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!

As American As...

2007-03-15T23:20:00.000-07:00

Today I made apple pie with the four fifth graders at the deaf school - two boys and two girls. Awhile back, their teacher invited me to their class to talk about what we eat in America. When I mentioned apple pie, they all said that they wanted to try it and would I make it with them? With only a week left of school to go, we finally got around to it.

I didn't understand everything the kids were saying to me, though I tried. I noticed how among them they seem to have a designated speaker, the one who is deemed to speak the best. So when I didn't understand something that one of the boys was saying, he referred me to one of the girls. I'm sure they're used to not being understood, but still, I felt that I was letting them down whenever I didn't know what they were saying. (Whereas many hearing Japanese feel that their language is too difficult for foreigners, and don't expect me to understand anything at all.)

As for the apple pie, we made it as per Betty Crocker's instructions. Apparently in Japan, it is customary to cook the apples before putting them in the pie shell. We didn't do that. We put the pie in the oven and started to clean up, and then Lilia's teacher appeared and said that she had a fever and would I please take her home. So I didn't get to try the pie. I hope it turned out okay.

White Day

2007-03-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was White Day. For those of you who don't live in Japan, White Day is the day when boys who received chocolate on Valentine's Day return a gift of something white, such as marshmallow candy, to the girls who were so generous on February 14. As you can see, it's a crock. Who would choose marshmallows over chocolate? But my daughter, who gave away a pile of chocolate last month, was very much looking forward to March 14. Frankly, I'd completely forgotten about it, but someone must have mentioned it to her because every time she got her hands on a calendar, she'd draw a little heart in the space for 3/14, clasp her hands, and gaze heavenward. She was thinking about what she'd get from R-kun, who has replaced the former object of her affection, D-kun. (She doesn't even remember the HUGE crush she had on Y-kun when she was in kindergarten.)

Fortunately, the boys at school delivered. They mostly gave her junky candy that they no doubt picked out themselves. The best gift of all was from S.-sensei, one of the first grade teachers. It was wrapped in blue paper and adorned with a pin made out of pencils. Inside, was a little white cake with almonds on top. I was going to ask him if he made it himself, or if his wife did, but I decided that I'd rather just believe the former. He seems like the type of guy who would be able to bake a cake. He's the one who showed the kids how to make wreaths and rings out of twigs. His New Year's card depicted a kind of still life that he'd obviously arranaged himself. In another life, I knew men who could cook better than I can. I would like to believe that there are men like that in Japan, too.

Wanderlust

2007-03-13T18:57:00.000-07:00

So the other day I opened the paper and happened upon an article about Iriomote Island in Okinawa. I showed my family the page and said, "I want to go there!"

My husband, who has been to Okinawa three or four times already, mostly on school trips (I've never been) said, "It's too far."

"But look at this beautiful beach," I said. "And the ox-drawn carriage! And this island is home to the rare wild Iriomote cat!"

"Then you go by yourself," said my very conservative son, who hates it when I go to Osaka overnight, and abhors the idea of travel.

"Okay, I will!" I showed the pictures to Lilia and asked if she'd like to go. She nodded and signed "Ikitai! Ikitai!"

Lilia would also like to visit Germany, after having seen a teacher's honeymoon photos, and, of course, Tokyo Disneyland. I'm glad there is at least one person in this family who shares my wanderlust.

Lilia, honey, let's go to Paris when you're twelve!

Look!

2007-03-09T02:33:00.000-08:00

Okay, so here's the cover.

She Crawls Away

2007-03-05T03:50:00.000-08:00

I'm having some issues with my daughter's crawling. On the one hand, I'm glad that she can get around speedily on all fours. It gives her some measure of independence. And she likes to be free. It took her something like three years to be able to crawl, so now, seeing her do it so well makes me kind of happy.

On the other hand, crawling lacks dignity. When children see her crawling, they say that she's like a baby or a dog. That really bothers me. If she was hobbling along with a walker, they might find her courageous - or feel sorry for her - but crawling seems sort of deviant. Or maybe that's just my bias. Maybe I am the one with the closed mind, with the prejudice for crawlers.

A couple of days ago, we were in a restaurant. Lilia decided that she had to go to the bathroom, and that she would go by herself. She got down from her chair and started crawling on the restaurant floor, past the other diners, toward the bathroom. She's really fast! But I can't help but think that crawling is not appropriate restaurant behavior.

There is also a hygiene problem. She crawls all over the place and then she sucks her thumb. (By the way, a hundred dollars to anyone who can give me an idea I haven't tried for making her stop sucking her thumb!)

Losing Kei - The Cover!

2007-03-04T05:02:00.000-08:00

So I finally found out when my novel will be published - January! - and I got a look at the cover. My publisher sent me some cover samples a couple of months ago and asked me to pick out what I liked. Most of the covers featured a photo of a woman smoking. I thought she looked desperate, like the woman in my book, and that the photo captured the mood of the story, but I worried that a lot of potential readers wouldn't even give it a try because of the cigarette. (For the record, she quits smoking in the course of the novel.) Also, I asked my American sister-in-law to throw a book party for me, and I told her that I want there to be a cake of the book cover. I didn't really think a smoking woman cake would be very appetizing! The cover that my family liked best featured a sweet little boy holding a pink paper heart behind his back. My woman friends and I thought it was very appealing, but I have to admit it was a little too treacly. The new cover - the one my publisher just sent - is perfect. It'll look great on the cake and it's not at all sappy. It perfectly conveys the tone and theme of the book. I will post it here when everything becomes a bit more official.

The Tyranny of the Dead

2007-02-23T20:31:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was horrified to find out that, as wife of the eldest son, one of my jobs would be to put make-up on my mother-in-law after she dies. (Also, if a loved one dies as the result of an accident, the bereaved get to wash off the blood.) I told my husband that I didn't think I could bring myself to put foundation on a corpse, should it come to that, and he scoffed and told me that it was the last kind thing I could do for her.

This got me to thinking about the Western attitude toward death versus the Japanese one. In Japan, where worship of the dead is part of the culture, where my mother-in-law puts out a bowl of rice for my deceased father-in-law every day, where not putting out the bowl of rice might upset the spirits of the dead and bring about bad luck, people are more comfortable with death. After all, the dead are always with us.

On the one hand, I can appreciate this, but on the other, it seems like the dead have too much power over daily life. I remember how I once made the blunder of heaping too much rice in a bowl when I was helping prepare school lunch. One mother told me that rice is only heaped like that for the dead. Today, my mother-in-law told me that I shouldn't hang the laundry facing in a certain direction because of the dead. To be honest, I cut her off before she could give me the details, but I'm guessing you're not supposed to hang shirts, which are kind of the shape of a person, facing north, the land of the dead. I don't mind if she follows these rules, but I really could do without the added stress of worrying about offending the departed (or whatever). I regret, however, that I cut her off. It sounds like something I could use in a story.

Losing Kei: Progress Report

2007-02-22T05:07:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to report that I have finished revisions on my novel, Losing Kei, over a month ahead of my deadline. I heard from Ira, my editor/publisher yesterday, and he seems satisfied with the changes I made. Yay! Meanwhile, I've been reading his first novel, The Kitchen Man, which is somewhat autobiographical. It feels sort of like reading one's boss's diary. I feel like I know so much about his marriage now (including his sex life) and the things that made him miserable in childhood. And Ira, having read my novel and probably other stuff that turned up online, no doubt knows quite a bit about me.

The Hypochondriac

2007-02-21T04:18:00.000-08:00

Lilia was born at 26 weeks, before her lungs had a chance to fully develop, so from the age of 2 till 3 or so, she spent a lot of time in the hospital with various respiratory ailments. She spent a lot of time in the ICU, the CCU, and the HCU, hooked up to IVs and C-PAPs. She was jabbed with many needles, confined to oxygen tents, pumped up with drugs that made her paranoid, and had her nose and throat suctioned several times a day. Believe me, she did not have a good time. Which is why I find it very strange that she now loves going to the hospital and enjoys watching medical dramas on TV. Today I took her to the doctor to see about this terrible cough she's had since yesterday. As usual, she was a model patient, opening her mouth for the tonuge depressor without being told, and eager to use the nebulizer. After we got her meds, she wanted to hold the bag. She waited in the car when I went to get Jio after school, but I carried the medicine with me to make sure she didn't do an Anne Nicole.

All I can imagine is that this is her way of dealing with her early trauma. At the time, I thought, "Well, at least she won't remember any of this." And yet, every time we see an ambulance, she perks up with recognition. To be perfectly honest, after all those years of having to pin her down and pinch her nose to get her to open her mouth for medicine, it's sort of nice that she's willing to take it now.

Hina-sama

2007-02-17T17:45:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my mother-in-law presented me with a couple bags of arare, round pastel rice snacks, for Lilia's Girl's Festival dolls. I think she was trying to tell me that it was time for us to put up the display. She's the one who paid the thousands of yen for the dolls, so it's hard to let the holiday slip by.

So anyway, yesterday, I dragged all of the boxes out of the closet and Lilia and I set up the dolls. When she was a baby, I used to get all upset when she'd touch them or knock them out of alignment. The plum blossoms had to be on the lower tier, angled just so, and the courtiers had to be on the second tier in just the right order. It all had to be exactly like the picture that came with the dolls!

I'm happy to say that I've lightened up considerably. This time, we didn't look at any photos or diagrams. I let Lilia put the dolls where she wanted, more or less, and touch them as much as she liked. They're hers, after all, and no one enjoys them as much as she does.

Camel Book Drive

2007-02-14T18:02:00.000-08:00

My husband is always nagging me to get rid of books. It's true that they are all over the house, and I am always acquiring more, but I can't bear to put them in the trash and there seem to be so few places around here willing to accept used English books. But here's an idea - the Camel Book Drive! I have already put together a box of books that I intend to take to the post office later today. I will mail them to:

Garissa Provincial Library
For Camel Library
Librarian in Charge, Rashid M. Farah
P.O. Box 245
Garissa, Kenya

And then I will enjoy imagining children in Kenya reading stories about Japan.

You can also help by sending money.

The Way Houdini Died

2007-02-14T05:33:00.000-08:00

I have been a bit remiss in reminding you, Dear Reader, to check out the fiction at Literary Mama. You'll be wanting to read Miriam Fried's hilarious story, "The Way Houdini Died," in which a mother and father have very different ideas about how to deal with their daughter's bully.

Also, check out Rachel Elizabeth Cole's heartfelt "Caring for Lily," in which a mother tries to find the perfect daycare center for her baby, and dig back into the archives to read about an expat Finnish mama in Tua Laine's "Au Pair in Alabama, or The Legend of the Dog-Killer."

Snow White

2007-02-10T15:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my son's happyokai, which means every class in the elementary school put on some sort of presentation. My son's class did "Snow White" in English, so that all of the parents would be impressed by their kids' newly acquired language skills. It was cute. The kids remembered their lines, danced well, and Snow White did some impressive fainting.

The second graders sang a few selections from "The Sound of Music," and then after that the performances were increasingly high culture. The next class - the third graders - did a poetry reading in sort of a No mode, and the fourth graders played an avant garde musical composition. The fifth graders performed a story by Kenji Miyazawa in English, which had an off-off-off Broadway feel, and the sixth graders did a performance of kyogen, speaking once again in a highly stylized way, a la kabuki.

I kept thinking, "So this is the difference between public school and private school." At a public school, we would have been treated to more mundane fare - the theme song to "Popeye, the Sailor Man," for example, and dramatizations of folk tales that everyone knows. I couldn't help thinking that it was all a bit pretentious. But then again, I went to public school. I'm the hoi polloi.

Mama at the Marathon

2007-02-03T15:27:00.000-08:00

For some reason, Japanese educators think it's a good idea for children to run around half-naked in the middle of winter. Thus, on Friday, my son had his school "marathon." I showed up to cheer the kids on as they ran from their playground to a shrine down the street and back - about a kilometer. The mothers were sensibly dressed in long underwear and down jackets, but the kids wore just T-shirts and shorts on a day when snow was predicted. Several years ago the school was known for its hadaka marason - "naked marathon" - in which children ran in their underpants.

My daughter's "marathon" was the week before. She did the course in a walker, and while wearing a track suit.

Happily, the kids were given warm drinks afterward.

Gaijin and Garbage

2007-01-25T16:47:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago Joseph Coleman wrote in the Japan Times about the Japanese-Brazilian population in Gunma Prefecture. Several years ago, in response to a labor shortage, the Japanese government allowed descendants of Japanese immigrants to Brazil to come and work in this country. I guess the thinking was that if they looked Japanese and had Japanese blood running through their veins, they must be okay. Well, as it turns out, those raised in Brazil are a little bit different. According to the Japanese-Japanese residents of Gunma, those Brazilians play their music too loud, don't file tax returns, and - this is mentioned more than once - don't sort their garbage properly.

My mother-in-law says the same thing about me. When we moved in here, she took it upon herself to take out our garbage. She is the keeper of the complicated garbage calendar,which tells you which two days of the month you can put out your plastic trash, etc. I figured that since she has nothing to do but hang out and take down our laundry, I would leave the task to her. (Besides, when I did take the initiative and dump the trash myself in order to avoid her constant complaints about my garbage sorting, she told me to leave the job to her.) Also, it's a safe way for her to pick on me. I don't get all riled up when she points out some mistake I've made in trash disposal, as I do when she criticizes my child-rearing, for example. The other day, my mother-in-law who is in reasonably good health and has no life-threatening diseases, told me that I need to learn how to sort garbage properly so that I will be able to do it after she dies! Little does she know that her son, the Japanese guy, is the one who tosses plastic bottles and rotten vegetables into the combustibles.

So anyway, the overwhelming stereotype is that foreigners don't sort garbage properly. Sorting burnables from non-burnables and recyclable from non-recyclable is good and all, but I doubt that most Japanese who complain are thinking about the environment. After all, this is a country where people leave their empty cars running while they run into a shop to buy a pack of cigarettes or whatever. And there is garbage all over Mt. Fuji, which is supposedly a sacred mountain. I think it is just a sign of pettiness, an easy way to complain about foreigners.

Hisashi Toshioka of the Justice Ministry's Immigration Bureau said, " Everybody, I think, is agreed on one thing: We want to attract the 'good' foreigners, and keep out the 'bad' ones."

Meanwhile, the mayor of Oizumi, Gunma, says, "We want people to learn our rules before coming here."

So to all you persecuted Somali Bantus out there who are thinking of coming to Japan:
Learn how to sort the garbage!

Sankanbi

2007-01-24T05:23:00.000-08:00

Today there was a sankanbi at my son's school. The first grade parents were invited to watch a music class conducted in English by a Canadian teacher. They started out with some rhythmic clapping, and then did some singing and dancing along with CDs. One of the songs was by the Wiggles, from a video that Jio and Lilia watched as toddlers. Out of all the boys, my son seemed to be enjoying the class the most.

Afterward, there was a meeting in the classroom. The teacher talked and laughed and cried (when she was telling us that Miss L. the Taiwanese-born American teacher would be leaving at the end of February, and again when she was telling us how moved she was by seeing the first graders speaking English as they rehearsed "Snow White") and all of the parents were totally stoic. No one ever nods in agreement or chuckles at an anecdote or even cracks a smile. Mostly, the parents look down at the desks, or at the teacher without any expression whatsoever. Except for me. I wonder if it's considered more polite to show no reaction.

The teacher said that she has told the students to do 20 sit-ups a day at home. My son never does sit-ups, so this is the first I've heard of this. The exercise is supposed to strengthen them so they can speak from the diaphragm. Interesting.

How to Get Into Tokyo University

2007-01-22T05:16:00.000-08:00

Someone has done research and written a book on the common characteristics of those admitted to Japan's most prestigious institute of higher learning, Tokyo University, a.k.a. Todai. According to this book, "Todai no Kodomo, Do Yatte Todai ni Itta no ka? (How Did the Neighbor's Kid Make it Into Todai)", just over 58 percent of Todai students ate breakfast and dinner with their fathers when they were between the ages of 4 and 7. Mark Schreiber writes in the Japan Times, "With dad presiding over the evening meal, the book theorizes, a young child's brain receives the highest quality stimulation - a considerably better way to promote his or her development than, say, sending preschool kids out to classes in English conversation or math." At first I bristled at this - what, only dads engage in intelligent conversation? - but then I realized that if two adults are present at the dinner table, they may talk with each other at a higher level than one adult and one or more kids. Just a theory. When I told my husband about this finding, he said, "What about that kid who started a fire because his dad was always nagging him about homework?" Perhaps a little more research is in order...

Shuffle

2007-01-21T03:58:00.000-08:00

When I was younger, up until I found out that my daughter was deaf, I listened to music a lot. I listened while I was cooking dinner or cleaning the house or just hanging out. But out of consideration for Lilia, I haven't listened to music much over the past few years. When she first got her hearing aids (which she was always tearing out and throwing across the room), I tried to keep quiet for her. I wanted her to be able to use whatever residual hearing she had for spoken words. Everything else was just noise. She has a cochlear implant now, but it's still difficult, if not impossible, for her to understand words spoken in a noisy room.

Happily, Yoshi got my an MP3 player for Christmas, so I'm listening to music more now. I'm remembering that certain songs make me happy and give me more energy, and help me get out of thinking-ruts. Also, being able to listen to music while walking encourages me to exercise more. I love walking past the sweet potato fields while Lloyd Cole and the Commotions segues into Snow Patrol segues into Tekameli segues into Neneh Cherry and so on. I hope someday that Lilia will get that kind of joy out of sound.

Addicts

2007-01-17T17:14:00.000-08:00

As you may recall, Jio and Lilia got DS Nintendo games for Christmas. We have limited DS use to one hour per day, after homework is done. During winter vacation, the kids were so eager to play, that they did their homework almost as soon as they woke up. Now that they're back in school, they've been doing their homework as soon as they get home. Which is great. But Daddy has decided that the DS Nintendo is A LOT OF FUN. He comes home at around 7 or 8PM, eats dinner, and then picks up one of the kids' games and plays till they go to bed. Instead of interacting with us, he sits there immersed in Mario, or the new "brain-training" software that he bought for himself to use on his children's DSes. Which is not so good. Also, Jio and Lilia start hovering and hanging over his shoulder, watching the action on the tiny screen as Dad plays. I can leave the room for an hour or more and no one misses me. Hopefully, this is all just a phase. Meanwhile, I'm sticking to novels.

Mama's Night Out

2007-01-16T05:56:00.000-08:00

On Sunday afternoon I took the bus to Osaka to attend Tracy Slater's second Four Stories event. The Savannah Bar and Grill was being remodeled, so this time the readings were held at Portugalia, which served - you guessed it - Portugese cuisine. I went armed with a subway map of the city and an email message from Tracy, and I thought that since I'd been in the area seven years ago, I'd be able to find my way to the venue. Well, I wound up walking in circles around Umeda for about an hour and a half. I asked for directions five or six times, but Umeda is so darn confusing. Happily, I managed to stumble into the restaurant just before the readings began. This time, the readers were Jessica Goodfellow, who read an amazing essay about her obsessive-compulsive disorder following the near death of her son in a car crash; John Eidswick, who read a story called "Daughters of Hiroshima"; Canadian Michael Hoffman, who apparently flew down from Hokkaido to read from his new novel Nectar Fragments; and American-born Canadian Hillel Wright, a former commercial fisherman and hippie who read from his new novel about a Japanese manga artist who defies the emperor.

Death of a Mother

2007-01-12T03:13:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago, the mother of one of the players on my husband's baseball team passed away. My husband, of course, went to the wake that night. He told Jio and Lilia where he was going. He was dressed in a suit and they wondered. I have always been reluctant to bring up death with Jio, especially, because he is so sensitive. When he was younger, I skipped over Babar's mother's death while reading the book, and phrases such as "dead tired" because he became so alarmed at hearing them. He started asking me questions about the baseball player's mother's death. I remember being that age, and being terrified of my own mother dying, and how promises of heaven or talk of the cycle of nature didn't help at all. I told Jio that I would do my best to stay healthy. Recently, I have been walking almost every day and I'm trying to eat better. And, because death is a part of life whether we like it or not, I've stopped skipping passages about death in books when I read aloud.

Bowling

2007-01-07T03:31:00.000-08:00

Today we decided to give bowling a try. Jio had seen it on TV and thought it looked fun. Yoshi thought that taking Lilia would be exhausting, but I thought we needed to at least try to let her experience bowling. So we went to the noisy, smoky bowling alley. It was very crowded - lots of 20-year-olds decked out in suits or kimono (well, one young woman), who'd obviously been at some official Coming of Age event. (Coming of Age Day is tomorrow.) We had to wait 40 minutes for a lane. Finally, we got settled in. We had gutter guards put up, otherwise the kids would have been in tears every time the ball went off track. Thanks to the guards, Jio's ball ricocheted a few times and he got a strike. Me, too. I wound up beating my husband at a sport for the first time ever. Lilia tried getting the ball down the lane in various ways. She tried pushing it while on her knees, but the ball moved so slowly I was afraid it would stop mid-way. Yoshi helped her a few times. She came away thinking that she'd won because she and her dad got a spare at the end. I didn't have the heart to set her straight.

Homework Hell

2007-01-04T06:04:00.000-08:00

We're not doing so well with the homework. In order to get everything done, I calculated that Lilia would have to do at least three prints per day, one each of math, kanji, and Japanese. I didn't make her do any homework on Christmas or New Year's and maybe one other day. With only four days left of winter vacation, she still has ten pages of math to go, as well as about five or six pages each of Japanese and kanji. We were also supposed to do three sets of flashcards - addition, subtraction, fingerspelling about twenty words - every day, and I'm sad to say that at most we've managed one set of flashcards per day. We are on a major backslide here. Oh, and she had three or four charts to fill out, after brushing her teeth, helping out around the house, doing the flashcards, etc, as well as a daily diary and five days' worth of picture diaries. Also, a chart for her winter vacation reading including titles and her feelings about the book. On the plus side, we've been reading lots of books, something that we don't always seem to have time for when the usual homework eats up our evenings.

Special Needs Mama

2007-01-04T05:59:00.000-08:00

In her new column, at Literary Mama Vicki Forman, mother of a multiply disabled boy, writes about the mother at the swings.

Kohaku

2007-01-01T07:35:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

If you live in Japan, you know that New Year's Eve is a pretty low key affair here. At our house, it involves watching "Kohaku" on TV, until about midnight when my mother-in-law prepares soba noodles for health and longevity. Normally, I'm not all that into "Kohaku," which is a music program featuring singers who were big over the past year. They divide the singers into groups - red (the women) and white (the men) and at the end, the audience votes and a winner is declared. Lilia was quite impressed by the pink Southern Bellesque dress and hat on Ayumi Hamasaki, as well as those funky nail charms. But the act we were all waiting for was singer-songwriter Angela Aki, a hapa (American mom, Japanese dad) who was born and raised here, in Tokushima. She went to the same elementary school as my son! Her big hit song this year, "Home," was actually inspired by her memories of this area. She was dressed down in a red T-shirt with her name across the front and a denim skirt, so Lilia wasn't terribly interested. Anyway, she talked about her grandma and Tokushima, and her singing and piano-playing were lovely. She did us proud.

Baseball, Dad and Me

2006-12-30T05:53:00.000-08:00

The summer before last, Jio asked me to write a story about him playing baseball with Daddy. I was inspired, and that night I dashed off what I felt was a heartwarming story about a boy (Jio), in a country with no T-ball, who just wants to hit some balls with his dad. Problem is, Dad is busy coaching his high school baseball team so about the only way he can see him is to turn on the TV during the summer tournament. Needless to say, Jio didn't like this story. As I read it to him, he frowned and said "When do we play baseball?" "Just wait," I replied brightly, feeling pleased with myself. There was a scene at the end where the narrator (Jio) finally got a moment with his dad. Well, I liked it. I sent it out to some magazines and book publishers and got a lot of encouraging rejections. Yesterday, my story finally found a home. It'll be published in Skipping Stones.

The Family Stone

2006-12-28T19:37:00.000-08:00

My last pick at the video rental shop was "The Family Stone." In this movie, Sarah Jessica Parker plays a rather high strung young city woman visiting her fiance's laid back, liberal family for the first time. At Christmas, no less. It was entertaining, but what I liked most about it was that one of the characters (the fiance's younger brother) was deaf. He was played by a deaf actor with a hearing aid. Everyone in the movie family was adept at ASL and signed whenever he was present, even if they weren't speaking directly to him. How ideal, I thought. If only our family was like that. As it is, Lilia has figured out that I am the official translator in this family and she looks to me whenever she doesn't understand what her dad is trying to say. I got him a hefty sign language book for Christmas. You can swipe a bar code for each sign with a cell phone and view a video clip of each sign. Hopefully we'll all become better at communicating withour hands.

Behold the Turkey

2006-12-26T20:03:00.000-08:00

I cooked two holiday meals, including this one, with the four pound turkey "killed with a sharp knife according to Islamic rites." The sweet potatoes in orange shells, which we actually had the night before, were a big hit. And they were pretty easy to prepare. Just peel and boil about 3 pounds of sweet potatoes, throw them in the food processor and add 1 stick of butter, 3 eggs, 1 cup brown suger, 1 Tablespoon vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, 1/2 cup cream, 1 Tablespoon each of lemon and orange juice and some grated lemon rind. Whip it all up. Cut off the end of about 8 oranges, scoop out the insides and replace with the sweet potato mixture. Bake at 180 C or 350 F for 45 minutes. Fabulous!

The Meaning of Squash

2006-12-23T06:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my mother-in-law cooked some winter squash (nankin) for us because, apparently, one traditionally eats nankin on the shortest day of the year. "Why do you eat it today?" I asked, hoping for a more detailed explanation. "Because today is toji (the shortest day of the year)," she replied. Okay. Whatever. I suppose it has something to do with the Chinese characters that represent winter squash, a secondary meaning, or maybe there is a synonymous word that has some special meaning. If anyone out there knows, I'd love an explanation.

At any rate, we ate the squash, and in a week or so we will be eating o-sechi ryori, in which every morsel is weighted with meaning (fish roe for fertility and so forth). In the meantime, I am preparing a traditional American holiday meal that no one will appreciate as much as I will. Lilia and I made cornbread today. On Christmas, I will roast a small turkey which, according to the packaging has been killed according to Muslim law, and I will also prepare sweet potatoes in orange shells, mushroom stuffing - and pumpkin pie, if I can find a can of evaporated milk.

Lunch with Lilia

2006-12-21T22:39:00.000-08:00

Today was the last day of school before winter break. Lilia finished before Jio, so I took her out for spaghetti in her two-hundred-dollar dry-clean-only ceremony outfit, which of course now needs to be dry-cleaned. At one point, she stuck a straw in her mouth and signed that she was like a mosquito. Get it? The straw is like the proboscis. And the juice was presumably like the blood. She was exhibiting bad manners, but I couldn't help but be amused. And amazed. In spite of her paltry vocabulary, she comes up with some clever metaphors.

Why There are Dishes in the Sink

2006-12-20T19:13:00.000-08:00

I've pretty much abandoned housework over the past few days in order to read Sarah Bird's The Flamenco Academy
I was disconcerted, at first, by the similarities between this and the unpublished novel in my proverbial drawer. As in Ms. Bird's book, my novel features a hopelessly white girl with a wild friend, and a hot, tortured Gypsy guitarist. However, while my story is set in the Midwest, this one takes place in New Mexico, and there is a lot of dancing. The flamenco lore is fascinating and Ms. Bird is a damn good writer.

My Weird English

2006-12-18T17:11:00.000-08:00

Not that I spend all my time plugging my name into search engines or anything, but...the other day I discovered a reference to one of my stories in the book Weird English. In the introduction to the book, Evelyn Nien-Ming Ch'ien, writes "With increasing frequency in literature, readers are encountering barely intelligible and sometimes unrecognizable English created through the blending of one or more languages with English." Do you think my English is unintelligible??? I couldn't resist ordering a copy of the book. I'll let you know what she wrote about me.

Deck the Halls

2006-12-17T20:10:00.000-08:00

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

More Champagne!

2006-12-12T17:22:00.000-08:00

A friend informed me that I was mentioned yesterday in the newsletter Publisher's Lunch, so I guess it's okay to tell you that....MY NOVEL IS GOING TO BE PUBLISHED!!!! Hooray!

Here's how the deal was described:

Suzanne Kamata's LOSING KEI, the story of a desperate woman who will go to any lengths to be reunited with her young son, to Ira Wood at Leapfrog Press.

I am a Hypocrite

2006-12-10T18:31:00.000-08:00

For a few years now I have been yammering on about how I will never buy my children any video games or hand-held electronic devices such as Gameboys. I believe that children should read lots of books, engage in imaginative play with Waldorf-approved toys and run around outside. Yoshi thinks that children should run around outside and watch educational TV shows. Anyway. This year, what Jio wants most in the world for Christmas, what he has, in fact, already demanded of Santa, is a DS Lite game. All of his friends have one, and then there is the barrage of TV and print advertising meant to brainwash seven-year-old boys. After much soul-searching, and also finding out that some of my most-principled mother friends have permitted their children to have Nintendo DS games, I talked Yoshi into getting Jio one for Christmas...only to find that they are not available! I wasted an entire morning last week driving from mall to electronic superstore. Yoshi searched auction sites. He asked his fifteen-year-old niece if she would sell us hers, at a cost above the market price, if we couldn't find one before Christmas. Last Saturday morning, a newspaper flyer announced that DS Lites would be available at the mall. I sent Yoshi to get one, but he was too late. The store opened at 9AM, but a lot of other parents got there before him. We wound up buying a couple of used Nintendo DS games (not the coveted Lite, alas) so I can somewhat assuage my guilt by the fact that we are recycling.

Scalpels

2006-12-06T17:27:00.000-08:00

I don't want her to be cut.

My daughter has already endured four operations in her seven years. This morning she told me about a dream she'd had where she was in the hospital, her head wrapped with bandages. I remember how when she was smaller, she used to cry in her sleep, and I always wondered if she was dreaming about the hospital, about being stuck with needles and surrounded by strangers. I shudder at the thought of putting her in the hospital again, and yet, I gave Yoshi permission to e-mail the famous Dr. Matsuo who has developed a surgical procedure that has enabled individuals with cerebral palsy to walk.

When I brought Lilia to school this morning, several other kids were jumping rope together. Lilia watched them while I was unfolding her stroller thingy and getting her bookbag ready. I wondered what she was thinking. Did she feel sad because she couldn't jump rope with them? Does she want to be able to walk? I think the answer to that is "yes."

Yoshi is most influenced by TV, which is where he learned about the great Dr. Matsuo. I am most influenced by what I read. In Life as We Know It, Michael Berube wrote about refusing an operation to have a gastronomy tube inserted into his newborn son's stomach. He and his wife managed to feed their son through a nasal tube until he was ready to take all of his nourishment orally. In Aurelie Sheehan's novel History Lessons for Girls, a doctor advises a particularly gruesome operation to correct a girl's scoliosis. Her parents decide to investigate alternative treatments - massages, yoga, faith healing - and in the end, she turns out okay. Harriet McBryde Johnson, author of Accidents of Nature, also refused surgery to modify the curvature of her spine. One of the characters in her novel defends the right of the disabled to give up on walking and use a wheelchair.

The doctor replied to Yoshi's email by saying that if Lilia wasn't walking by the age of four, we can safely assume that therapy alone isn't enough.

Tests and the First Grader

2006-12-05T17:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Jio remarked that he has a lot of tests. No, kidding. I started to tell him about the days of yore, when I was a first grader, and had no homework at all, not to mention tests. I just ran around outside with my friends or watched "Bugs Bunny." But then I realized that maybe that was not the best way to talk to my son about school. "Do you like tests?" I asked. He thought for a moment, and then he said, "I like spelling tests - a little." Bless his little heart! To date, he has never gotten a perfect score on an English spelling test. Whenever he gets a word wrong, he has to write it ten times. "Did you have to write the words ten times, Mom?" he asked. Actually, I was very good at spelling, but I didn't tell him this. "Uh, no. I don't think so." He sighed with longing. "I wish we lived in America." First time I've ever heard him say that! I'm afraid, though, that American kids now have lots of homework and tests as well.

Lilia has a math test today. Her teacher said that it would be mostly story problems. Whatever. I think that Lilia should learn how to read before she's expected to tackle story problems.

Mushrooms and Dirty Socks

2006-11-29T05:11:00.000-08:00

I signed up to be a sort of cultural ambassador, so periodically I'm called on to visit a school and talk about America. I figure it's good for kids to learn about other countries, and also I pick up a little pocket money. Today I went to a nearby elementary school to talk to the sixth graders. In preparation for the visit, I looked up my elementary school on the Internet. I also looked up some school lunch menus and was appalled to find that everything I learned from "Supersize Me" was true - at one school, the menu features pizza, chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers over and over again. There is no miso soup! Hardly any vegetables! No fish! I'm so glad my kids eat lunch in Japan! Anyway, I packed a lunch in order to show the kids what American kids eat for lunch. I'm guessing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are still popular.

They had so many questions! Do Americans think that matsutake (expensive and rare wild Japanese mushrooms) smell like dirty socks? How do you say 'war' in English? What is America's biggest problem? Do Americans like anime? I was heartened to meet with such curious children.

Just before I left, they gave me gifts - a head of lettuce, a daikon radish, and a bag of citrus fruit.

Hear the Bells?

2006-11-25T15:15:00.000-08:00

A couple of months ago, Lilia's physical therapist at school told me about a monthly group therapy session at a nearby school for the disabled. He encouraged me to bring Lilia. I figure Lilia can use all the physical therapy she can get, so I signed her up. I also figured that this would be sort of a no-strings-attached activity, like going to Hinomine, the other place where she has therapy, but no. There is a mother's group and they suggested performing a song on handbells. At this first meeting, "Silent Night" was rejected as a possibility because it's "too easy." Another mother said that the children would be more delighted by a lively song. Never mind that at least two of the kids are deaf. Anyway, yesterday was our big rehearsal. As it turned out, half the kids were sick, some in the hospital, so their mothers weren't there to rehearse. We wound up going with "Silent Night." I took piano lessons as a kid, so I know what middle C looks like on a sheet of music, but all the other mothers learned "do re mi." I'm supposed to hit the "re" notes. Whatever that means.

Thanksgiving

2006-11-23T04:32:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving doesn't happen around here unless I manage to order a turkey from the Foreign Buyer's Club and dig up my pilgrim centerpiece. Like anyone cares (except for me). This year I didn't manage to pull it off, but, in the spirit of the season, here are ten things that I'm thankful for:

1. Everyone in my family is healthy (although Yoshi got hit in the head with a baseball today and is wearing a plaster).

2. Beacon Press is going to publish my anthology.

3. Lilia can now do her math homework on her own, more or less.

4. Jio has started to read in English.

5. The Democrats kicked ass in the election.

6. I have a job that I enjoy, part time though it may be.

7. I have Internet access.

8. I am involved with Literary Mama.

9. I have good friends.

10. My mother-in-law has a new pastime (pyramid sales).

There Will Be Champagne Tonight!

2006-11-21T17:17:00.000-08:00

I just got word that Boston's venerable Beacon Press has agreed to publish my anthology on parenting disabled children. I AM SO HAPPY!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks to those of you who participated in my straw poll a few weeks ago. I believe your comments may have helped tip the scales.

For those of you just tuning in, I have spent the last few years working on an anthology of creative writing - fiction, poetry, nonfiction - on parenting children with special needs. My intention is to show life as it really is - the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful - and to make the case that the lives of families of the disabled are worthy of literature. This is not a book of inspirational pieces for the parents of the disabled. It's a collection of wonderful stories, essays and poetry that happen to be about parenting disabled children.

I will keep you posted!

Life: The Class

2006-11-21T00:09:00.000-08:00

Today there were open classes at the Deaf School. Lilia's class, the first graders, had Life. I've never been exactly sure of what they study in Life. I know that they grow vegetables and fruits and harvest them during this period. They also cook and eat the vegetables. I think this is also the time when they go out and collect fallen leaves and acorns. Anyway, it seems to have to do with plants and other living things. Today they made tops out of acorns and hoops out of dried vines, which they then used in a ring toss game. Lilia became ecstatic whenever one of her classmates managed to toss a ring onto a toilet paper roll. She hugged R. and bumped fists with D. Y., the autistic kid, thought the whole thing was boring, and didn't try very hard. He pulled down his pants in class a couple of times, which made all the kids laugh, but I can understand that his mother failed to see the humor in it.

Woman, Blossoming

2006-11-20T03:08:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago, I received the happy news that my short story, "Woman, Blossoming," will appear in Cicada. This story, the first one I wrote after becoming a mother, orignally appeared in All Nippon Airway's flight magazine, but I'm willing to bet none of Cicada's readers have come across it yet. It was inspired by a story I read in the newspaper several years ago, about a Japanese woman who was rumored to have finished her husband's paintings after his death. She was a painter in her own right, but I gathered that she sacrificed her own art to take care of her husband. This all happened in the early 1900s in France. I'm not sure when the story will be published, but I'll let you know.

Educational Reform

2006-11-17T15:20:00.001-08:00

I am feeling very uneasy about Prime Minsiter Abe's proposed reforms. I wonder, is it really necessary to teach love of country and about how beautiful Japan is? In my experience, most Japanese people already think that this country is the best place on earth and that Japanese people are superior to all others. Does that really need to be emphasized in the classroom? And what will happen to my son? Will he be despised because he is only half Japanese? I thought we were just starting to get past that kind of thinking in Japan, but what with all this talk of forced nationalism and nuclear armamament, I'm starting to get very worried.

School Boy

2006-11-16T05:25:00.000-08:00

Recently, my son's teacher told me that he is hyper. Actually, what she said was "ochitsuki ga nai." I find this a little surprising because whenever I've gone to open classes, he has paid attention and participated in class, with his little bottom on the chair. He is active, yes, and we love that! At home, it's the opposite. His dad wants to play catch with him (in the living/dining room, where the ball goes sailing onto the table and knocks over the soy sauce!), but Jio just wants to read his book.

Yesterday, his teacher told me that he does not hold his pencil or chopsticks correctly, and that he is always spilling food at lunchtime. I know that he does know how to hold them properly, because his dad went to a great deal of trouble to teach him. And I'm pretty sure that at home, he holds pencils and chopsticks the way he should.

Today his teacher told me that he needs to work on writing Chinese characters nicely. Granted, his writing is a bit messy. Also, they have timed exercises, like the SATS, where you have to complete tasks within, say, ten minutes. I asked her if public schools expected the same thing, and she said that it's important to be able to calculate quickly in preparation for the future. Whatever.

I'm not particularly bothered by these issues. I am very happy, though, that he has actually started to read in English. That's why I sent him to this school.

A Visit to the Doctor

2006-11-12T00:26:00.000-08:00

This morning we had a meeting with Dr. T., the professor and audiologist who is overseeing Lilia's progress with the cochlear implant. He was in town for some sort of cochlear implant confab,and wanted to meet up with Lilia before he got on the bus that would take him back to the other side of the island. Instead of my leisurely cup of coffee, I got everybody dressed and in the car by 8AM. We found the professor in the lobby of the hotel. Someone from the confab pointed out that he wasn't wearing shoes. I really liked it that he was down there in his stocking feet. I'm always pleased to find eccentricity in this country where everyone is under pressure to conform. Anyway, he said that his shoes were up in his room, and then this woman asked where Lilia's mother was. I was standing right there! I know she doesn't look much like me, but it's always a bit disconcerting to hear something like that. After the others had gone, we settled into the more or less vacant lobby, which resembled a large living room. The monkeys went wild. Dr. T. started setting up his laptop in order to check something on Lilia's speech processor, and Lilia crawled away and hid under a chair. I guess she thought it was going to be noisy and unpleasant. I finally dragged her out, the test was completed, and we said our good-byes to the doctor. Ordinarily, I would have been mortified by my daughter's behavior, but there was no one around and the doctor was very understanding.

Accidents of Nature

2006-11-11T03:26:00.000-08:00

Right now I'm reading Accidents of Nature by Harriet McBryde Johnson. It's about a girl with cerebral palsy who experiences a political awakening while at cross-disability camp in North Carolina in the 1970s. I first heard about this book about ten years ago when I attended a writers' conference in Charleston. Harriet was a fellow attendee. She gave a reading from her wheelchair in a crowded bar. Her story had nothing to do with her disability. If I remember correctly, it was about a hunting trip. Anyway, she mentioned this bizarre camp her parents had sent her to, and that she was working on a story about it. And this is the story.

Harriet is a wonderful writer, with a dark sense of humor. She has also given me a lot of think about. The following passage has been dogging me for days now, from the time I read it, through Lilia's therapy session, and up until right now:

"It is funny. Therapists, teachers, relatives - everyone - they all think walking is such a wonderful thing. And we don't question that. We believe it must be worthwhile, or they wouldn't torture us for it. And then, finally, you get up on your feet, take a few halting steps - pardon me, I mean courageous and determined steps - and the cameras flash, and everyone's inspired. But then you find out walking is a lousy way to move from place to place. And as you get bigger, it's worse. When you fall down, you have farther to go. When you start to think for yourself, you realize a wheelchair is a better way to get where you're going."

Ali Baba and the Drummer Girl

2006-11-04T07:35:00.000-08:00

I feel like I should write about the Culture Festival since my pre-Festival post finally came through (there was some message about rejecting it at first). I actually spent almost all of that day in the udon tent, where I would periodically grab a handful of seaweed and toss it into a bowl of noodles. During all the action on stage, I was helping to get everything set up. I slipped away to watch Lilia do her drumming. She didn't smile, even though she is normally Little Miss Sunshine, so I guess she was pretty nervous. She did okay, but she dropped her drumstick at one point and I was afraid she was going to fall out of her chair while trying to pick it up. Luckily, a teacher rushed up to the stage and retrieved it for her. She did well in her role as Dancing Girl in Ali Baba, too, though she only had one line. She was in her SRC (a walker with a table in front) and it was too dangerous for her to move, she signed, so she just moved her hands. At one point, the other Dancing Girls held hands and danced around her. I'll bet she liked being at the center of things.

I actually saw the dress rehearsal the previous Thursday, so I was able to enjoy the entire program.

The first time I saw a Deaf School Culture Festival, I was concerned about the dignity of the kids with multiple disabilities - Y-chan, the girl with cerebral palsy who, I believed, couldn't communicate with signs and thus couldn't convey her compliance or non-compliance; T-kun, the deaf-blind-autistic boy who can't see what's going on; and Y-kun, the autistic boy in Lilia's class who doesn't really like to do things with other kids. I thought it was kind of cruel to put these kids onstage without their total understanding. But this time, I thought how wonderful it was that they were involved.

The older elementary school kids put on a play in which Y-chan was a central character. In the first scene, she disappears, and the other kids, who are responsible for her, have many adventures as they search for their friend. In the last scene, she is found in a sort of golden grotto. I immediately thought of Lourdes, but I'm sure that's not what they intended. Still, I thought it was kind of cool that the whole play was about Y-chan.

During the fashion show, where the students model the clothes they made in Home Ec, T.-kun pulled off his shirt and threw it in the air behind him. It was deliberate and funny and everyone laughed. He participated, and was memorable.

And Lilia. The kid can't walk, but she can sure dance.

My Halloween Gig

2006-11-03T04:56:00.000-08:00

Today I had a gig as a Japanese-speaking Foreigner. I was supposed to talk about Halloween in America to a bunch of kids as part of a storytelling event. The whole thing was an hour and a half and included getting treats from a confectionary, storytelling, a costume contest, and a craft.

The storytelling came before my little spiel. The first picture book presented told the history and meaning of Halloween, thus decimating the speech I had planned. This was followed by two more storybooks, by which point the kids were getting restless. They wanted to get up and move around, but they were supposed to listen to me. By this time it was an hour into the event, and there wasn't much time for the craft. Also, I didn't have much to say, so I just said whatever I could think of that hadn't been mentioned yet. It probably took about five minutes. They paid me, but I feel guilty about how little I did.

The Family Dinner

2006-11-01T16:57:00.000-08:00

You may be wondering how those weekly family dinners have been going. As you may recall, my mother-in-law prepared the first. Last week it was my turn and we had nabe (hot pot). While fishing vegetables and tofu out of the broth, my husband said, in Japanese, that next week would be my mother-in-law's turn (of course), but when it came around to us again we could make octopus fritters or fondue.

So. Tuesday night I was looking forward to not having to cook, and to my mother-in-law's fabulous feast. Since she has so much time on her hands, when she cooks for us, she spends the whole day at it. Nevertheless, when I got home from work, she didn't seem to be cooking. There was no scent of dashi or fish wafting over from her quarters. I decided to make a run to the store for milk. When I returned, she popped over and said, "Oh, you're back." I figured that was her cue to start bringing over her trays of food. But nothing happened. By this time, we were all getting pretty hungry. Finally, Yoshi sent Jio over to see if there was anything he could help with.

Jio came back a minute later and said that Obaachan hadn't prepared anything. She thought we were making fondue.

I sometimes wonder where the miscommunication occurs. We use three languages in our household, so it's easy to make mistakes once in awhile, but I clearly recall my husband saying in Japanese to his mother that it was her turn to cook this week.

We all wound up going out for sushi.

Culture Mama

2006-10-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

So here's what I did today. I helped carry heavy tables from the fourth floor of the Deaf School, which I may have mentioned does not have an elevator, to the first floor. I did this in preparation for tomorrow's Culture Festival. I signed up for the P.T.A. Culture Committee because, to me, culture is books and music and ballet, things that I love. My duties, however, as committee member, are to work in the udon tent. I don't really know how to prepare udon noodles, but that's my job. Today we set up tents, washed all of the pots and cooking implements, and hauled those tables around. We had them all lined up, and then a teacher came by and said, "You can't use those tables. Put them back." So we had to carry the heavy tables back up the four flights of stairs.

Meanwhile, Lilia was helping to clean the school and practicing her one line in the elementary school production of "Ali Baba," in which no one is beheaded and no one gets boiled in hot oil. As of this writing, homegirl is most looking forward to selling coffee from the drink booth.

The Teahouse Fire

2006-10-25T22:52:00.000-07:00

My review of The Teahouse Fire now appears at Japan Visitor, although the book won't officially be in print until December. I predict that this novel will be huge. I think it'll be the next Memoirs of a Geisha. I'm sure that movie rights have been snapped up already. I imagine Gong Li in a leading role, and Japanese audiences rejecting the film because a Chinese actor is portraying a Japanese woman, although they can accept Liam Neeson, an Irishman, playing a German (Schindler) or Charize Theron (a South African) on screen as an American. Anyway, I see this as a major book, a major film, and maybe it'll even set off a tea ceremony boom. In which case, I'll have to dust off my bamboo tea whisk.

Dr. Jazz

2006-10-24T19:58:00.000-07:00

A few things Lilia's teacher should know about her:

1. She doesn't like school.
2. She likes going to the doctor. (Even if she has a just a hangnail, she starts signing that she wants to go to the hospital.)
3. She's a good actress.

Nevertheless, the teachers at the deaf school remember the days when a runny nose would put Lilia in the ICU, and they want her to be healthy for the all important Culture Festival this coming Sunday. So, this morning I brought the kid to school with a cough and a runny nose, and an hour later, the teacher called me and told me to come pick her up because she had a fever. When I got there, the teacher said her temperature was 37, which in my opinion, isn't a big deal. She seemed tired, which isn't surprising since she was doing homework* till 9PM last night and had a hard time getting to sleep after that. But I took her to the doctor anyway, because I figured she could do with some cough medicine. By the time we got there, her temperature was perfectly normal and she was wriggling all over the place.

We got some meds, and I got the story behind the grand piano in the waiting room. See, actually the good doctor is a jazz pianist. and at the end of every year he has a party at his hospital and invites all his patients to come hear him play. I told Yoshi that I'm definitely going if we get an invite.

Oh, and the good news about today is that Lilia doesn't have any homework.

*this involves much staring into space and sharpening of pencils, which is why it takes such a long time

Straw Poll

2006-10-23T17:58:00.000-07:00

For the past few years, I've been working on an anthology of literary writing (short stories, essays, poetry) on parenting diabled children. I've finally got the book together and an editor at an esteemed publishing house is preparing to propose this book to her colleagues for publication. She has confided, however, that the publishing house director is concerned that parents of children with X disability don't want to read about the experiences of children with Y disability. I'm sure that this is not true, and I'm going to prepare a report to that effect, but if there's anyone out there who can back me up on this, I'd love to hear your voice.

Boy With Beans

2006-10-19T22:45:00.000-07:00

While I was surfing around the Net, I happened to come across the illustrations for a story that I wrote for Jio. Click on recent work and then images 3-6. I love the pictures. I showed them to Jio, who's already heard the story. He complained that there weren't more of them, and then he wanted to know what happened to the scene with the gorilla. "Well, honey," I had to say, "it got cut in the editing process." If you look closely, you can see that the boy is writing his name - "Jio" - in the second image. Pretty cool, huh?

The Dinner Party

2006-10-18T03:40:00.000-07:00

Last week my mother-in-law was feeling neglected and unappreciated and said that she wanted to move out on her own. It probably had something to do with my not wanting her to bring drinks to my friends, and to my irritation when she started not only taking down my laundry but redoing it. Anyway, in an effort to mend family relations, my husband suggested a weekly "dinner party," to be held on Tuesday, my work day. Yoshi will come home early on that day, and my mother-in-law and I will take turns cooking. She got to go first. The night before she asked Jio (the boy!)what he wanted to eat. In restaurants, he adores tempura fried shrimp, so she suggested that and he said "yes." Well. She apparently went to several different grocery stores in search of the perfect shrimp and then knocked herself out putting together a fabulous dinner. Everything looked very pretty and was delicious. And of course, Jio wouldn't eat the shrimp.

A Small Victory

2006-10-16T04:54:00.000-07:00

I'm always going on about homework here, I know, but today something wonderful happened. Lilia corrected my Japanese! She has to write a picture diary every day, meaning a picture of something that happened during the day and a few sentences about it (who, what, when, and where). Usually, I ask her via sign language what her picture is about, and then write out a sentence for her to copy and learn. Today's was "Today at home, I did homework. Math and kanji were interesting." (Sometimes she is totally uninspired.)I spelled math (in Japanese) incorrectly and Lilia fixed it and told me to remember! I was so happy, I was ready to uncork a bottle of champagne.

Also, last Friday, her teacher told me not to help her with math any more because Lilia tends to turn off her little brain and wait for me to more or less feed her the answers. Yesterday, I didn't help her at all. She did an entire print by herself and got only one of eight wrong. Today she did just about as well. So now she can do at least part of her homework by herself - a big step

Now if we could only get those kids to stay in their own beds all night long instaed of crawling into the Mommy and Daddy bed...

Impetigo!

2006-10-11T19:47:00.000-07:00

Since my kids started school I have encoutered a lot of diseases and illnesses that I'd previously never heard of or only read about in books. If you look up impetigo on the Internet, you'll find that it's a skin disease common in Third World countries where nutrition and hygiene are inadequate. But, hey, I know a kid who rides around in a Mercedes who has it. Several kids at my son's school, including Jio, were recently afflicted with impetigo. We've been treating it with a topical bacterial cream, but it's itchy, and the bandages come off, so I broke down and got him some oral medication. The doctor told me not to touch it, and if I did, to wash my hands, and inwardly I was thinking, "I KNOW, I KNOW, I KNOW!!!!" Well, Jio woke up in the wee hours, and in a gesture of affection, I brushed his arm with the back of my hand. Almost immediately, I felt a kind of burning sensation, and I knew I should drag myself to the sink and wash my hands, but I didn't. Within two hours, I had an open sore on my knuckle. Eew! It's so disgusting and it spreads so easily and quickly. It's like flesh-eating bacteria or something. I can imagine someone making a horror movie about it - "Impetigo!"

Mountain of the Gods

2006-10-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

Today the weather was beautiful and Yoshi had a rare day off, so I lobbied for Nature Time. We drove 15 or so kilometers from here, into Kamiyama, which the locals translate as God's Mountain. (I prefer Mountain of the Gods.) Anyway, it's not all that far away, but you have to travel twisty, narrow mountain roads without any guardrails in places. I've never been all that keen on driving up myself, though the mountains are lush with greenery and the air is fragrant with kimokusei. Also, I wanted to take Lilia to see the paintings of Hello Kitty that I'd heard about. See, there is an artist residency program in Kamiyama. Every year, three artists from Japan and abroad (this year's participants are from France, Holland, and Tokyo) spend a couple of months on the mountain, creating art inspired by the environment. A couple of years ago, an artist from Malta created an installation out of sudachi, a small, green indigenous citrus fruit. Anyway, we found out that the former school which houses the art left behind by these artists was farther than we thought, but we were led to an Art Walk closer by. The path was on a mountain slope with lots of pine trees. It was lovely, but not wheelchair accessible, and Lilia is pretty darn heavy. We took a look at a mummy made of sticks and gave up on the rest of the walk. Jio said that the whole day was boring, except for when we stopped by the river and threw stones into the water for about half an hour. Lilia, on the other hand, drew the stick mummy in her picture diary. (And dang, if I didn't bring my camera!)

The Spelling Test

2006-10-05T06:52:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling a big depressed after having had a look at my son's latest English spelling test. He's the only kid with native speaker proficiency in his class,and yet he only got one out of ten words correct - "up." Some words he spelled incorrectly: "down," "small," "in." Same story with his first ever spelling test. I don't get it. I've been reading English books to the kid since birth, and I've been pointing at the words as I read along for the past three. He loves stories, loves books, and yet he has never tried to read an English book on his own. I'm beginning to think he might have some sort of learning disability...

Library Books

2006-10-03T21:11:00.000-07:00

Today there was an open class (math in English!) at my son's school, followed by PTA committee meetings. I signed up for the library committee, although I had no idea what it might entail, simply because I love books and love to be around them. I must say, however, that I am appalled by the state of the books I've seen in Japanese school libraries, both public and this private one. None of the books are bound in that plastic library binding. At my daughter's school, some older books are mended with duct tape. At both schools, the books are in pretty bad shape. The climate doesn't help, of course. There is no climate control in the libraries here so the books are at the mercy of the humidity. I suppose, as a committee member, I could suggest book-binding as a project, and maybe I will, although it would be A LOT of work and all the other mothers will hate me. I'm surprised, however, that in a country as literate as this one, libraries don't take better care of their books.

Second Semester

2006-10-03T06:45:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I started my second semester as a part-time university instructor. I have a brand new batch of fresh-faced, affable students from all over Japan. One came from Okinawa! One boy graduated from the high school where my husband teaches and had him as P.E. teacher. Small world, eh? This boy aspires to be a kindergarten teacher, which is cool. It must take a certain amount of individuality for a guy to pursue a career as a kindergarten teacher in this country. As elsewhere, it's stereotypically a woman's job, and I suspect that some parents in my home country would be uncomfortable having grown men around their small children. There was actually a male kindergarten teacher at my son's preschool. He was very popular with the kids and with certain parents who figured a man could control their wild children better than a woman. In my class, I also have some male students majoring in home economics. I bet they'll make good husbands.

Plus

2006-09-28T18:12:00.000-07:00

I've started sitting in on Lilia's math class once a week so I will know how she is learning and have a better idea of how to help her. Actually, all of the mothers are encouraged to do this. I may start sitting in on Japanese, as well, although my presence tends to be a distraction for Lilia. Anyway, here's what I learned in the last math class: in Japan, there is a right and a wrong way to write the plus sign. First, you write the horizontal line, then the vertical line. Now that's one thing I never would have known if I hadn't been sitting in.

In other news, today is my birthday. That means there will be no cooking - at least not by me.

Integration

2006-09-27T07:05:00.000-07:00

D. is leaving. Next year, Lilia's clasmate D. will integrate into a regular public school. So while once there were six, in the spring, there will only be three - and one of them is autistic and doesn't spend much time with the others.

I am happy for D., and I think it's the right thing for him. He is bright and uses his cochlear implant well. He hardly uses sign language at all anymore, and speaks very intelligibly. Plus, he can read and he's good at art. One of his paintings won first prize a couple years back in a national competition of deaf school students. Of late, he has been show-offy and disruptive, writing math problems in kanji, for example. Clearly he needs more of a challenge. Some kids at his new school may wonder about his apparatus, and he may have a hard time keeping up with conversations, but I think he'll be fine.

I wish Lilia could integrate, too. In the past, I thought that the deaf school - a place where her first language, JSL, is the predominant form of communication - was the best place for her. Also, I would worry about bullies if she was in public school. But with everyone leaving, it just gets lonelier and lonelier. And while I don't want my daughter to be the sacrificial lamb, I don't think that Japanese people will learn to be truly accepting of the disabled unless they go to the same schools.

Unfortunately, I don't even think it's an option. D. is going to a school with a "deaf track," but the teacher who helps the deaf kids has no training in special education and doesn't know sign language. A principal at another school with a "deaf track" said that deaf children could only attend his school if they could communicate verbally.

For awhile, at least, Lilia will stay where she is.

Zip Zip My Brain Harts

2006-09-24T00:31:00.000-07:00

My friend Sean introduced me to the work of South African photographer Angela Buckland . She is the mother of an undiagnosed disabled child and she takes up the subject of parenting disabled children in her photographs. The recently published Zip Zip My Brain Harts includes images from five different series. The first, Dysmorphic Series, deals with the frustration that Buckland felt as her child went through numerous inconclusive tests. Images of her son Nikki's skull are juxtaposed with those of his physical abnormalities. These photos are haunting and disturbing, but never freakish.

The second series, named Stickytape Juice Collection after the words of a cerebral palsied child with a love for language, are of clothing "lovingly" altered to accomodate and disguise a child's disabilities. These shots also raise conflicting feelings: is it better to try to hide a child's disability, or be frank about it and deal with the stares?

"Where's Nikki?" named after Buckland's son's tendency to run away, explores the stages that parents of disabled children are said to go through - shock, loss/grief, rage, confusion, relief, acceptance, and hope. My favorites of these are of Sibongile, a Zulu girl with cerebral palsy. Specifically, I love the one of her being carried by her caretaker aunt, piggyback style.

The photos in the final series, "Shadow Catching," are elusive, mysterious, and beautiful, as many disabled children are to their parents.

The accompanying text written by researchers of disability issues is worth reading, too. Although South Africa's cultural mix is different from that of Japan, these words from the introduction apply here as well:

"There is a tendency for disability in South Africa to be a secret. The challenges that face families of people with disability are also often hidden away. Part of the reason for this secrecy may be that disability is sometimes seen as a shame or a disgrace, something to hide away, a source of stigma. These reactions are rooted in the idea that disability is freakish or monstrous, an idea that continues to haunt the ways in which disability is seen, and to affect the experiences of disabled people and their families.

"But what if disability were considered ordinary or everyday? What would looking at disability be like then? What if disability were considered not so much as the sign of incontrovertible difference, but as just one among many differences that there are already between people?"

Undokai

2006-09-19T01:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my was son's first sports festival at his new school. I didn't know quite what to expect, or rather I didn't expect the right thing. I thought it would be like the sports festival at the deaf school where there were tents set up for spectators as well as students. I was wrong. We arrived later than everyone else to find that families had set up folding tables with parasols all around the field (dirt lot, rather), as if at a barbecue. All I'd brought were a couple of "sheets," squares of plastic, to lay on the dirt. My sister-in-law showed up with a couple more sheets, but we didn't have anything to shield ourselves from the sun.

My son arrived at school a couple of hours before the event began. I guess they had to do some last minute setting up because of the typhoon the day before. At any rate, when I arrived, he was sitting alone under the students' tent with a shippu (What do you call those things in English???) on his neck. Apparently he'd pulled a muscle and it hurt to run.

Although the teachers managed to convince Jio to participate in the relay and the pom pom dance, he sat out on a couple of other events. He was pretty miserable the whole time.

Meanwhile, Lilia wound up playing with the only other disabled kid at the gathering, a little boy with a stub where his left hand would have been. I was happy to discover that there was another disabled sibling.

Doglegs

2006-09-16T19:51:00.000-07:00

I can't say that I approve of tying up one's eight-year-old son and kicking him in the head as a means of consciousness-raising, but the idea of disabled wrestling is interesting.

One Chrysanthemum

2006-09-15T17:23:00.000-07:00

Joan Itoh Burk, who is a member of my online writing group, has just published her first novel. She'd written the novel before joining the group, so we can't take any credit for it, but we're very proud of her. Here's what I wrote in Eye-Ai magazine:

"Misako Imai has the gift of second sight – or maybe it’s a curse. At the beginning of Joan Itoh Burk’s astonishing debut novel, One Chrysanthemum, as the wind of a typhoon “dances a garbage can down a dark Tokyo street,” Imai has a vision of her husband with another woman. She realizes that he lied to her when he told her he would be staying late at the office on account of the weather. Another storm, a year before, churned up the bones of a young woman from the pond waters at a nearby museum. Misako’s grandfather, a Buddhist priest, has been keeping the bones in his temple, while he tries to figure out what to do with them. Throughout the following chapters, Burk expertly weaves Misako’s story with that of Kensho, a gangly mixed blood Buddhist priest interested in clairvoyance, and the mystery of the bones."

Eastern Hospitality

2006-09-14T21:14:00.000-07:00

There is this thing that my mother-in-law does that drives me up the freakin' wall. Although we supposedly live in separate quarters and lead separate lives, whenever I have guests, she hustles over here with a tray of refreshments. I know she's just trying to maintain a certain standard of Japanese hospitality, but this bothers me for several reasons. One, is that I would like to offer hospitality to my guests in my own way. For example, as an American entertaining foreginers, I think it's more polite to ask my guests if they'd like something to drink, and then offer a selection. In my experience, my foregin friends answer honestly. When my parents are visiting, they are always getting irritated when unwanted drinks and snacks are foisted upon them.

Also, my mother-in-law's entrance always turns everything all formal. Everyone must start bowing and being gracious and speaking Japanese. I would like for my house to be a place where my foreign friends can relax. I would like to be able to relax.

Last night, Jio's friend's mother dropped by to pick up Jio for soccer. The deal is that I will watch her daughter while the boys are off playing sports. My friend and her kids and her male guest from Australia all came in for a moment while Jio changed his clothes. And then my mother-in-law appeared with her tray. I know she's just trying to be nice, but I felt so irritate with her.

We had a little chat today and I tried to explain all of the above, but I'm not sure how much I got through to her. She told me a story to demonstrate the importance of ningen kankei (human relations). She seems to have gotten the idea that Americans are all businesslike in their dealings with each other, but that's not what I meant to say. Also, she pointed out that there was a male guest and he must be given special treatment.

Bonding for Beginners

2006-09-11T17:42:00.000-07:00

My short story, "Bonding for Beginners," is now up at Tales for a Small Planet.

Frustration du Jour

2006-09-10T18:21:00.000-07:00

Actually, there are many things that frustrate me on a daily basis, but what I thought about while driving my kids to school this morning was speech therapy.

Before summer vacation, Lilia's homeroom teacher asked me to consult with the speech therapist at Hinomine, the place where Lilia does PT and OT, about exercises that she could incorporate into the school day. Lilia's teacher has a degree in deaf education, but apparently doesn't know much about speech therapy.

Lilia had speech therapy once a week in kindergarten. Her teacher there wasn't a specialist either, but the exercises (blowing up balloons, etc.) seemed somewhat effective. Although now I'm wondering what kind of progress Lilia might have made had she had a highly qualified speech therapist.

Over the past years, teachers have blamed Lilia's lack of speech on me, for speaking English around the house; on her cerebral palsy (though her physical therapist says there's no problem with her mouth and she can eat just fine); and on her use of sign language. (Why bother to speak when you can sign?) The teacher she had for the first two years of kindergarten said she wasn't like normal deaf children, whatever that means.

At any rate, Lilia is a very vocal child and she has finally gotten to the point where she can utter two syllables in one breath and can make all the vowel sounds. I believe she can do better.

So I asked the speech therapist at Hinomine to suggest some exercises, etc. He said that he would need some time to assess her. Over the next month, I brought her once a week to him after four hours of school and before two hours of OT and PT. It became clear, pretty quickly, that he couldn't engage her/control her. Lilia is a very willfull child. She tends to tune out or try to escape when she finds something too difficult.

After a month, the speech therapist announced that he couldn't do anything with her, and that she'd be better off in a group setting where other children would motivate her. And by the way, there is no group speech therapy at Hinomine.

So back to square one.

Always

2006-09-10T01:17:00.000-07:00

I tend to enjoy movies featuring characters who are writers. "Always" ("San Chome no Yu Hi" in Japanese), which Yoshi and I watched last night, featured two scribes. The first one, Chagawa, lives behind a candy store in a 1958 Tokyo neighborhood. He is, as he drunkenly reminds his neighbors at the corner bar, a one-time finalist for the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. He's also a graduate of Tokyo University, but his neighbors, including the guy who owns the auto repair shop across the way, call him a "literary has been" and tease him about the rejections of his stories that come in the mail.

Chagawa actually does make a living at writing boy's adventure stories. In his own eyes, he's a hack, but then one night, while drunk at the corner bar, he becomes guardian of an abandoned child. As it turns out, this boy, Junnosuke, is an avid reader of Boy's Adventure Stories, and a big fan of Chagawa himself. Suddenly, the writer finds himself idolized.

The second writer in the film is ten-year-old Junnosuke, who is taunted by the neighborhood kids at first, but then wins their admiration and friendship through the adventure stories that he writes.

The stories of these two are woven with those of others in the neighborhood. It's a feel-good flick, offering a slice of life in post-WWII Japan, when the country was just starting to pull itself up by its bootstraps, and the Tokyo Tower, then under contruction, was a symbol of hope. This film was very popular in Japan. It made me laugh, it made me cry. Trust me: you'll like it.

It's a Boy!

2006-09-07T20:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, so you already know that Kiko-sama gave birth to a boy. Arcane and annoying though the rules about ascendancy may be, I'm feeling happy for Princess Aiko, whose future suddenly became wide open. Now she can marry a salaryman and become a housewife, if she likes, as did Aunt (the former Princess) Nori. Or she might be able to go to Harvard and become a diplomat like her mom. And maybe now everyone will get off Princess Masako's back and she can forget about trying to produce an heir. Hopefully she'll have a chance to become well.

I fear things may get more difficult for Princess Kiko, though. Although the wife of the second son doesn't have to put up with the same lofty expectations that wives of eldest sons do, it probably makes a difference when you're mom to the third to the throne.

Win a Free Book!

2006-09-05T18:52:00.000-07:00

If you have a kid in the house who likes to read, he/she can win a free book (featuring my story "The Diver") from Blooming Tree Press. All your child has to do is write a short essay (even a paragraph) on "What I Did on my Summer Vacation" and send it to bloomingtreems@yahoo.com. Winners will get a copy of the anthology Summer Shorts, which is a collection of short stories about summer. The winning entries will also be read at the book launch party. Apparently this is open to kids anywhere in the world. For more details, have a look at editor Madeline Smoot's blog.

First Grade Math

2006-09-05T02:57:00.000-07:00

All summer long, I was obsessing about Lilia and math. Her teacher gave her something like 30 pages of problems - numbers, numbers, numbers - to do during the month of August. Also, she had two sets of flashcards that she was supposed to memorize. Things started out well. She did two pages of math each of the first few days. Then it went down to one page, then a quarter of a page. Nothing seemed to stick in her brain. Every time she saw 1 + 2, she counted on her fingers. I started getting frustrated. Lilia started getting frustrated. She'd throw the flashcards across the room; she'd crumple up the pages of problems.

Last week, at the center where she has therapy, I asked the doctor if there might be some problem with her memory. He said, "Oh, yes, she's mentally handicapped." The doctor there doesn't really know her. He knows she has cerebral palsy, but he doesn't know her. Her occupational therapist suggested that maybe she was more of a right brain person. She likes drawing and when she builds things out of blocks her contructions are always three-dimensional. Y.'s mother suggested that maybe Lilia would learn better using another method.

So finally, I suggested to her teacher that the math was too hard for Lilia. The woman looked perplexed. Yesterday, Lilia did her math homework all by herself and got everything right. Her teacher said she understood everything today, as well. So maybe it's just that memorizing flash cards doesn't interest her at the moment.