House Update

It occurred to me that I’d never posted revised picture of our living room, now that it’s been decorated a little. It’s all cleaned up right now, ready for the knitting group on Monday. So far five(!) people have RSVPed – I hope they all show.

Anyway, note how it is much nicer and more welcoming and ready for visitors . . . .

School this week

I was a substitute teacher for the whole day for the international school this week. This meant that I read the morning story, supervised individual reading (sat with as many children as time would allow and listened to them read from their reading books), spelling and handwriting time, and math time. There wasn’t a lot of standing in front of the classroom “teaching” in the stereotypical sense, but more time one-on-one with students, which makes sense in a small school with students at varying levels.

Just a note about something I’ve been thinking about lately. I’ve watched the students struggle with vocabulary in their spelling books (where a common exercise is to show a picture of something and then to ask students to write the sound of that something, as it pertains to the lesson). This week, one student was working on “i” as in “igloo.” Fine. The student was shown an igloo and then asked to write the i-sound. He succeed. Next, the student was shown a ruler with an inch marked off. Now, there is no way on earth that this student can even fathom what that is. He’s never seen a ruler with those measuring increments on it, and he certainly doesn’t know the word “inch” to write in his book. So there’s nothing to do but give him the answer, and explain what an inch is. Which is a teaching moment, too. And I’m not saying that just because inches aren’t used in Japan, the students shouldn’t learn about inches, they should. But teach them that: it seems frustrating and unfair for texts to ask students words they have no hope of knowing. On the other hand, being an “international school” connotes something: namely, that you are using English-language teaching materials, that your students will be ready to enter the next level of English-language education upon the completion of your school. So, a school can’t very well drop texts that are culturally specific, if this is, in fact, the mission of the school. It just leaves the poor seven year-olds in a tough spot. And any attempt to make some kind of globally appropriate English-language textbook would likely come to naught due to the difficulty of producing such a book, questions of cultural sensitivity (whose English ought to rule the day?), and the relatively small market for such a book. So the students do they best that can be done, which is generally quite good, as questions like this don’t really compromise the majority of the spelling books. It’s just those few questions that get me thinking . . .

Anyway, after lunch – and quick game of kick baseball (also known as kickball) – it was time for art. This week, to tie in the with the social studies unit on giving directions, we started making our town out of milk cartons, yogurt containers, and other small boxes. Before we began, we brainstormed all the different types of buildings that cities have, and I made a list on the board. The one building that didn’t make the list, but of which our town will have at least five? A robot center, of course! (and if you look carefully, you can even see a robot in the back of second picture below)

Tomorrow, Mike and I are joining the school’s celebration of International Week here in Tsukuba. The students, along with Japanese schoolchildren, are setting off on little nature adventure at Mount Tsukuba. We are riding on a bus leaving school at 8am (this is Saturday morning, mind you), to get to the mountain by 9am to start to climb it. The climb is expected to take three hours. Then, we’ll ride the cable car down, have a BBQ lunch, play some games, and ride back to the school around 3pm. We will definitely be posting about this!

Reading

So, despite what I tell the LaRouchies on campus, I can, in fact, read. I also like reading. And I’ve had a fair amount of time to read lately, so I thought I’d post some reviews (see, you want more updates, I can make you sorry you asked . . . ).

These are more my thoughts than plot summaries, so skip this post if you can’t follow it. I would also like to add, that while I will criticize, I freely admit that I could probably not write better, and am likely writing a lot worse.

1. Mona in the Promised Land [Gish Jen]. I started reading this because Allegra Goodman, whose book, Kaaterskill Falls, I really enjoyed said that she read Gish Jen and Ha Jin (on another note, it seems to me that these two are grouped together more often than their styles would warrant). Anyway, I read Ha Jin’s Waiting over spring break, and really enjoyed it. The book was sad, gripping, and had a story that has really touched me (as you can see, I am no Michiko Kakutani in training). Part of the plot was fairly predictable, but the last few pages were rich with detail and feeling, if not with resolution. Who doesn’t love a good love story? Or two? Mona in the Promised Land was considerably lighter. I liked the idea of a Chinese teenager converting to Judaism (I admit to judging a book by the blurb on the back, at least initially), and therein was a certain degree of satire of upper class America that I enjoyed. Gish Jen perfectly captured the voice of Mona’s parents and the character of Mona’s sister. However, Mona’s relationship with Seth (and, really, the whole character of Seth) was puzzling and somewhat underdeveloped. I am actually not a fan of the ten-years-later-epilogue approach – I feel like if you can’t wrap it up in the book, fine, leave us with unresolved questions. But it seems like cop-out to end and then not really end the book. I guess if you are going to do this, then you need to be really sure that your readers are so enthralled with your characters that they will just love every morsel of writing about them, but owing to the Seth problem above, I never really felt that way about Mona. Still, I would recommend this book to friends. A solid read.

2. After the Quake [Haruki Murakami]. I got hooked on Murakami’s stories through The New Yorker, and I’ve never been disappointed. This book was a gift from my friend Sheila, back in the days when I hardly had time to read outside of school. Murakami’s novels and stories are always a dance with magical realism, sort of reinterpreted for a post-modern society. These short stories, as the title suggests, all engaged with the Kobe earthquake. My favorite was “Super-frog saves Tokyo” – although I think I may have read this one elsewhere before the book was published. But, then again, I might be wrong. If I had more courage, I think I’d read Murakami’s exploration of the Aum Shinrikyo cult in the wake of the Tokyo subway disaster, but I worry that if I did so, I might never get on the subway again in Tokyo. If you haven’t read any Murakami, you should. Go to the bookstore. Now.

3. Eternal Egypt: The Civilization of Ancient Egypt from Earliest Times to the Conquest by Alexander the Great [Pierre Montet]. This book was a real disappointment. Ancient Egypt was fascinating, and a book about ancient Egypt ought to portray some of that excitement, mystery, and wonder. One frequently blames the translator rather than the author for these types of problems, but in this case, I think the blame rests solidly with latter. The book began promisingly enough, with interesting chapters on the geology, flora, and fauna of the Nile region. I learned some fascinating things about the Nile, but the weaknesses of the book soon overwhelmed things. First, the book needed a far more extensive series of maps than the three provided in the back of the book (but never referenced in the text). Second, I am not really interested in who discovered which codex and which museum holds which codex (parts of this book read like a museum catalog!), but more interested in the significance of such codices. Third, the thematic organization can only take one so far – it is a good introductory technique to set the stage, but then you need to switch to a chronological ordering of Kings and Pharaohs. With the thematic organization, I could never keep the chronology straight without referencing the included, and very useful, table of Kings, Pharaohs, and Major World Events. I feel like any knowledge gained from this book is all jumbled in my head; this book was not the authoritative scholarly history on Ancient Egypt I’d hoped it would be.

4. Bel Canto [Ann Patchett]. I read this book in about three days – not sure if that suggests good or bad things about the book, since I actually like long and complex books that I can savor. The book definitely has suspense with a minimum of violence – a perfect combination for me. It’s hard to say too much about this book, since I don’t want to give away the ending. I will, though, say this: after finishing the book, when I thought about the book and the ending, it seemed predictable, but also fitting and very touching. The description is vivid, the characters are mostly believable, and the story definitely got the reader interested and invested. On another note, Ann Patchett has recently written about her friendship with Lucy Greely, the author of Autobiography of a Face. This was one of my favorite books in high school, so I’m looking forward to reading her book about their friendship.

I’m currently reading A History of the Jews [Paul Johnson] and The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love [Oscar Hijuelos].

we had a slow weekend, seriously

We didn't go to Tokyo or anything. It rained, so we were just here in Tsukuba. We checked out two different cafes (Japan, not so much a cafe culture) and tried to find this yarn store.

What we did find was Japan's answer to Ikea - and, folks, it is pretty frightening. Also, note that this store (called Joyful Honda, of course) has every other craft under the sun (glassmaking? no problem. mosaics? check. stone-carving? super), but no yarn. So that was helpful.

Tomorrow night I am going to a game night in Tsukuba organized by some other international residents, so hopefully I will meet some people there.

Also, we still don't have internet at home - so go easy on us regarding the updating!

I promise a post on Friday about today's art lesson, complete with pictures.

Restless Fans

Because at least one of our fans appear to be getting restless (please check the comments to the last post), I thought I would briefly tell all of you about what we have been up to.

Yesterday I had my first conversation using skype with my friend Matt (he promised to update his blog more frequently). Skype is an internet phone setup where you can talk to others (with very good quality sound) for free, as long as you have both downloaded the free software. I highly recommend it.

Today Kate is teaching at the international school, her second day. She informed me this morning that we no longer have to save our yogurt containers (we had been saving them for an art project) and now she would like to start saving paper bags.

Tomorrow I will go to Tokyo to hear a talk and to pick up some things that a friend is giving us (a VCR and a toaster).

On Friday an American professor at Tsukuba University (who happens to be friends with Joe Jupille) will have us over to his house for dinner, which should be fun.

Next week I will meet with a Japanese professor who I hope will be able to introduce me to some interview subjects, and I will also have at least my second (and maybe my third) whaling interviews.

I’m an alien, a legal alien . . .

So, as of today, we are officially legal aliens, in possession of our alien registration cards. Really, being an alien just makes me want to have antennae. You know, like the ones you got at the fair when you were little: on a headband, with bobbly spring coils attached to glittery round balls.

Those were not, shockingly enough, the free gift with our alien registration cards. Rather, we got to take the elevator up two floors and enroll in national health insurance. Almost as good as antennae. And not a moment too soon, as my old insurance from school expires in a few days. The health insurance is not terribly expensive (or so we think), and I bet the care will be pretty good. So that is a refreshing change from the U.S.

What is not a refreshing a change is how difficult it is to sign up for internet service. Our first attempt to get high-speed internet into our house was foiled because we failed to submit the certificate that showed that we had applied for said alien registration cards. Our second attempt four days ago took nearly forty-five minutes, because it was unclear whether or not we could even sign up without the actual alien registration cards (No internet? How are we to communicate with the mothership?). Finally, after many phone calls and consultations, they agreed to accept the certificate that stated that our alien registration cards were forthcoming plus Mike’s library card (of course!) as evidence that we were, in fact, serious about giving them our money. Since the second sign-up, they have called twice. Neither of these calls has resulted in them making an appointment to come out to our house and set us up. Still unclear on when that will happen.

Art Update

So, my first day of art volunteering went well. It was fun – I was at school for the whole day: I I read the morning story (Make Way for Ducklings, to honor my Boston past), helped with spelling, and then did my art lesson. We made flags that showed things we liked. Here are our projects:

And here are some sample lines from class:
"Please do not sit on the scissors."
"Please do not wave the scissors around."
[a note about the scissors: being children’s safety scissors, they are not really that sharp. Still, in a country where – until today – I did not have health insurance, the waving the scissors in the air as I walked around did make me a little nervous]
"Done? You're not done. You have a blank piece of paper in front of you."
"No, you can't make a flag of things you hate. We are thinking positively."

Next week, we’ll be starting on a building a model city with yogurt containers and juice cartons. I had originally thought I’d save this project for later, but the junior kids are learning map skills and direction-giving in social studies, so it fits in perfectly. We’ll paint buildings next week, and assemble the city the following week.

Knitting

Knitting in Tokyo was fun. The women – Americans, Canadians, Australians, and Japanese were all very nice. The Australian woman has a great knitting blog, too. The meeting was bilingual, and it was really fun to see the projects everyone was doing. I’d love to go back to this group. But once my evening Japanese class starts (not the one with the opening ceremonies, but the other one), I’ll have class most Tuesday nights. So, I probably won’t be able to go back until November when my Japanese class has a holiday. Also, speaking of holidays, tomorrow is another one: the start of autumn, of course.

Anyway . . . I am setting up my own group in Tsukuba. Here’s the invite, in case any of you are in the neighborhood:

Hi all,

I’d like to start a knitting group* here in Tsukuba. When I lived in Seattle, we called this a “Stitch-and-Bitch**,” but I’d be fine to call it knitting circle, too.

The basic idea is simple: every week (or every other week, depending on interest) we would get together for about two hours, have a little snack, drink a little tea, and work on our projects.

No project? No problem! The knitting circle would be open to those wanting to learn to knit, too. I only started knitting a year ago – and six scarves later – I’m still going. I have some reference books, and I feel that I could teach people the very basics (enough to get going on a scarf). I can also send you some advice on needles and yarn for your first project, so that you’ll come ready to begin at our first meeting.

Let’s have our first meeting at my house in Matsushiro (near Doho Park and the Suwa Hotel) on Monday evening October 3^rd at 7pm. At this meeting, we can talk about a regular time/day and a regular place (perhaps closer to Tsukuba Center?).

I’ll send you directions when you reply to this email.

Can’t wait to meet you!

--

*If you’re not a knitter, feel free to bring your other needle crafts (cross-stitch, needle-point, embroidery, crochet) – or really, any other portable craft (boatbuilding, etc).

**Of course, men are welcome as well!

Tokyo, tonight

Well, at least we are getting good use out of our parking pass.

I am going to try and attend a meeting of the Tokyo Stitch and Bitch knitting group. I am excited about this because I am thinking of starting my own knitting circle here in Tsukuba as a way to meet some potential friends. I promise a full report of that - and of art class tomorrow - soon.

Mike is heading in to have dinner with one of his professors.

The birthday present that wouldn't fit

So, my brother's birthday is coming up soon. I've been buying all sorts of strange Japanese goods for him - from clothes to food (if you are having a birthday this year and would prefer to receive an actual gift, rather than a collection of strange items, TOO BAD! Just kidding!).

Last night I really thought I had struck gold:


(you may have to click on the picture, because reading the text here is key)

What I really loved about the packaging was the honesty: you will probably be satisfied.

However, when I got home, this box wouldn't fit in the larger mailing box. Or, it would, but nothing else would have. So, we decided to keep the sacred crane eggs for ourselves.

I have to say . . . I was not satisfied, at least not totally. The shell, we concluded (after several tastings), is lightly chocolate (like white chocolate, but not as sweet as usual). The inside is sort of mealy, sort of cakey - like the consistency of bean candies, but with the taste of cake.

Perhaps this post should have been titled: How I came to love CITES.

Respect for the Aged Day

That's today, FYI.

So, to celebrate, we first watched a little of the Autumn Grand Sumo Tournement on TV. Our favorite wrestler is this Bulgarian guy who we think is sponsored by the same company that makes the Aloe yogurt. This company makes yogurt "in the Bulgarian style," and they also make a decent strawberry and blueberry - our breakfast every morning.


Then, we went to school. Mike made us lunch - rice triangles with fish inside of them.

Later, we may try to take a swim at this community pool in a gorgeous park near our house.

Aloe Yogurt

Japan has aloe yogurt. It is ick.

Tokyo Stories

You knew that post title was coming, didn’t you? Really, we’ll try not to use the title too frequently.

Anyway, we’ve completed the week of craziness regarding our Tokyo trips – we even managed, in time for our last trip, to get a parking pass for the train station. The parking pass is awesome because it guarantees us a space whenever we show up; parking is actually very limited at the station we tend to use (and at the other one it costs $22/day, hence our tendency to use the other station) and the parking tends to fill up early. But we no longer have to worry about that, owing to the parking pass. And, really, we’d love to take the bus to the station that is slightly closer to us, but the bus is 15-minute walk from our house and stops running at 8pm. Not so cool.

Anyway, Saturday in Tokyo was fun. I went to a meeting of the Tokyo Wellesley College club, which was fun – the students from Wellesley who are studying abroad in Tokyo were there, so it was nice to meet them.

After that, we had dinner with our friends Daisuke and Chie and their son, Nagu. Nagu is an extremely cute baby:

Also, Mike met a cellphone:

The Arts

So, I will be teaching art. The school is very cute, and the teachers are very nice. I’ll actually be there all day Wednesday helping out, and the art lesson is an hour in the afternoon.

This week we will be doing “art that represents you” – a way for me to get to know the kids. We will either be making flags that communicate who you are or a family/personal coat of arms. I have an hour, so older kids who worked fast might be able to do both, but there’s no rush. We’ll be using construction paper, glue, scissors, markers, and crayons.

Not sure what we’ll do next week. I have some projects in the pipeline – like a city built using yogurt containers, juice cartons, and boxes, etc; fall leaf rubbings; paper snowflakes; and all the other fabulous ideas from friends and family who posted. First, I just need to get a sense of how this will work.

More Cray

This has been a crazy week. By Saturday night we will have spent 4 of the last 7 days in Tokyo. For at least one of those trips we biked to the station (about 25 minutes each way), and for the other trips we have driven. Perhaps the biggest trip to Tokyo was yesterday, where I conducted my first research interview (regarding whaling) and we attended a welcome dinner for the 2005-06 Fulbright Scholars. Also attending the dinner was Ambassador Schieffer, who I was able to meet.

Other big news is that tomorrow we will have cable TV, although our internet and home phone will still take a little while.

Learning consciousness

So, I have now registered for two Japanese classes: an evening conversation class that begins on October 4^th, and a more general “Japanese for beginners” class that begins on October 18^th.

The general Japanese class begins with an opening ceremony (of course!). And just in case one were tempted to blow off the opening ceremony, the flyers for this class were very specific: “any student not attending the opening ceremonies will not be demonstrating the proper learning consciousness and will be excluded from the class.” Take that!

Art

I may have this volunteer gig teaching art one day per week at the international school here in town. This has potential as a really fun job. However, I am a little nervous because I am, like, the least artistic person I know (have you seen my knitting lately?).

Also, I will be teaching children ranging from grades 1-6 in one big class. So, not only would I have to come up with activites, I`d need them to be ones that could interest children at different developemental stages.

What to do? I tried to think back on what I did for art in elementary school . . . and I drew a total blank. I think this may have been because I went to public school in California. Wait, I think I remember someone`s mom teaching us calligraphy. Well, that`s not a lot of help.

So, dear readers, I turn to you. What art activities did you (and/or your kids) do in elementary school? What projects do you remember? What would be a fun project/lesson to do? [Basic art materials are readily available, so that`s not an issue]. Help me out here by posting some ideas in the comments section. Don`t worry too much about adapting the activity for kids at different ages; I can do that - just get me started with some ideas.

Another car picture 

Mike drives our new car 

Our new laundry hamper 

Japanese TV

One of the best things about visiting Japan is Japanese TV. Here are two examples:

1. Last night after our nightly viewing of the English news (from 5:50-6:15), Kate and I happened to catch a human interest-type real life story called "Monkey Wars: Episode 4" This story was all about how monkeys have been a big problem in Nagano prefecture, but how some dogs, including an 8 month old black lab named Joe, have been successful in chasing them away. But the best part of the story was that they used Star Wars music; they played the Imperial March for the monkeys, and the good guy music for the dogs.

2. Please view this actual ad for the Japanese Marine Self Defense Force.

Partay!

If the rains aren't too serious, tonight we will bike to our first party in Japan, where the editors of the local newsletter Alien Times will try to recruit local foreigners to write articles.

cooler, but wetter

So it has finally cooled down a bit here. That`s the good news. The bad news is that the cooler weather is due to a typhoon that is battering southern Japan. We won`t get a direct hit, just some rain. So we`ll stay in and read and play cards. We have enough food and the like.

Car and Office

Today I bought a used car. It is in quite good shape, and it runs nicely. We will get in on Thursday.

Also, I am currently blogging from my office, a huge room which I share with two Korean professors. Tsukuba's campus is quite pretty (there is a pond, and some streams), and I learned that it is the largest university campus in Japan.

Tonight Kate and I will decide which internet service to sign up for, and that will help us determine which land-based phone service to get. So, we should be sending out a mass e-mail soon with our new contact information.

Learning to bow

Kate and I had the following conversation on Saturday, as we walked from Omotesando street to the Shibuya trainstation in Tokyo:

M: Kate, did you just bow to that car?
K: No, I was just... Yeah, I guess so.

Settling in

Yesterday we went Tokyo. The Tsukuba Express train is very cool; still no word on the wireless availability, though. In Tokyo, we walked around Yoyogi Park, strolled the shopping area (where we witnessed a parade of schoolkids and a plant store [a succulent grows in Tokyo?])


At the house, things are starting to come together. We’ve bought some basic things like laundry soap and some extras, like things to spruce up the apartment.


We even did laundry, although – of course – the machine only spoke Japanese!



Our bikes have arrived. I’ve decided to call mine “creamsicle,” in honor of its pastel-y color. And we finally found bike helmets – not easy in a country where hardly any adults wear them. Actually, we’ll be wearing helmets made for kids, but, hey, if the helmet fits, buy it.



Mike chatted up some of the neighbors – an American guy, a Flemish guy, and a German guy, all academics working at the university, and all married to Japanese women. I am beginning to think we might be the only full-foreigner couple around here.

The first pictures are in . . .

So that’s our place.

There were the usual moving-in issues the first night: cold showers because the gas wasn’t yet turned on (and even if it were, we’re not sure we’d know how to work the computerized bath heater system), no toilet paper (thankfully, advertising in Japan frequently takes the form of little packs of Kleenex, so we’d amassed a fair amount of them in Tokyo), and much difficulty working the A/C (and, friends, it is HOT and STICKY here). We did finally manage to figure out the A/C and selected a bedroom, and were sound asleep by 8:30pm. Of course, now it’s 5am as I write this . . .

The place is a little Spartan (4 bedroom-style Spartan-ness), but these are the before pictures. I think that the place has a lot of potential – I just wish I a) knew if there was an Ikea in the Tokyo area, and b) had watched more of those decorating-on-a-budget shows. Really, though I guess I’d need the decorating-on-a-budget-where-you-don’t-speak-the-language-and-can’t-drive-anywhere show. That might be too challenging for a mere decorating show; prime-time reality TV, here we come!

The driving thing is a big issue at this point (number one thing you don’t want to hear when moving into a new place in a foreign country where you can’t yet drive: “the grocery store nearby just closed a few days ago. You’ll have to use the mini-mart a mile up the road, or drive into town”). We had, in fact, planned to get a car, but this will take time – about three weeks. In the meantime, we have some bikes being delivered tomorrow.

We really, really need a car here. Tsukuba is surprisingly spread out for a Japanese city. Everyone drives, and everyone tells us we need a car. This house is about a ten minute drive from the train station and about a twenty-minute drive from the university (they are both in the same direction from our house). Near Tsukuba station is this newly built shopping complex with neat looking stores (and a LUSH store – take that, Bellevue Square!). It`s only a 50-minute train ride from downtown Tokyo.

The other big thing is internet (I feel guilty for sounding like a spoiled American: I want my car! I want my internet! But, hey, when you’re living in the middle of the country in a country where you can’t speak the language, these things do take on a certain heightened importance, no?). We’ve heard about this great deal with Yahoo that comes with cheap international calling. But the bad thing is that it may take as long as two months to get that internet into our place. There’s an internet café about a fifteen-minute bike ride from here, so I guess we’ll be frequenting that place, too.

We also now have cellphones. I didn`t get one that makes hot chocolate, but mine does do radio and TV, email/text messages, and the like. Watch for the mass email with our numbers that we`ll be sending out soon.

Cray

On Thursday, we finally moved into our house in Tsukuba. The house is huge, and we have more than enough room for guests, so start planning your Japan trips now. Regarding our location, we are a little bit out in the country. But once we get a car (a prof affiliated with my special project will help us select one on Monday), I think we can leave our apartment and end up in Akihabara, the electronics bazaar neighborhood of Tokyo, in a little over an hour.

The people in my department have been EXTREMELY nice and helpful. I don't think that even visiting professors to the US get the kind of treatment that I have been getting. I also just bought a book called "基本の和食レシピ" (Basic Japanese Recipies), and I am looking forward to doing some cooking.