New Beginnings

Well! This has been an exceptionally eventful and stressful week for me. Both kids had their opening ceremonies in the pouring rain and I also went for the first time ever to the college where I will be teaching to introduce myself to the students in my rain-drenched suit. Not only is the rain cold and wet, but also it makes the traffic really bad in the morning. Before I could get my daughter to school in twenty minutes, but now it takes three times that long!

Jio and Lilia have something like ten textbooks each, and every day they’re supposed to bring different books to school. I don’t see why they can’t just leave the books in their desks at school and bring home the ones they need to use for homework that day. Today Lilia didn’t have the proper book for her life class. I had no idea which book it was until her teacher told me when I went to pick her up.

Yoshi might have helped with this if he hadn’t been stricken by a vicious virus. He’s been out of commission since last Sunday.

Things can only get easier.

Backlash

Several years ago, the Ministry of Education decreased the number of hours of study at school. The logic was that giving kids Saturday off would allow them more time to relax, improve familial relationships, pursue their own interests, and possibly spur creativity. What happened was parents panicked and started sending their kids to cram schools on Saturdays, so these kids still don’t know what to do with their free time.

In today’s issue of The Japan Times, I read about a new private boarding school for boys, billed as Japan’s Eton. At a cost of 3 million yen per year,it’s very expensive, but as one father said, “A child’s future is determined by his school, and the school is determined by money.”

Eighty of Japan’s most powerful companies designed the academy which they hope will “churn out future global leaders who can think independently but also work well with others.”

The daily schedule is something like this: wake at seven, sit in class all day, take an hour break to call mom and dad, then do homework till bedtime. And students are allowed to bring no more than five CDs and ten books.

Says Yoshiyuki Kasai, a member of the school’s board of directors, “The ability to think outside the box comes from a structured life.”

Well, then, with all that structure it sounds to me as if Kaiyo Academy will be a hotbed of creativity.

Japanese Math

I have been busily writing Lilia’s name on the various and multitudinous components of her Sansu Set (Math Set). I’d heard tell of the math set up in the Mother’s Room, but I didn’t really know what it was till I had to purchase one each for my kids. There are dice and magnetized shapes and a board game and flash cards. And, as per teachers’ instructions, Lilia’s name has to be on each one. Heaven forbid if her dice get switched with someone else’s!

Apparently, Lilia is supposed to use this set for the next six years. Apparently, she is expected to keep track of the tiny plastic rods and hajiki (flower shaped counting devices) until she gets to junior high school. Good luck, Lilia!

I think it would be more fun to count buttons or apples or something, but as an American, I guess I’m not in a position to make fun of the way that the Japanese do math.

The Last Hurrah

So today was the last big hurrah before the start of school on Monday (for Lilia, at least). After physical and occupational therapy, we went to a park on the side of a mountain. We met up with this American woman that I happened to meet at the library the other day who has lived here as long as I have - eighteen years. We were amazed that we hadn’t at least heard of each other before. She brought along her teen and tween and dog, and helped carry Lilia up the mountain. I let Jio run wild, as I usually do, because I was trying to keep my disabled daughter from danger. Then, what do you know, Jio fell down a ten foot stone wall. Okay, maybe it wasn’t ten feet, but it was perilously high. He said he slipped on an acorn. At first I thought he might have broken his leg or something. He’s all scraped up, but he started running around pretty quickly after his fall. Phew!

Hanami

Today we engaged in the time-honored tradition of flower-viewing. The photo above was actually taken yesterday while I stopped at a red light on the way home from the library. This evening, we viewed cherry blossoms by moonlight and lantern-light on the slopes of a mountain in Tokushima City. We just walked around a little, but others were drinking beer and sake and eating on plastic mats under the boughs.

Red Beans and Rice

Today two people dropped by with huge boxes of sekihan (celebratory red beans and rice). The first was a friendly neighbor who keeps us in fresh vegetables and is having some sort of shindig at her house tomorrow. The second was my husband’s cousin, cousin’s wife, and their daughter who is about to enter junior high school. The parents were wearing suits and the daugther was wearing her spanking new uniform. I, of course, was wearing faded jeans with a hole in the knee and a sweater that had dye stains on it. Of course I was wearing no make-up and the living room was scattered with toys and scraps of paper. Anyway, the cousins came to give us red beans and rice and a big box of cream puffs and a roll cake because we ( my mother-in-law, actually, who was off watching her son’s baseball team get beat 12-8 in the quarterfinals of the spring high school tournament) gave them a wad of money in honor of their daughter’s making it into junior high. (It must be said they gave us a wad, too, to celebrate the twins’ going to first grade.) After she came back, my mother-in-law told me that we need to do something similar and soon, and how about if I bake some cakes? Normally people bring fancy store bought cakes as gifts in these cases, but my mother-in-law really liked the carrot cake I made yesterday. Okay. So I’m gonna bake.

Special Mention

I bought a copy of the 2006 Pushcart Prize anthology just to see my name in the back. (Thanks, Vicki, for the heads up on this.) My essay, “The Sound and the Worry,” which was published in Brain, Child received a special mention. It’s a thrill to see my name on the same page as Pico Iyer and Lee Smith, who were also cited.

Haven’t read the whole book yet, but I did, with some trepidation, read Ann Hood’s heartbreaking essay “Comfort,” about the death of her daughter. I met both daughter and writer when I attended Bread Loaf several years ago.

Terebi Champion in Africa

I had to watch Terebi Champion with my son this week because the contestants went to Kenya. The challenge was to photograph as many wild animals as possible. They got extra points for rare shots, such as an animal hunting, or a leopard in a tree. I believe they were on a game reserve. Anyway, this was the first Terebi Champion I’ve seen that involved danger. There was a guy with a rifle in each open jeep, and at one point, on hearing a lion’s roar, the contestant wanted to go in closer, but the guide warned that the lion might leap onto them. And then that would be like the Japanese tourist who fell into the Grand Canyon while trying to get a good shot.

One of the contestants was an animal illustrator. The winner was a safari guide, which didn’t seem fair since he probably knew better about where to find the animals than the others. I couldn’t help wondering what the African villagers on the show thought of these crazy foreigners.