Gaijin Mama

O-Hisashiburi!

2007-06-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I haven't been able to post for a couple of weeks. It's been very frustrating, as I've been bursting with anecdotes! For instance, a week or so ago, Lilia read a book to me for the first time, which was very exciting. She's also started picking out Chinese characters that she knows on billboards and such. I'm starting to believe that she may turn into a reader after all.

In other news, I got my contributor's copies of Eye-Ai magazine today, with my story featured on the cover! I interviewed Angela Aki, a singer-songwriter who's been topping the Japanese charts lately, and who was born in the next burg over. Her mom is American, and her dad is Japanese. She attended the same elementary school as my son. I think I mentioned this before.

Anyway, I interviewed her via telephone in the midst of her tour. I let my son answer the phone so he could say that he talked to Angela Aki, and then I took over. She was super nice. Our conversation was interrupted twice - once when my mother-in-law yelled up at the stairs at me, and another time when I had to help Lilia go to the bathroom. She was very understanding about the whole thing.

Fireflies

2007-06-05T04:44:00.000-07:00

This afternoon when I went to pick up Lilia at school, she started going on about fireflies. Earlier, a teacher had shown the kids a firefly she'd caught near her house. She showed them photos and explained all about fireflies and their semaphores. Lilia insisted on having one more look at the photos posted in the hallway before going home.

After dinner, she managed to convey something about fireflies to her father and he suggested that we go have a look. Firefly-viewing, like moon-viewing and cherry-blossom-viewing, is one of those time-honored Japanese traditions, but in all my years in Japan, I've never gone in search of flickers in the night. Fireflies remind me of lazy, barefoot summers in Michigan, and of Mason jars with holes punched in the lids. We caught them and made lanterns of our cupped hands.

Tonight, we piled into the car and Yoshi drove to a wooded area along a stream. It was very dark and we could hear frogs bellowing. It wasn't long before we saw a tiny flash. Then, we found a spot with entire constellations of fireflies. We didn't get close enough to catch any, but Lilia shouted with delight. She told me that she likes firefly-viewing better than her Nintendo DS.

The Houseboy and the Mother-in-Law

2007-05-29T00:44:00.001-07:00

I recently finished reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche's novel Half of a Yellow Sun, which included the wonderful character Ugwu, a boy from the bush who becomes houseboy for a Nigerian professor. From day one, Ugwu greatly admires his boss (his "Master") and tries to anticipate his every need. At one point, he irons the master's socks. They wind up getting stuck to the iron and the master calls him an ignoramus, but the kid was only trying to be helpful. Ugwu also sometimes listens at doors. Although I loved him as a character in a novel, I was reminded of why I don't think I could ever deal with household help. I like (no, LOVE) my privacy, what little I have of it, and even a once-a-week housekeeper would intrude.

At times, the one person Ugwu most reminded me of was my mother-in-law. In theory, my mother-in-law has her own chores and her own life, but she has taken it upon herself to do my laundry (even though I've asked her not to, even though at one point she told my husband she was exhausted from hanging out and taking down our laundry). 　My husband said that she just wants to help us.　A week or so ago, I didn't do the laundry and she was very agitated when I came home and asked me do it then (at 5PM) so that she could hang it out. This morning, I didn't get around to doing my laundry, but when I came home it was hung out on the poles. My mother-in-law told me, in a mildly chiding voice, that she had done the laundry. She came into our quarters and unloaded the laundry basket, in which hand-washables are sort of mixed with machine washables. My bathing suit was ruined in the wash. Oh, well. She was just trying to help.

I've decided that I've got enough material by now to write a short story with a laundry motif. I think it'll be entitled, "The Laundry Wars."

My Animal, My Son

2007-05-27T16:41:00.001-07:00

It must be one of Murphy's Law of parenting that children tend to get sick in the middle of the night, on weekends, or long holidays when the only option for treatment is a clinic way on the other side of town.

Saturday night, while my husband was getting ready to take his mother to the bus for her night tour to Ise Shrine, I noticed that my son had a hideous rash. He'd had a high fever and a sore throat since the evening before, but I thought it was just tonsillitis, which he tends to get. But he'd had the rash thing before, too, and I recognized it as scarlet fever.

Scarlet fever is sort of like strep throat, and ever since I heard that Jim Henson died of strep throat, I get kind of freaked out by related diseases. I told my husband that we had to get Jio treated right away. He wanted to wait till morning, but I insisted.

Later, after he left with his mother, he called me from the road. He said that he could get antibiotics from his friend, S.

"But he's an animal doctor!" I said.

I refused the offer and told him that I would take Jio to the doctor myself. He wound up driving to the clinic across town, where my diagnosis was confirmed.

Movie of the Week - from the Archives

2007-05-26T18:21:00.000-07:00

It's come to my attention that a true-crime book about the murder of Shari Smith has just been published. Several years ago, I wrote this little essay. I've never been able to find a place for it, but I realized, hey, I can post it on my blog!

Movie of the Week

In the made for television movie, William Devane stars as the sheriff. The other actors – the ones who play Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Shari, her sister, the townspeople – are not so well known. Watching the movie on video, I think that the young actress who has taken the part of Shari Smith is not as pretty as the original.

The movie is called “Nightmare in Columbia County” – an unfortunate title. For one thing, there is no Columbia County in South Carolina. The events took place in Lexington, County, just outside the capital of Columbia. For another, the title makes it sound like a horror flick. Then again, I guess it is.

I did not know Shari Smith. Not personally. Not well. To me, she was one of those big-haired girls who flitted through the halls of my new high school. Beautiful, popular, and outgoing, she was bursting with confidence. I was an outsider – a Northerner – with the wrong clothes, the wrong hair (short and spiky, not big) and the wrong ancestors. At lunch in the cafeteria, people still talked about how the Yankees had made off with their great-great grandmothers’ silverware.

I had a crush on Shari’s boyfriend,a blue-eyed, All-American guy in my homeroom, and I was jealous of her. On top of everything else, she could sing the angels out of the sky. I learned this one day when she soloed during lunch in the cafeteria. It had something to do with graduation. I was a senior, so I guess she was singing for me.

She was a junior then. I had already spent a year at a small Midwestern college when she was kidnapped on the verge of her own graduation. When I heard the news, I regretted every bad thought I’d ever had about her.

I hated that summer. The air was hot and still and shrill with cicadas. I had fallen in love for the first time and had my heart broken, and now I was working the salad bar at Shoney’s. I spent twelve hours a day on my feet doing drudge work – chopping lettuce and tomatoes, wiping the breath marks from the protective glass. I tried to rest my feet in stolen moments by standing flamingo-style while leaning against the stainless steel counter. My hair always smelled like grease. I had no previous work experience other than babysitting and blueberry picking, no qualifications for waiting tables. My co-workers were convicts on a work-release program.

It was a summer of fear. Neighbors tied yellow ribbons around their mail boxes. I read the newspaper every day, desperate for news. Was she still alive? Had they found her yet? And then they did.

Shari Smith was dead.

Cora, the tall African-American woman who was doing time for bad checks, had a scoop. She and I worked the salad bar together. While we refilled the dressing, she said, “I know someone on the police force. He said they found her in the woods wrapped in plastic.”

None of this made it into the newspapers. Twelve years alter, I watch the made-for-TV movie and find that it was true. Shari, who’d been a diabetic, had died that very first day for lack of medicine. Her abductor had dumped her in the forest. From the movie I learn that he had been calling the Smith family for weeks and telling them that their daughter was okay. He called on the phone and said that he was in love with Dawn, Shari’s sister, a local pageant winner who’d one day be runner up to Miss America.

I was nineteen years old. I went out at night, went dancing, and hung out with my friends at the Capitol Café, eating brains and grits. I went home at three a.m. People told me stories about escaped convicts creeping into the houses of innocents. The night janitor at Shoney’s was a murderer.

I’d spent most of my life in Grand Haven, a tourist town on the shores of Lake Michigan. The entire time I’d lived there, only one local murder made the headlines. It was a domestic squabble, or a crime of passion – nothing that affected my sense of safety.

A boy I’d known in elementary school died in a freak snowmobile accident. Another died of cancer. But I’d never known a murder victim, not even remotely. Shari’s death was a shock I couldn’t absorb.

I went for walks – long walks to clear my mind, along the tree-lined country road. It’s all tract housing now, but then the pines were thick all the way to Scrub Oak Farm, where the cows grazed on an embankment. There was corn across the road. The only jarring part of the walk was a house mid-way with a yard full of dogs. Whenever I walked past, the dogs started barking, lurching, straining at their chains. I crossed to the other side of the road when I went by and tried not to wince.

I heard a lot of rumors that summer. I heard that the man who lived in the house with the dogs was a suspect in the murder of Shari Smith. I heard that the murderer had chosen his next victim, and that she was blonde and blue-eyed. Well, so was I. I stopped taking walks.
The second victim was a little girl who lived in a trailer park. She was found a few days later, and then Larry Gene Bell, an electrician, was arrested.

The man was clearly insane. During his trial, a year later, I was working at the local newspaper. Accounts of Bell’s courtroom antics filled pages of print. When asked a question, he’d say, “Silence is golden.” Once, he stood up and proposed marriage to Dawn Smith, who sat horrified in the courtroom. Someone on staff at the newspaper said that the murders had been good for business. I couldn’t tell if he was being cynical or not.

By the time I watch the made-for-television movie, Larry Gene Bell is about to be executed. I am living in Japan, which boasts one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world. I am past the age of victims favored by serial killers.

At the end of the movie, a photo of Shari Smith flashes on screen. It’s the photo that appears in my high school yearbook. How out of date that Farrah hairstyle looks, I think. And no one would wear blue eye shadow like that anymore. It happened all so long ago. It is dark outside and I am alone in the house.

U-Turn

2007-05-25T17:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I skipped the arduous pool cleaning session at my son's school in order to attend a lecture at the Deaf School. It was given by a young deaf woman who works at the school's dormitory. Her talk was directed toward the junior and senior high school students, but there were many teachers and mothers in attendance.

Her story was a familiar one: Deaf child is integrated into regular schools. Child doesn't understand everything that's going on, but manages to get by. Child goes to college and at last meets deaf peers. Child finds tribe! Child (now young adult) learns sign language. Child wholeheartedly enters Deaf culture. Hearing her speak reinforced my conviction that the School for the Deaf is the best place for my daughter. I can understand parents wanting their children to learn to live in the hearing world, but as a non-native speaker of Japanese, I know how stressful it is to not be able to understand half of what is going on. I am most at ease when I am with my foreign English-speaking friends, just as Lilia is most at ease when she is around people who can use sign language.

The young woman also told the students that they need to speak up when there's a problem, and explain to hearing people what they feel and how they can be helped. I thought this was sage advice, and also interesting because Japanese culture teaches people to be patient and silent in enduring hardship - gaman.

State of the Art

2007-05-17T20:02:00.001-07:00

So Yoshi went out and bought some mouse traps and this is what they look like. Simple, huh? It looks like something a pre-schooler could come up with. The inside is sticky, so I guess the idea is that the mosue ventures inside and then can't get out.

Yoshi placed a couple in strategic positions, mused about putting some cheese in as bait, and then didn't. The next morning, the traps were empty. But after school, I was getting started on dinner and I heard a squeaking noise. It was mixed in with the feedback from Lilia's hearing aid (a loud, screeching noise produced whenever it isn't nestled snugly in her ear or when she leans on it). I paused in my vegetable-chopping, and sure enough, the sound seemed to be coming from the cardboard tunnel. It sounded like a creature in distress! Being a wimp, I didn't want to peer too closely, so I sent Jio (who is actually even wimpier) to have a look. "There's a mouse!" he confirmed, and ran away. I grabbed a broom and swatted the trap out the door, praying that I wouldn't somehow dislodge the thing and set it free. I felt kind of bad though, as it was squeaking all the while.

Then I called Yoshi and told him that we'd caught a mouse. When he came home, I asked him what he was going to do with it.

"On the box, it said to throw it in the garbage," he said.

He told me that he'd seen the traditional mouse traps with the spring action at the store, but thought this kind was better.

Hmmm. Long slow death, or immediate execution? Which is more humane? I have to admit, however, that I don't want to personally deal with either kind of trap. I'm glad the mouse is gone.

Losing Kei at Amazon

2007-05-17T05:05:00.000-07:00

My first novel, Losing Kei, is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com (and Amazon.co.jp). How cool is that?!

Mother's Day, Schmother's Day

2007-05-13T00:41:00.000-07:00

So here is how I've spent my special day (ha ha ha): I nagged Lilia throughout the morning about her homework. Then we went to the mall, and Lilia kept wheeling away and disappearing, in spite of my talk about strangers. For the nearly the past eight years, the kid hasn't been responsible for her own safety, and doesn't know the importance of sticking close to Mommy in a crowded shopping center or of watching out for cars. At one point, while I was standing at a cash register, she took off out the door and went into the parking lot. Dangerous! We will have to have a talk about traffic safety, in addition to a reinforcement of the talk about strangers.

I've decided that I'm not cooking dinner, as it's My Special Day. If we have go to McDonald's or order pizza, then so be it.

This evening, my husband is taking his mother to see "Tokyo Tower," an undoubtedly schmaltzy Japanese movie. I will be staying home with the kids. If I can get them to bed early enough, I'll have a glass of wine and watch "Le Divorce" on DVD. (There is no hidden meaning in my viewing choice; I'm just in the mood for Paris.)

The House of Mouse

2007-05-02T18:26:00.000-07:00

This morning I went downstairs to make breakfast and a little gray mouse scurried across the floor. Eek! Unfortunately, it wasn't the first time. After eighteen years of seeing nary a nezumi in this country, we've suddenly had four in the past couple of weeks (or maybe it's the same mouse four times). The first time, I heard a rustling over by the rice. It sounded like a behemoth rodent - a foot-long gutter rat. The children and I huddled on the sofa until Yoshi came home. He managed to trap the mouse without hurting it - what a man! - and took it outside. It was a cute little baby mouse, but it made me think of rabies or the bubonic plague.

Last time we went shopping, Jio lingered near the vermin poison and suggested darkly that we get something to kill the mice with. But why, when we have such a great mouse-catcher in the house? He's caught three so far! And besides, I can't decide which is worse - finding a dead mouse and having to dispose of it, or having to wait until my husband comes home to trap the little bugger.

Lilia's Abilities

2007-05-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

Today is Blogging Against Disablism Day (or something like that). In honor of the occasion, here are ten things that my seven-year-old daughter can do:

1. She can write the Chinese characters for "spring wind."
2. She can do a somersault.
3. She can throw a baseball hard and straight.
4. She can write her name in English and Japanese and can also finger-spell it.
5. She can take photos and make movies with my cell phone (and also other functions that I haven't figured out yet.)
6. She can break an egg into a bowl without getting any shell in.
7. She can tie her shoes.
8. She can use chopsticks well and has been able to since she was about three.
9. She can remember all of her lines from her school play a year and a half ago.
10. She can give me directions to her aunt's house.

Baby Love

2007-04-25T17:33:00.000-07:00

I recently read Baby Love by Rebecca Walker. I could relate to her ambivalence about becoming a mother, her difficult birth and her inability to remember any lullabies. I was also excited to read that she'd made a trip to Shikoku, the island where I live, although she didn't have a great time. And I appreciated her defense of fatherhood. Feminist or not, I think we have to recognize the importance of fathers in the lives of our children.

But on page 89, when she's trying to decide whether or not to have an amnio, she writes "I just can't get too excited about a huge needle that close to my baby. On the other hand, I have to be honest with myself about being able to care for a baby with special needs. I don't think I can do it."

Here's the thing, Rebecca: No one wants to give birth to a baby with special needs. Don't we all say, "as long as it's healthy"? And probably most of us believe that we are incapable of caring for a child with special needs. To be honest, if someone had told me when I was pregnant that my daughter would be deaf and unable to walk, I would have been very disappointed. And yet now, I can't imagine not having Lilia with us. I would rather have Lilia as she is than not have her at all. She has made me a better person.

Having a child with special needs isn't necessarily bad.

Katei Homon

2007-04-24T22:08:00.000-07:00

Today was the dreaded annual home visit by my son's teacher (Lilia's teacher will visit in the summer). My friend L. said that she didn't understand why the visits occurred so early in the scholastic year. The kids have only been in school for two weeks. What could there possibly be to talk about? I reminded her that the visits are not meant for discussing the children's progress. The teachers enter their students' homes to check out their living conditions. For me, as an American, these visits constitute an invasion of privacy. The closest American equivalent I can think of would be a visit from social services. I guess the difference would be that Japanese teachers don't make any suggestions about changing their students' environments. They just take notes and file away the information for future reference. They might then cut a kid some slack if they know he's living in squalor with his single mom.

Last year I couldn't find the appropriate moment to hop up and serve refreshments. This time, I made sure I had a pot of coffee and a plate of cookies all ready. As soon as the teacher came into the house, I directed her to the sofa and poured the coffee. And then we talked about yesterday's paper-ripping incident. Yesterday evening, Jio was earnestly taping one of his prints back together, saying that his teacher would be angry. (She has complained already about the state of the prints that he shoves into his backpack.) Upon further questioning, we discovered that some kids in his class ripped his homework print. There have been other similar incidents, and Jio is not one to talk, so we're ever vigilant.

It's hard, though, to strike a balance between caring too much and caring too little. We want him to be able to fight his own battles, but we don't want him to be bullied. He's a sensitive kid, and I'd like to nurture that, but I don't want him to get stomped on.

The Imaginary Wheelchair

2007-04-19T20:31:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, I ordered a wheelchair for Lilia from the (as it would turn out) appropriately named Dream Shop. I figured we'd get the chair, with its bright yellow seat, in time for my daughter to use in first grade. But then as weeks turned into months and numerous phone calls yielded nothing, I began to wonder if we'd ever see that wheelchair at all. What could possibly be taking so long? The paperwork had gone through months before. I started to think that these chairs were being handcrafted by little elves at a mountain factory. Or maybe the whole thing was just a dream. Then finally, a week after Lilia started second grade, the wheelchair finally arrived.

Lilia is thrilled to be able to wheel around her classroom. I've seen the ease with which she goes over to the cubbies to retrieve her book bag at one end of the room, and then on to the other end to grab a homework print, whereas before she balked because she knew crawling on those hard floors would hurt her knees. My only concern is that she won't be using her legs as much as before and that they will weaken. For now, though, it's nice to see her reveling in a bit of independence.

Bad Mommy

2007-04-16T03:34:00.000-07:00

Normally, in writing, I try to make myself look good, but I'm no saint. Lilia has decided to live in a box because she is hurt and angry with me. It all started with the homework (my bete noire). As usual, she has a lot, and today, for some reason, she couldn't apply herself. It didn't seem all that difficult to me, but she just couldn't get it. She's learning to tell time at school. My son has a hard time with telling time, too. Anyway, she was goofing off, kept dropping her pencil, and then just sat there doing nothing. I lost my temper. We have spent an hour and a half on homework (or rather not doing homework) so far, and she's done only about a fifth of it.

I was already in a cranky mood because my son's dour and humorless new teacher, who seems exceptionally lacking in the social graces (not even a konnichiwa!), told me that Jio shouldn't bring all his books to school every day as he has been. Lilia's teachers are always saying that she should take responsibility for what goes into her bag every day, so I figured the goal of Japanese education was self-reliance. It appears, however, that in Jio's new teacher's eyes, I am not measuring up. School, I realize, is all about the mothers.

Daruma

2007-04-14T00:34:00.000-07:00

I'm all for rituals, so I decided I'd begin my next big writing project with one. I bought a papier mache daruma doll and colored in one eye, as per custom. Often, Japanese politicians color in an eye of a daruma as they embark on a campaign and then color in the other eye after they've won the election. I'm going to color in the other eye after I've finished the novel that I've just begun to write. (It may be a long, long, time, but I look forward to that day.) In the meantime, I've thought of some other little things I can do to mark my progress, such as bottle of champagne after every 5,000 words. It'll have to be the cheap kind, though. My daughter likes the daruma and signed that she wants one, too. "What will your goal be?" I asked her. "To work hard at math?" "No," she signed. She's going to write a book, too.

Second Grade

2007-04-11T18:13:00.000-07:00

This week the twins started second grade. Here are my daughter's textbooks. Lilia has two books for music class, as well as three textbooks for Japanese (she has the standard one, and a slow-paced one and then something else). Last year, Jio had a textbook for P.E. Who knew you needed a book to learn how to do jumping jacks?

So about the teachers. Lilia has the same homeroom teacher as last year, but her special helper teacher has changed. No longer do we have the dour and conservative Miss N. Now we have the bright and good-natured Ms. Y., who if I recall correctly, taught a deaf boy with ADD or something like that, last year. Miss N. was always in a bad mood by the end of the day, and I felt kind of sorry for my girl. I understand that she is difficult. She's extremely willfull and easily distracted (except when she's being stubborn about something), but she's also a cheerful and funny kid. I was happy to see Ms. Y. laughing when I went to pick up Lilia yesterday. My friend L., who taught high school in Australia, says that high school teachers should never teach small children. Maybe she's right. Last year Miss N. moved down from the high school to be Lilia's teacher. Now she's gone.

Jio didn't get the rumored kibishi (strict) teacher he expected. He said his new teacher is nice, and he came bursting out of school on the first day with a big smile on his face. The woman took one look at me, turned to Jio, and said, "Does your mother speak Japanese?" I found this very off-putting and wanted to slap her, but maybe things will get better. At any rate, Jio's anxiety seems to have died down a bit.

Bloggers Who Think

2007-04-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

I am deeply honored to be nominated for the Thinking Blogger Award. Thank you so much, Vicki! I'm also feeling a little guilty about my lack of posts, as of late. It's not that I haven't been thinking - I have! It's just that I'm trying to tie up loose ends on my anthology on parenting disabled children so it can be edited and published. Also, we had two weeks of spring vacation, during which I had to keep my children away from the Nintendo games and the TV.

The thing about this award is that I get to name five other Thinking Bloggers. Although several of my favorite bloggers have already been tagged, I'd like you to check out

Lotus Reads, who manages to read an awful lot of books about Asia and present them to readers with intelligence and enthusiam,

Here in Korea, who provides intriguing snapshots of the expat life in our neighbor country and makes me feel not so alone

Schuyler's Monster, in which an alternadad writes about heartbreak, hope, depression, and his disabled daughter, all with a dash of humor and irreverence

ReadingWritingLiving which makes me think about race and adoption and writing in ways in I hadn't thought before

and Pinwheels, 'cause Jennifer's writing is so lovely and 'cause I'm eager to know what it's like to raise a child with Down Syndrome in Montana.

In Celebration of New Teachers

2007-04-06T17:46:00.000-07:00

In just two days, my twins will begin second grade. I can't wait to find out who their homeroom teachers will be. My son has heard rumors that his will be a strict male teacher who piles on the homework, and he isn't quite looking forward to that. My daughter, however, is counting the days till she advances to the next grade level (while I worry about the homework).

It's possible that her homeroom teacher will be H.-sensei, who just earned his master's degree from Ehime University. H.-sensei was once my husband's student. He is also profoundly deaf, and I think he is the first deaf person my daughter ever met. It's very difficult to pass the teacher's exam, and very few do on the first try. Clearly, H.-sensei is a remarkable individual and he will be a shining example for the deaf kids at Lilia's school.

Elsewhere, Hirotada Ototake, author of No One's Perfect, was appointed a full-time teacher at Suginami Daiyon Elementary School in Tokyo. Ototake was born with tetra-amelia, a congenital condition that stops the limbs from developing properly. Basically, this means that he doesn't have arms or legs. His disability is very obvious. I am sure that these two men will wield a positive influence over the coming generations.

Mudville

2007-04-02T03:31:00.000-07:00

There is no joy Chez Kamata today. After winning the quarterfinal game, my husband's team lost the semi-final. If they'd have won, they'd have been able to go to the All Shikoku tournament (not Koshien, as previously reported; you'd think I'd have that straight by now, having been a baseball widow for ten years or so). In this morning's newspaper, there was a photo of the scene immediately after the game - the victors, running forward with their arms raised; the losers and their coach standing in the background, heads drooping. Yoshi felt that the photo constituted harrassment of him and his players. I thought, from a journalistic point of view, that it was a great photo that told the whole story, but I managed to sympathize with him.

In somewhat related news, I finally got my contributor's copies of Skipping Stones, featuring my inspired-by-a-true-story story, "Baseball, Dad and Me." It was written from my son's point of view, about how his dad's team lost the prefectural championship a couple years ago by one lousy run in the tenth inning. Interestingly, the illustrations are of a little girl playing baseball with her dad. Politically correct, yes, but the story was actually about Jio.

Baseball Diaries Redux

2007-03-28T06:59:00.000-07:00

We are well into the spring baseball tournament, the one that leads to Koshien. I haven't been to any of my husband's games, yet, because the stadium is not handicapped accessible and also because while my son loves hitting, kicking and throwing balls, he does not enjoy watching others do the same. Leave the kids with the mother-in-law you say! Well, she wants to go to the games, too, and does. So anyhow, Yoshi's team won its second game today, which puts them in the quarterfinals on Friday. He was very pleased with his pitcher and the 7-1 score. Only thing is, his team is currently plagued by the flu. Three or four players are sick. This evening, he got a call saying that his pitcher, the one who pitched today, his ace, now has the flu. Oh, dear.

Portrait of the Artist

2007-03-25T01:04:00.000-07:00

On the last day of school, Lilia received an award for a painting she did in art class. Her teacher entered it in a prefectural-wide concours of artwork based on students' reading. Lilia's was based on a book called Pao's Christmas, or something like that. She got an Honorable Mention. When I heard that, I got tears in my eyes. I remember when Lilia was the only kid in her class who still scribbled, who couldn't draw a recognizable face. Back then, I had no idea of what kind of progress she would make in school. Also, there was a boy in her class who was really good at drawing. He won first prize in an art competition of deaf school students all over Japan. There was an award ceremony at school, and a well-known actress came and made a speech. This boy was featured in the newspaper. I figured with him around, Lilia had no chance of ever impressing anyone with her drawings. That boy, who is going to be integrated from April, has been more interested in baseball than art, lately, and he didn't win anything this time. I am very proud of Lilia and all she has accomplished this past year. (Please excuse the messy room!)

Four Stories redux

2007-03-22T22:56:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday evening I had the great privilege to be a guest reader at Four Stories Osaka, a spin-off of the Four Stories reading series held in Boston. The whole thing was started (and is continued by) Tracy Slater, an emerging writer who teaches gender studies at a Boston prison. Tracy decides on a theme (this time it was loss and desperation) and invites four published writers to read for fifteen minutes each. I've been to three of these events so far, and it's always a good time. Tracy is enthusiastic and supportive and a boon to the arts in Japan; every writer should have a Tracy!

The event was held at Portugalia Bar & Grill, just down the street from the American consulate. There was lots of food and wine and an attentive, literate audience, including a reporter from the Japan Times. I got to read along with Holly Thompson, author of the wonderful novel Ash, and a contributor to my anthology The Broken Bridge. It was fun to hang out and talk with her, and to have a look at the dummy of her forthcoming picture book. Brit Chris Page read a funny story and a man whose life is going down the drain, and American Jerry Gordon read a heartbreaking tale about a boy's uneaten last lunch.

All of the readings and some photos from the event are now online. Mine is here. (I was holding a mike in one hand and my pages in the other. If you here a pause, that's me trying to get tot he next page.) Depending on how fast your computer is, it may take awhile to download the audio portion.

Bully Mamas

2007-03-20T17:20:00.000-07:00

While in Osaka Sunday for a Four Stories event (more on that later), I picked up a copy of Kansai Scene. There was a great article by Laura Markslag about the all-important Park Debut, that is, the first time a mother ventures onto a public playground in Japan with her child.

Markslag writes, "Many parks in Japan are controlled by gangs. No, not by the gangsters that sell illegal substances to children or the kind that would steal your grandmother's purse. These parks are controlled by exclusive bands of mothers, your average neighborhood housewives, and they decide exactly who can and cannot play at the playground with their children. These gangs of mean mamas have more power than many thugs do and instill fear in the hearts of the new mothers."

I was blissfully unaware of any such groups here, and besides, we usually met up at the park with other foreign friends when we ventured out, but I find this whole scenario very easy to imagine. And people wonder why bullying is such a big problem in Japan!