Scottish Japanese Fusion Cuisine?

We went to Miyajima the other week to see our friend off, as he started the Hatsukaichi Triathlon. We just managed to see the start from the ferry - sorry we're crap Paul, but well done! But we did spend a nice morning on Miyajima anyway though. Of course no self respecting Scot, hailing from the land of the Deep Fried Mars Bar, could pass up the chance to try out Miyajima's latest craze: the deep fried Momiji Manju!

Momiji Manju are the souvenir of choice from this part of the world. Momiji means Maple, and a manju is a kind of filled cake. Traditional Momiji Manju are basically mini doughnuts stuffed with azuki bean paste and then cooked on a special griddle which give them their characteristic maple leaf shape. Because Japanese visitors to Hiroshima more or less HAVE to buy these cakes for everyone they know, the past few years have seen a few new variations in an attempt to make them more interesting. You can now get chocolate, green tea, custard cream and cream cheese filled versions, and even chocolate covered ones although my personal opinion is that they shouldn't have messed with the original...


However this shop (in the covered arcade parallel to the seaside road to the shrine, if you're interested) has taken the humble momiji manju to a whole new level. It was something like 130 Yen for one, so we joined the queue, and tried out both kinds available : anko (bean paste) and custard cream. Cream: bowf as we say in Mars Bar Land - which is by no means a favourable description. Think hot mayonnaise. If that's your thing, get queuing! Anko: Better than the cream, but let's face it, it's going to take a lot more than a deep fried momiji manju to get me to like anko at all, after the shock of biting into an an-donut, when I was expecting a jam one, in my first week in Japan.
But then I've never been a big bean fan, have I?
Frankly, I'd rather have a deep fried pizza, and that's saying something!

M was a bit skeptical too.

Special Days Update

Whether or not to put your child into International School is an ongoing and passionate debate here in Hiroshima's "International" community. I thought about it long and hard before doing it, and only time and M herself will tell whether I made the right choice. I'm constantly re-examining that choice, and the rising fees give cause for further pondering.

There is no black and white answer. It is not as if the Japanese National System is all bad, and the International Curriculum all great. Far from it. However, on aggregate, having seen the Japanese system from the inside on most levels, I feel that the International system is more likely to broaden her personal horizons and expand her social, educational and professional options , than the Japanese one. And this is my main motivation.

As for putting facts and information into heads, it seems to depend on the subject matter which system does it better. And much though we'd all love our kids to be Einsteins, who knows if M will be academically gifted, or choose to use those skills even if she has them. That will ultimately be up to her, not me.

Personally I feel that the best gift I can give my child, who will by her birth and not her choice, possibly find it more difficult to belong 100% to either of her cultures, is an education which (hopefully) will foster independent thought and initiative taking, and furnish her with the ability to think things through logically by herself, solve problems and make decisions which affect her for herself. Y and I might not be here forever! My experience has not shown me that this is the case in Japanese schools.

Which does of course not mean that the International School will prove to be perfect in this respect. All schools sounds great according to the prospectus! Some friends who I respect immensely have made the other choice for different reasons. You just have to choose which demons are more important to you.

It's so hard, as we're all basically comparing our own experience of what we see here, with the education we received as children, or our own experience of another system which is not necessarily relevant or current. In some ways I envy people who have never had nor entertained any other option than sending their kids to the school down the road, coz that's the only one there. It's such a luxury and at the same time such a burden to have the choice to make. We can only hope to make a responsible decision which will not turn our kids into psychopaths.....

I reckon I have to decide finally by the time she's 6. To change her entire language of study after she starts "real" education on a whim would be too unfair. Of course there are people who have no other logistical option.

Anyway, all this soul searching is real and serious, but I have already found one reason why HIS rules!
Last year I wrote this: Happy Mothers' Day

This year, we've already had Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day, and now we have these beautiful likenesses of ourselves! Yeah!!!! It's worth 6 Grand a year!!!!

This is me by the way!
And this is Y.
And me again for good measure! What a mini Picasso, eh!

Playschool Tulip

I'm on my summer holidays from HIS, but my Mummy still has to work sometimes. So I started a new play school for days when she has to go and teach the big girls. It's called Tulip and I love it. My friends F and K go there every day, so I can see them, and we go on a school trip every day, if it's not raining. Today we went to the zoo, last Friday we went to the family pool, I've also been swimming in a river. It's great! We made Tanabata decorations to bring home, and may other things too. It's great! I come home in a green "melon" bus - but it doesn't look like a melon really!

I have to carry lots of things in my rucksack every day, but it's worth it.

私はもう夏休みだけど、Mummyはときどき仕事をしないといけないから、新しいプレイスクールに行く事になった。チューリップという保育園なんだけど、大好きです！友達のFちゃんとK君が毎日行っているから行くときに会えるし、天気の日は毎日遠足ですよ。今日は動物園に行ったし、この間ファミリープールに行ったし、川で水遊びした事もある。雨の日は、七夕飾りを作ったり、料理をしたり、いろんな工作もしているよ。とても楽しい！帰りはみどりの「メロン」バスに乗る。メロンの形はしていないけど。。。
リュックに荷物をいっぱいつめないといけないけど、頑張るぞ！

Tuesday Park Plays 火曜日公園会

Since the summer holidays are so long, one of my classmates' Mums came up with the idea of meeting in a different park in the city each Tuesday so we can keep in touch. I'm going to Scotland tomorrow, so I won't be able to do it all summer, but I had fun the twice we did manage to get there. Once was in Ushita, where we always have the Halloween party.



私のスクールの夏休みが長いだから、クラスの友達のお母さんは「毎週の火曜日にどこかの公園で会いましょう！」といういいアイディアがあった。明日からスコットランドに行くから、毎週参加ができないけど、今まで行った２回はとても楽しかった！一回目はいつもHalloween Partyをする牛田の公園だった。

そして先週廿日市の公園に行きました。


Then we went to a great park in Hatsukaichi.

I had great fun! See you all in August!
また８月に遊ぼうね！

Uncanny Vision

Another gem from Weechan today:

" Mummy, only you know everything, isn't that right?"

今日のMセリフ：「何でも分かるのは、お母さんだけよね。」

よく分かったねMちゃん！

Mr Watanabe Wins Hands Down

Well, we were going to buy a new car next year. Because we are skint this year. Moving house, international school fees, weddings in Scotland; not exactly leaving a lot of yen in the coffers.

Fatal mistake: J to Y, " We've nothing better to do, why don't we go and test drive a Prius"

We'd decided that the next car we bought would be a hybrid car. "Very you" said my sister. Not sure what that means but anyway.... we'll take it as a compliment. Although not so sure, coming from someone who drives a 3 litre turbo diesel Audi convertible....Anyway, we'd heard they could feel weird to drive, so thought we better check it out before committing ourselves - next year of course.

Enter Mr Watanabe. We test drove the car, which was not in the least bit weird to drive. The only reservation I had was that it was too small for my luggage hauling needs - you never know when you might need that kitchen sink - but I looked at my previous number 1 choice, called a Harrier here, and found the practical space was not what I had thought anyway, and an Estima, which is brilliant on the inside, but just too damn ugly to compromise on on the outside; but the bottom line is: if you're supposedly doing it for the environment, the mileage stats can't be ignored. It has to be the Prius.

So, we said right, thank you very much, we'll be back next year.

Oh naive gaijin that I am.

Mr Watanabe had other ideas. He'd been at our house before we'd even been home, which freaked me out somewhat. However, he's quite the gentleman, and smacks of the kind of polite good service that I am a sucker for. Nonetheless, after 3 visits at weird times I said quite plainly, " I really am planning to buy a Prius next year, but if you keep pestering me about it, it will only put me off, so please wait until we contact you" Which sounds a lot ruder even than that in Japanese!
He then followed with 2 strokes of genius: 1) he offered us a trade in price on the RAV4 which was much more than was realistic, for God knows what reasons, and 2) he came round our house when we were both drunk, to press us for a decision. Quote from Dr Y: " Mr Watanabe's at the door. You better go, I'm too drunk to say no" Unfortunately so was I.

And so it was that on Saturday last week, we found ourselves the happy new owners of a metallic red Prius. I felt compelled to include Mr W in the family shot. A tribute to the man who managed to get me to buy what I'd sworn I wouldn't. Despite my skill at finding things to spend money on by myself, I really do hate persistent salesmen, and am overly suspicious of anyone trying to sell me anything. Well done Mr W!

I have to say I'm loving it though. Once I worked out how to switch it on that is. The navigation system has voice recognition, so you can literally say " I want to go home" and it takes you home. I'm impressing myself that it generally understands what I say - except when people are watching of course! It also tells you where the traffic jams are. Its HDD music system renders my iPod unnecessary. The dashboard is like something out of a sci-fi film. And it's so so quiet...

Of course now we really are skint!

日本語版は後でね。。。

Scary.....

M's sudden statement in the car today: " Mummy, when I die when I'm 4, I'm going to miss you..."

!!!!!!!!!!
Weechanが車で突然：　「Mummy、茉利がね、あのね、４歳で死ぬ時、Mummyに会えなくて寂しくなるよ。」

なんてこと！？？！

All Change! 生まれ変わった！

Well, we’ve moved house, M is in a new school, Y and J are both in new jobs, we’re getting a new car next week, and I’ve got a new MacBook to play with, so why not go all he way and start a new blog too! In fact, in my new journey into the Apple world, I’m discovering that I can’t do the old So-net blog the way I want to from this computer - something to do with browsers and OS compatibility - so I’m using my free month of .Mac to test out this one.

The main points of “Mairi’s World”　were 1) to let people who are interested know what she was up to and what her face looks like, and 2) to have a record of what she did and who she knew , for her to look at when she is older and has forgotten. The most I have of the 0-3 era are flashes of images, and whatever my mother remembers.

The facts are however, that she is so busy at school and various other things, that we don’t do that much together these days to fill a blog, and she is getting to an age when she will remember things herself. So no need for as much detail as before. And to be honest I’d always planned to change the format when she turned 4. Babies are cute, but toddlers other than your own can be less than adorable!

Still, hopefully Grandparents and close friends and family still wonder about us now and again, so I won’t give up altogether. Other comments I’ve had are that there is not enough news about me and Y, and that I have too many blogs to keep up with! So the answer: a new family blog! Why “On the Pond”? It’s what the characters for our name mean (池 means “pond” and 上means “on, above”), and is the most original one I can come up with for now - better suggestions in a comment welcome!


さて、引っ越ししたし、Mは新しい幼稚園に行きだしたし、YもJも新しい職場で頑張っている。来週から新しい車に乗ることにして、Macもとうとう購入！こんな新しくなった環境だと、ブログも新しくなるのは当然でしょうね。 実は、アップルの世界にゆっくりとなれてきている私は、Macを使うとSo-netのブログを前のように編集できないことが分かった。ブラウザーのせいか、 OSのせいか、私のバカか分からないけど、とりあえず.Macの一ヶ月無料体験をつかってこのMacのブログを試してみようかと。。。

茉利の世界」の主な目的は、会えない親戚や友達に茉利は毎日何をやっているか、どういう顔をしているかを見せることと、茉利が大きくなったときに、自分が小さいころ何をやっていて、どんなお友達がいたかが調べられることでした。普通は０歳から３歳までの思いでがほとんど残らないでしょうね。

今の現実：茉利は毎日インターナショナルスクールや習い事で忙しくしているから、お母さんが覗ける時間が少なくて、ブログのネタが前ほどないね。それにそろそろ物事を自分で思い出せる年齢になるから、そこまで細かい情報はいいかな。正直にいうと、４歳の誕生日の際に新しいフォーマットに変えようと前から思っていた。赤ちゃんはかわいいけど、大きくなったら、自分の子以外は時々でいいってかんじよね！
でもおばあちゃん達や親戚や親しい友達はまだちょっとだけでも私たちに興味があると思いたいから、まだ完全に諦めないよ！茉利の事ばっかりじゃなくて、YとJの事もたまに聞きたいや、ブログがあり過ぎて訳が分からないなどのコメントもありました。 その結果：このファミリーブログに変身させていただきます！なぜ「On the Pond」か？私たちの文字を英語に訳してごらん。。。あまり面白くないタイトルかもしれないけど、ごめんね。。。これからもよろしくね！