A View of Mt. Fuji

Check out Annie Donwerth Chikamatsu’s lovely poem, A View of Mt. Fuji.

Vacation!

We just came back from our family vacation, a three-day trip to Osaka.  Day one, we visited the aquarium at Tenpozan.  It was a Monday - a weekday - so we were thinking it wouldn’t be too crowded.  Silly us!  Since we’re still in the midst of school holidays, it was as packed as a Tokyo subway at rush hour.  We were able to catch glimpses of tropical fish through the throngs.  We also rode on the world’s largest Ferris wheel.

Day two we went to Universal Studios Japan, which was also pretty crowded.  USJ offers Guest Support Passes for visitors with disabilities, which means we didn’t have to wait in long lines, and we were escorted into attractions before everyone else.  We tried to see and do as much as possible, and everyone was pretty worn out by the time we stumbled into the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner.  We stayed at the fabulous Osaka Bayside Nikko Hotel.  Jio went running  through the lobby while pushing Lilia’s wheelchair with her in it, of course, and tipped it over somehow.  A hotel guy yelled at him (as did Jio’s parents).  I think Jio was just trying to show his sister a good time and be helpful, so I felt a little sorry for him, but it was pretty dangerous.  Lucky she didn’t hit her head on the marble floor.

Day three we lounged around in the hotel for as long as possible, watching Yankees vs. Red Sox baseball on satellite TV while the children had fun with bedcovers and spilled corn chips all over the floor.  I think we’re a little too unsophisticated for the Nikko.

On the way home, we stopped off at Shiawase no Mura (The Village of Happiness), which is a complex with an array of facilities for the disabled and others.  There’s a therapy garden, where disabled people grow fruits and vegetables, tennis courts, a pool, a hospital, a group home, and a bunch of other stuff.  There are expansive lawns with lush grass and many trees.  The buildings are all yellow stucco with tile roofs.  We stopped by the stables so the kids could have a pony ride.

Now we’re back home with three days till school starts.

The Noodle Man

One of the things that’s always charmed me about living in Japan is the variety of products sold door-to-door.  Years ago, a woman came to my apartment selling fresh strawberries, and another time a woman tried to sell me a bra.

Today, while we were in the middle of homework, a gentleman came by offering a free ramen sample.  He set up a portable stove in our genkan (entryway) and cooked the ramen right there.  We ate it, proclaimed it delicious, and then he took away the dishes.  There wasn’t even any pressure to buy more just then.  We said good-bye and went back to the homework.

Access to McDonald’s

I mostly try to feed my kids fresh fish and vegetables from the neighboring fields, but every once in a while we go to McDonald’s.  I took my daughter the other day, at her request, and was reminded once again, that the fast food restaurant is not accessible.  Lilia, who is increasingly independent, wanted to wheel herself up the ramp, which is very narrow and goes behind some shrubs.  Worse, the Happy Meal toy display is between the entrance and the wheelchair ramp, effectively blocking the way.  Of course, the people there are very nice - customers and employees alike - and they always rush out to help me get Lilia in the door, but the issue here is indepedence.

During the meal, Lilia wheeled off to the bathroom.  She’d been able to use the toilet at the Center for the Disabled all by herself and so she was feeling confident.  But she couldn’t open the door by herself, and although there was a bar on the wall, the door to the stall was too narrow for her wheelchair. 

It seemed as if McDonald’s had added these token features in order to comply with building codes, but they did nothing to improve accessibility.  Not only is the environment unfriendly to wheelchair-bound customers, but also to potential employees with disabilities.

I may be wrong, but I don’t recall any wheelchair ramp at all at the McDonald’s we visit in South Carolina.

I suppose the message here is don’t eat at McDonald’s.   I can see the wisdom in this; I know about transfat; I saw “Supersize Me.”  But I  see a wasted opportunity.  Instead of trying to kick mothers out of the Ronald McDonald House for breastfeeding, McDonald’s could try to improve its corporate image by setting an example and creating a barrier-free space.

Short but Sweet

New fiction is now up at Literary Mama.  For starters, try “Epiphany.”

Book Vs. Movie

I’m feeling sort of grumpy today.  Maybe it’s the heat.  I also keep thinking about the email message that my mother sent from Michigan, where my dad was attending his class reunion.  My dad went to high school in Reed City, which is kind of a podunk town (sorry if you’re from there).  One of his classmates had a son who grew up to write a book.  This son, Doug Stanton, was a special speaker at the class reunion.  His book is about the U.S.S. Indianapolis, which sank during WWII.  It was published by a major publisher and it’s going to be made into a movie.  I’m happy for him.  Really.  It’s not the kind of book I’d normally read, but I understand that books like that are popular.  Fine.  So what bothered me about my mother’s email was her writing, “Maybe your book will be made into a movie, too.  You never know, honey.”  It’s as if having your book made into a movie somehow validates it.  I’m sorry if people are too lazy to read, but how many times do you see a movie and think, “The book was so much better!”  And I understand how movies reach more people, but why can’t the book be enough in itself?  I would be happy about the money that I might get, but I don’t see how my novel could be turned into a movie.  Some Hollywood screenwriter would make lots of changes, turn it into a thriller, and then it wouldn’t be my work at all.  *Sigh*  I suppose I should get used to this kind of thing. Next, Mom will say, “Maybe you’ll get a story published in Good Housekeeping, you never know.”  Or “Maybe Oprah will have you as a guest.  You never know.”  But even if none of these things happen, I am still happy that I am about to publish my first book.

The House Guest

We’ve never really had a pet, although we did cohabitate with my mother-in-law’s dog for awhile.  And there were also a couple of stag beetles that died untimely deaths.  Pets, then, are something of a novelty for us.

We are babysitting a goldfish while some friends are on vacation.  “He’s very friendly,” my friend assured us.  (A friendly goldfish??  Might she be projecting?)  She added that it was okay if we forgot to feed him once or twice.  He’s a rather large fish.

Forgetting to feed him is definitely not the problem.  I think he might have been fed three or four times yesterday.  It’s supposed to be Lilia’s job in the morning, but yesterday morning Yoshi fed him.  “He was demanding to be fed,” my husband claimed. 

In the evening, I found him sitting on the floor, gazing at the fish, which I’m sure had a calming effect.  Lilia wrote about feeding him in her picture diary, and last night my mother-in-law was fretting about leaving him in the dark.  She thought that we should leave the light on for him.

It’s kind of nice to have a pet, but I’m thankful that my friends will be back from their trip before it’s time to clean the tank.

Fired Up

My eight-year-old daughter is now in training for a trip by wheelchair across Australia or some such thing.  She saw a documentary on TV last night about a Japanese woman who wheeled her way from western Australia to the eastern part of the country, part of which is comprised largely of desert.  At one point, there was a problem with the food and the adventurers had nothing but fly-studded bread to eat.  Lilia found all of this very inspiring and actually asked me to stretch her.  This morning I laid out a cute little camisole and skort for her, and she refused to put them on because she is in training.  She wants to wear P.E. clothes.  We’ll try to keep the feeling going through this afternoon’s physical therapy session.

I wonder what would happen if I let her watch Murderball.

Arthur Miller’s Secret Son

I love my kids, but it was great to have an uninterrupted block of time to give some attention to edits of Love You to Pieces, my anthology on parenting disabled children.  Of course, I got distracted.  First, I had to check in on Koshien and see how Tokushima’s representative team, Tokushima Shogyo, was doing (they lost).  Then, I went to get the mail and flipped open to an article about Arthur Miller’s secret son.  Like many others, I never knew that the great American playwright had a son with Down’s syndrome.  Miller, who spoke out on behalf of oppressed writers and refused to name names during the McCarthy witch hunt, was lauded as “the moralist of the past American century.”  He was also the father of a boy born in 1962 and institutionalized shortly thereafter.  According to various reports, he never visited his son, Daniel, and left him entirely out of his autobiography. 

When I first found out that my daughter was deaf and had cerebral palsy, I looked to literature for comfort and illumination, but there was so little about parenting children with disabilties.  Imagine if someone like Arthur Miller had seen fit to write about his son?  Interestingly, Miller had a cousin with Down syndrome and his sister’s son has cerebral palsy.  Almost everyone has a disabled family member, or knows someone who is disabled, so it seems very odd that there hasn’t been more writing about families dealing with special needs.  Could this be the last big taboo?

Ghosts in the Water

A couple of years ago, the Center for Communication for the Disabled (or something like that) was constructed across the river.  Though I’d heard about the facilities, which include table tennis for the blind and a pool, I’d never been there.  This summer, however, students at the deaf school were invited to several play sessions with deaf volunteers.  It’s actually a sort of babysitting service to give parents of disabled kids a break.  Since respite sounded good to me, and since swimming in the pool with people who are good at sign language seemed like fun for Lilia, I signed her up. 

I packed up Lilia’s swimming gear this morning and got everyone into the car.  We found the place after driving in circles for awhile.  (Japanese roads don’t usually have names, so all I had was a map with intersecting black lines and a few landmarks.)  Lilia’s teacher was volunteering today.  She met us in the parking lot and told us that the pool is closed just for today.  See, it’s Obon, the time when the spirits of the dead return.  Apparently, they come via water, and if you go swimming on this day, they may try to drag you under and take you back to the Land of the Dead. 

Needless to say, Lilia was disappointed, but she had a good time making origami animals, drawing pictures and racing around in her wheelchair.  She even did a little homework.