fewer one-stop options from Boston to Osaka, and we thought a week with the Nagatas would make the transition easier.

The Nagatas are my host family in Tokyo from when I first went to Japan in the summer of 1986 at age 16. I lived with them again for a year and a half 1995-1997, and they are really a second family to me. They haven't met any of my kids yet, so they were pretty eager to have us stay there immediately rather than going up to Tokyo later. They live in part of the "shitamachi" area (near Asakusa), and in this photo Maia is reading up on the local sights.We'll stay for a week there and then head down to Kyoto on the Shinkansen train (the so-called "Bullet Train"). Sam is much more excited about the Shinkansen than the airplane, and I can't blame him! We have been looking at photos of the Shinkansen on the internet, but he says they all "are pretend." We also watched You Tube videos of Japan Airlines 747s taking off. All pretty interesting, but we'll see how he reacts to the real thing.

Well, we better get packed and ready to go!