"Let me go!" 

L and his bus stop friends 

Procrastination

I don't want to attack the large pile of laundry and the messy house just quite yet. If I clean everything up now, I'll have to do it all again on Thursday before Mom and Dad arrive. We took a bike ride to the local river to check the cherry blossoms and it looks like they'll be in their prime when Mom and Dad are here. L managed to kick his right sneaker into the river when kicking a stone into the water. J and M managed to fish it out with a stick before it floated away. N was grumpy because we didn't let her ride her own bike, but she's still alive and well so I think we made the right decision.

Report Cards

Today was the last day of the school year here and the girls brought home their report cards. They also brought home a trimester's worth of marked papers, art works, musical instruments and whatever else was in their desk. All year N has been reluctant to be seen or heard doing homework, even though the parents are expected to give her marks on her oral reading performance and math practice on a special mark sheet periodically. She announced each day that she had finished her homework, not mentioning the oral part and forged the parental marking portion. I hear her reading stories out loud to L and know that she's reading above level for her grade and that her class reads the work out loud at school several times, so I didn't bug her too much about not reciting.

My handwriting isn't so wonderful, so it wasn't difficult for her to write my name beside the excellent marks she gave herself each day, but her dates gave her away. The marksheet came home today with a load of other papers and I smiled to see she had done such a great job reading everyday from December 30th through December 44th.

Girls' Day Doll Festival

The third day of the third month is a special day for girls. It isn't a national holiday like the fifth day of May, formerly a special day for boys, now Children's Day, but it has its own traditions. Families with girls get out their set of courtesan dolls with a prince and princess at the top of five or seven tiers of court musicians and maidens with all the paraphernalia of the ancient court. Families in tiny city apartments like ours usually get a smaller set, with only the prince and princess and a few accessories like plum trees or colorful stacks of rice cakes.

The shy 76 year old woman who lives on the third floor of our building approached me a few weeks ago, requesting permission to visit us on March third. She said that she wanted to celebrate Girls' day with us. She stops by a few times a month with snacks for the kids, but doesn't usually come inside. I told her we'd love to have her over and invited her for dinner so she could eat the traditional sushi dish that people eat on this day. Saying that she was a picky eater, she declined the dinner invitation and asked if 7:00 p.m. would be a good time to visit.

A few days later, I got our set of dolls out and on March 3rd I cleaned the house and had a nice sushi meal with the kids. We set out a bowl of tangerines to share with our visitor when she arrived. She rang the doorbell at 7:00 on the dot and I opened the door very slowly, to avoid knocking her over (J did knock her over on one occasion). She had a bag full of tangerines as a house gift, so, knowing that she had walked all the way to the fruit shop and back with her daypack with the goal of getting something nice for the children, I quickly asked J & M to take our bowl of tangerines into the back room. Fortunately, our visitor moved very slowly, carefully navigating every step in unfamiliar territory, looking down through her very thick glasses.

The children were happy to have a visitor and showed her our dolls and some of the 7-5-3 photos. She seemed to have a good time and was talking about other seasonal events she could contribute to, like providing rice dumplings for moon viewing in September.

Today I dusted the dolls off and returned them to their storage boxes, as displaying them too long after Girls' Day is unlucky. There are no such superstitions about the Boys' Day, so we'll get L's warrior armor and carp wind sock out sometime before Mom and Dad visit.

More on One of the Supers

The 70 something (probably closer to 80) year old man who works in our reception office downstairs showed me a neat picture from his days as a waiter in an exclusive restaraunt in Fukuoka in the decade after WWII. Amazingly, I was able to recognize three of the five people in the photo. In addition to a much younger, tall and handsome version of our superintendent in his waiter's uniform and another person from the staff, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were seated at an elegant dinner table with another guest. He asked all three of the patrons for their autographs and I could decipher "Joe DiMaggio" and a shaky "Mariylin Monroe DiMaggio" (the DiMaggio part was a little cramped, I assume because it was their honeymoon and she wasn't used to writing it yet). A few months later, a TV crew was in our lobby filming for a five minute segment on our superintendent, his life now and then and his treasure, the photograph, and twenty minutes more on the celebrities in the photo.

Management Crisis

The company which has managed our apartment building for the past 33 years went bankrupt at the end of January, making me sorry I agreed last year to my two year appointment to the management committee. It looks like they embezzled lots of money from most of their clients. I've been running around all month getting signatures on various banking documents and making sure that the nice people who perform the daily superintendents duties (a live-in couple and a 70 something man who rides his scooter over every day) get paid.

The committee invited three new companies to offer bids on the job and we've chosen a new company but need to hold a formal vote among all of the owners before we hand over everybody's bank account information. Tomorrow is the "Emergency Owners Meeting" as opposed to the annual owners meetings held to report the usual goings-on. It will be a relief to hand over the accounting to the pros on Monday. I'm glad that the new company has agreed to keep our superintendents and the various monthly businesses which polish floors, maintain the water tank, maintain the elevator etc.; these businesses don't lose our business and we can enjoy the same good service we've been getting.

This is our lucky week.

Another free ticket to the circus arrived via an old man downstairs who thinks L is cute. We ought to clean L up more often.

The Circus is Coming

At this morning's building management committee meeting, I was given 5 free tickets to the circus which will be here from mid March until early May. The tickets are valid for free admission on March 28, 29, 30 and April 1. This is perfect for a family trip to the circus on April 1 when Mom and Dad are here. I'm glad that Tokyo is at the end of their Asian trip so they won't sleep through the circus from jet lag.

In a few weeks, if more free tickets don't fall into my lap, I'll buy 2 children's advance sale tickets for 1,700 yen each and use the free tickets for the rest of us. What could have been 17,000 yen at the gate for 3 adults (3,000 yen each) and 4 children (2,000 yen each) will only cost 3,400 yen. S said he'll probably stay home that day to enjoy our home while the "circus" is away.

S's brother was nice enough to play dodgeball with the kids on the pink bump in the local park when he visited in January. 

Computer Savvy...not!

I learned that our account was bouncing e-mails recently and couldn't figure out why. I check my mail daily so messages shouldn't be bouncing. I got sick of all the junk mail that we'd been getting and, not wanting S to accidentally open any virus attachments while I was in the hospital, I set up a number of rules forbidding certain types of messages from being downloaded from the server (messages containing certain words like mortgage, finance, cheating wives and enlarge). I assumed that the messages would disappear from the mailbox after being refused. This was not the case. I removed all the rules to see if that was why my downloading was so slow these days and over 900 messages dated from early November arrived in the mailbox, about 60 of them with dubious attachments...Duh!

I waded through and found a few messages from family (yes I received the book Elizabeth, and thank you for the messages I wasn't ignoring you on purpose.) and friends (you wanted to get together when and where for coffee?). The other 900 plus messages were junk mail. Now that the pop mailbox is empty, downloading is almost instant. Ya lurn sumpin everday.

Bone Scan

I saw my skeleton from various perspectives and was told that no breast cancer cells were detected in it. Nice news. Last month's blood tests were OK too.

I will be seeing my doctor at a smaller local clinic one Friday a month from now on, except for semi-annual exams at the university hospital. He said I'd get a "visual" exam (ooh, gotta buy some new bras...) and a blood test at the monthly visits and mammograms at the semi annual visits. He didn't give me any trouble about importing my own supply of tamoxifen citrate after I showed him the package and explained about the price difference. He even said that the monthly visits could be once every 6 or 8 weeks if I preferred, as he had planned on giving me a new prescription each month. We agreed to keep to the monthly exams for now, as there are a few more tests he'd like to do at the clinic and I'd feel more secure knowing that he's keeping an eye on me.

TV Spot

Town Life

The Rice Cake festival on the first day of school last week was taped and about five minutes of it were broadcast on the local cable TV station. We don't subscribe to cable, but the guide channel, where they're showing the program with other local news, is available for free as our apartment building is wired in to the cable system.

International students from the nearby national university were invited to experience the tradition and share in the hard work of pounding sticky rice in the big wooden "mortars" with heavy wooden hammers until it became a single, smooth, sticky and hot mass of MOCHI (rice cake). There were seven "pounding" stations in order to make enough to feed all the elementary school students quickly. This year's coordinator asked me to be there to chat with the international students. They, another foreign mom (from China) and I were asked to make short speeches about New Year's customs from our own countries.

The cable TV program shows the pounding process, a mini concert by the university brass ensemble over the din of 550 kids enjoying their rice cakes and me (and my chins) on stage making them all say "Happy New Year!" in English.

All three girls are shown with their respective classes and there's a nice close up of N while the narrator explains that "some children returned for second and third helpings..."

Town Life

Town Life

Just a quick update. My bone scan went smoothly on Tuesday, results will be available next Tuesday. J's art has again been selected for the city-wide elementary school art display. The children and I walked over to the gallery to check it out before dinner yesterday. She has also been asked to go to her city science club half an hour early next week because one of the teachers was impressed with her report on the qualities of water and would like to interview her. I expect they'll ask her to give a 5 to 7 minute presentation at the closing ceremony in February. They called twice to arrange the appointment. It sure is nice when someone calls with nice things to say about the kids.

Already Friday

Monday was the last day of winter break for the children but they're already looking forward to the weekend after only 4 days of school. They got too used to the relaxed holiday schedule. L is home today with gastroenteritis (no fever) and, fortunately, has learned to use a bucket adeptly. More vigilance in hand washing may contain the situation.

Karaoke Klub

Friends came over for a TAKOYAKI party yesterday. After tanking up on slightly burned balls of batter filled with pieces octopus and other ingredients, slathered with a rich, sweet and savory sauce and AONORI seaweed sprinkles, we all decided to go to a local KARAOKE entertainment center. The center has several floors of small rooms, each with its own large screen TV and song receiver/player. We rented a room for 3 hours for about $3.00 per adult as it was the weekday pre-6p.m. special rate. Kids are free (but must be accompanied by an adult) so our group of 3 adults and 6 kids was a deal.

S was surprised to see other people we know on our way in and out. He had assumed that only gangsters and other "bad" people went and here were several classmates of J's and M's and a few families with children who study English at his school (he must not have screened them well enough!). This was our first time as a family to go out for KARAOKE, if you hadn't guessed.

He now knows that it's a good place to let the kids go ahead and be noisy. It was cozy and warm and they all had a great time. When we go again, we have to take an extra microphone for N, as she latched on the the microphone every time a song she knew came on, regardless of whether she requested the song or not and her sisters missed out on a few turns to sing. Even L did well.

Today, the children set up their own KARAOKE room by arranging chairs in a rectangle and taking turns singing songs. The poor neighbors.

Happy New Year

Well, there were good things and bad things in 2004. Unfortunately, the end of the year was filled with overwhelmingly sad news. A Foreign Wife friend who used to live in our neighborhood was in Phuket with her Japanese husband, two sons and baby daughter for the Christmas holidays. A very large earthquake resulted in a disasterous tsunami killing thousands of people and my friend and her family were swept away. On December 31, I learned that her sister had been flown in from the Philippines to identify her body and that the rest of her family still hadn't been found. She had carefully documented her family's recent life on her website and there was an eloquently written passage about how the travel bug hits them every so often as well as hundreds of photos of various trips and events.

Now my face is all puffy and I look like Aunt Vi without the pink hair.

I cheered up considerably when, upon opening Mom's and Dad's Christmas card which arrived in yesterday's mail, I discovered that Finn is going to have a younger sibling sometime in late January. This wonderful news is a perfect way to begin the New Year.

We all stayed up watching a traditional TV show with 2004's most popular musicians and guest Olympic gold medalists and eating buckwheat noodles for longevity (another tradition). After midnight, we went for a short walk to the shrine at the corner to toss a few coins in the alter, ring a bell and pray or wish for a healthy and prosperous 2005. I distinctively heard L making a specific request for a magic flying carpet as he bowed his head and clasped his hands. We were given cups of hot AMAZAKE, a sweet creamy drink made by culturing cooked whole rice grains, using traditional methods, so that their starches turn into natural sugars. It isn't alcoholic, despite the literal translation "sweet SAKE" and S and I also got small paper cups of real SAKE as we exited the shrine.

Returning home, S handed each child a decorated envelop with a little money and an age appropriate book as a New Year's treat. He never had Christmas presents as a child and New Year's was the holiday he most eagerly anticipated. Our children get a little of each holiday, in moderation.

When everybody wakes up, we'll have grilled MOCHI rice cakes served dumpling style with pressed fish cakes, taro potatoes, carrots, a spinach-like vegetable called KOMATSUNA, soaked and simmered dried SHIITAKE mushrooms and a few bits of chicken in a bonito broth. The soup is ready as is the box of other New Year's foods. I couldn't fit all the items in the three tiered box, so we'll use a few platters as well. I sure hope that the family will accept the same menu for lunch and dinner, as it took all day yesterday to cook it all.

Happy New Year to all.

Health Update

I went for this month's blood test and to get my next prescription for Nolvadex-D. As I had experienced no side effects, I was given a 28 day prescription instead of 2 weeks worth. I'll be going on January 17th for a bone scan. The Japanese word was the Chinese letter for bone and phonetic characters SHIN and CHI, which apparently come from scinti, as in scintigraphy, which took me a while to figure out. I had the general idea that isotopes would be injected in the morning and images would be taken that afternoon but that "shinchy" word didn't have any equivalents in the on-line dictionaries. A quick search on Google for isotopes, bone and test brought me lots of pages with the necessary vocabulary to mire my way through the release which must be signed before the test.

The Nolvadex-D is about $1.35 per pill after the 70% National Health Care discount. Unfortunately, generic drugs have not reached Japan. I'm thinking of forgoing the NHI coverage of the drug and ordering at my own cost from a reliable online pharmacy in Australia for about 42 cents a pill including shipping as the generic version is so much cheaper. I will, of course, continue to make use of NHI for my monthly doctor visits.

Stocking stuffer bubble bath is put to use immediately after breakfast. 

No more pink rain boots!