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

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.

Walking Home

On most days we do the commute to Sam's yochien by bus. We take a bus from our corner, ride it for about 10 minutes, and walk about five minutes on the other end. Of course with a wandering three year old on a busy street, especially in bright sun or pouring rain, the walking part can be interminable, but it is not bad in part because the buses run on schedule and are frequent. Most of his classmates live a bit closer and commute riding on their mothers' bicycles (in seats) - most children wear helmets, no parents wear helmets. About 10% seem to use cars. In my shoes, most of the mothers would use bikes, but those who grew up in this city have been biking for their whole lives on these narrow and busy streets and so are not quite as nervous about it as we have been. Several carry two children on the bike, with a seat installed front and back. I haven't installed even one seat yet though I did buy two children's helmet and brought my own from home.

By foot it is only about 20 minutes for an adult, so sometimes we use our double stroller and walk both ways, usually with at least one child catching a nap. Last Friday I did this and took some photos along the way. They give a sense of some of the things one sees on a random walk in Kyoto.

Here's Sam walking up the path to school...



OK, his nursery school is not that imposing. This is really the center of the Honganji (Nishi Honganji) complex, the part where most of the tourists go. We made a bit of a pilgrimage on the way home. Sam wanted to go up inside and that would be fine, but there seemed to be rather somber praying going on in the hall, so I lured him back out and took a photo by the huge door. (He's just gotten a big haircut and so is a bit puzzled by being able to find his own ear.)



Heading out you can see the other side of Horikawa Street, most buildings on which are also connected to Honganji. Here are more modern buildings for the institution, including this large hall. The banners are about liberation from discrimination



Crossing into a smaller side street, we passed a place that manufactures o-mikoshi, or portable shrines used in Shinto festivals. This is not a museum - you can see boxes in back for shipping them off. I helped carry one of these in the mid-1990s at the Sanja Matsuri in Tokyo. It was only the smaller neighborhood shrine, but I ended up with some pretty impressive bruises and sore muscles.



I never noticed it before, but Maia seems to have her own building on Nishinotoin Street. And it has nice pink lettering.



I turned into a smaller side street because I had read that there was a good eel shop. I thought maybe I would buy some prepared eel - this would make a quick dinner together with pickles and rice. But there was a huge crowd in front of the eel place, and they were filming something there. In this photo a car is blocking it, but the shop and the one next to it seemed to be dressed up to look extra quaint. I'll have to go back for eel some other time.



Nearby there is the Kandaijin Shrine. I never see much tourist traffic here - it is one of the many, many, many rather significant shrines that does not stand out in a city with so many such places. The plaque says that Sugawara no Michizane, a great Heian Period scholar, was first bathed in water from here, and so this spot was devoted to him and is turned to by aspiring students.



Here's a typical moderate older house plot in the area.



A restaurant with an interesting name and very old Toyota (I think) in front.



A great idea for a cafe - get a pet shampoo and have crepes and organic coffee. Or just sit with your dog while you have a coffee. They also advertise "Dog Aromatherapy" "Dog Reflexology" and "French Goods." What dog owner could ask for more?





Turning off the busy street, here's a sign for our alley



and a peaceful look at one leg of our Z-shaped street.



I wish I could do this every day, but usually I'm dashing back and forth from the other side of Kyoto on some crowded bus...

We have been able to make some arrangements to help out with Maia's care, and I learned some more about Japanese daycare in the process. Through web searches, and even a PDF document on the Kyoto municipal website, I found a number of small daycare centers that are outside the system run by the Welfare Office. These might be considered unlicensed , or as an article about them calls them "unapproved"(muninka/ninkagai). Some places are in this category because they don't pass certain standards, but most because they want to operate outside the public system and provide services that the "approved" centers do not. Daycare operated by a company would also fall in this category, as they determine their own admissions and do not accept kids via the welfare office application system. Some parents don't qualify for the public daycare system if they are not both working or studying full time, and they may use this as an alternative. There is not a strong tradition of babysitting here either, so you can not usually hire a local high school student cheaply - this provides an alternative to that. The city posts the PDF of ninkagai centers, but did not mention them to me, even when I asked if there might be any alternatives for me while I waited to get into a registered hoikuen.

I visited a couple places on the list of centers that had registered with the city, and chose one with the nicely redundant name of Chiisai peti (Little Petit) near here. They have a lot of flexible plans, and I chose to buy a block of 50 hours for about 45,000 yen. Those can be used over the next three months. That's around 8/hour, so pretty reasonable by Boston standards, and the ratio is three children to one adult. The regular kids there are all close to her age, a lot from 12-15 months, so a nice fit. Though there was also one lonely looking boy about eight years old who must be going there after school.

In exploring this category of care centers, I avoided those marked as "baby hotels" (beebi hoteru). These are places that take babies overnight and have a lot of irregular users. They received a lot of bad press on low-end news and expose programs in the 90s. There were some injuries to children but the focus was on criticizing mothers who used them. I expect most of these have some useful role to play, but I am just a little too put off by the expression.

For October and November she can go to the Center for Women Researchers at Kyoto University which has a system to help women faculty and students who are waiting for spots for their children in the hoikuen system. It's only for two months, but I will use it. The location is halfway between my office and classroom, which is only a seven minutes walk total. I can pick her up three minutes after my LONG afternoon of classes ends on Monday at 6PM. And it's only 50,000/month (about $450) for full-time quality care, provided by one of the companies I researched for temporary care this month. That company runs the daycare center at the Hotel Okura and other such posh locations where there are many temporary and non-Japanese visitors (this is different from "baby hotels"! But since they provide quite late night babysitting at the hotels, they are rather like baby hotels for the rich).

You might ask why this is only for women faculty and students and not all parents. The Center's pamphlet provides some impressive and disheartening statistics about the percentage of faculty who are women at Kyoto University, which is one of the top few universities in the country. Women comprise only 4.2% of full professors, 10.7% of associate professors, and 8.7% of assistant professors. That means the percentage of women full professors at Kyoto University as a whole is half that of tenured women in the natural sciences at Harvard, ie not very high. This center is supposed to help improve that through daycare and elder care support, back-up care when a child is sick and can't be cared for in daycare, as well as research and analyze the obstacles for women scholars. I am not sure what services they provide, but I think the inclusion of elder-care is novel and important as that is a huge burden everywhere, and which women especially are expected by many to bear. This center seems like a pleasant and much-needed facility, so I hope Maia's short stay there will not be too much of a burden since I am only tangentially affiliated with the school. But since Gender Equality and International Relations are both listed among the top six priorities for the university I think I fit.

Kid Conveniences

It has been interesting to see what conveniences for kids there are and what are lacking. The biggest challenge with Maia has been restaurants and seating. Many places have a high chair type seat, and this is great. But they almost never have a belt of any sort, and so really are more for an older child who might stay put, along the lines of a booster seat. Luckily we had some experience with this back in Tokyo when we were staying with a belt maker - Mr. Nagata fashioned a cloth belt with big Velcro patches. This was meant just for one chair they were giving us, but we have ended up traveling with it at all times. Another option in a lot of restaurants is to use a zashiki room where you sit on tatami and she can crawl around.


There are sometimes some great things in bathrooms and so on. Anyone who has ever taken an infant to a public toilet can appreciate this product. These were installed in the bathroom stalls at a big electronics store, Bic Camera, at Kyoto Station.

Unfortunately these are not so widespread, but I've seen them here and there. The children's floors of department stores have great facilities for dealing with a baby. The baby care and nursing areas are separate from the bathrooms. They are large and have a big open area with cushioned changing tables, a microwave for heating up baby food (which is generally available for sale nearby if you want it), seats for feeding solid food, and some port-a-cribs. Both men and women can use that area. Beyond that there are double curtains into a private nursing area where men aren't allowed and the chairs are arranged for a degree of privacy from each other.

Our area of Kyoto seems to be low on outdoor playgrounds. The closest park seems to be getting a facelift and has a long way to go before anyone can go inside. But a long walk or short train ride away there is the Kodomo no miraikan, a wonderful free indoor and outdoor playspace. It's open every day except Tuesday from 9-5 or 9-6 and has great stuff for 0-6. Some things remind me of the Children's Museum of Boston and the space for smaller kids there. The pool of wooden balls was really popular with Sam. And Maia had some admirers as usual.

The Big Trip

We left for the airport at 5:45 AM in a convoy to Logan. Since Sam came out straight out of bed he was still in his lobster PJs, and he just did not want to change out of them. So he had a wicked Boston look for most of the way to Tokyo.


All in all the trip went pretty smoothly. Getting through security twice and the last hour or so on the plane were probably the most difficult. Taking off shoes, removing laptops, and pulling out little baggies of liquid items while wrangling the two of them was rather insane but doable. On the Boston-NY flight American Airlines didn't sit us together. They put me with Maia, but Sam behind Chris. But the flight attendant, who was flying her last flight ever, helped us out. And since Maia would sit on my lap for that flight I gave up my seat on that flight for $200. The beneficiary was an Irish businessman who was making a tighter connection to a Tokyo flight than ours. Father of 1 year old twins, he definitely didn't mind helping to entertain Maia. We agreed that our cheeky flight attendant cracking jokes with the pilots and criticizing the gate attendants for the lousy seat assignments, would be a good contrast to the polished and super competent JAL staff.

After a delay due to some really spectacular lightning and despite being 13+ hours in the air, Japan Airlines from NY to Tokyo was quite nice. They had various things for the kids: personal TV, Anpanman (a Japanese cartoon Sam watches on You Tube) diapers, a bib, kids' meals, and a nice car seat for Maia's seat, the last of which was a lifesaver. I could put her there when she was asleep, and the side of it made a nice cushion for me to sleep on. She was a bit antsy but didn't cry much at all, at least that anyone other than I noticed. One of the stewardesses was really ready to take her home, and in fact offered to do so when we were on our way to the immigration office at Narita.

Sam freaked out a few times, but was basically pretty saintly. He sat next to Chris and since he kept kicking in people (mostly Chris) in his sleep, Chris slept even less than the three or so hours I did. So we survived the flight, but I wouldn't want to do it again anytime soon. In the car from the airport (the Nagatas all came in two mini-vans to pick us up), Sam who had just woken up said first "Where's Jon?" - his Uncle Jonathan had driven us to the airport in Boston and then "I want to go home!" Sorry Sam, we are not getting back on that plane for some time to come. I doubt you'll miss it.

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!