Sunday 28 June 2009
Saturday 27 June 2009
Friday 26 June 2009
MIchael
So I'm kind of sad. Whatever you can say of him, he's the icon of my generation I suppose. Like Elvis was for my Mum's.
But I have to say I was genuinely surprised today at work. I teach 12 1nd 13 year olds on Fridays, and was expecting them all to give me the "So what?" look when I mentioned him dying.They have often not even heard of huge Western stars. Some of them did. Then at lunchtime, a 13 year old girl came running up screaming "Jackie!!" (I get this a lot).
"Jackie, you told 2-5 that Michael Jackson is dead"
"Yes, I'm really sad."
" NOOOO!"
And then she burst into tears in my arms. In all seriousness.
Who cares about all the rest of it?
If you can make a 13 year old girl in Japan cry when you die, that's the mark of a true superstar. And there has to be a reason for that.
Call me sad, but I'll drink to him.
Hope he's at peace now.
But I have to say I was genuinely surprised today at work. I teach 12 1nd 13 year olds on Fridays, and was expecting them all to give me the "So what?" look when I mentioned him dying.They have often not even heard of huge Western stars. Some of them did. Then at lunchtime, a 13 year old girl came running up screaming "Jackie!!" (I get this a lot).
"Jackie, you told 2-5 that Michael Jackson is dead"
"Yes, I'm really sad."
" NOOOO!"
And then she burst into tears in my arms. In all seriousness.
Who cares about all the rest of it?
If you can make a 13 year old girl in Japan cry when you die, that's the mark of a true superstar. And there has to be a reason for that.
Call me sad, but I'll drink to him.
Hope he's at peace now.
Wednesday 24 June 2009
Birdmen
OK, so I don't have time to tell the full story right now, but thought I better share my husband's bravery (or something!) with the world first.
Last weekend we had an adventurous day at Kijima Korakuen in Beppu. There was much upping and downing and round abouting, but by far the craziest thing anyone did was this. N and DrY tested their and our nerves by being dropped from a great height. Horizontal bungee jumping- not for the faint hearted!
Thursday 18 June 2009
Family Friends Food and Fish and Tokan-san 09
Some shots and a couple of videos if you scroll down, of Hiroshima's
Yukata (summer kimono) festival a couple of weeks ago.
Bon-odori dancing in Shintenchi
Hiroshima's Elvis?
And it seems the Slosh crosses all cultural barriers!
Wednesday 17 June 2009
The Curse
OK, so I tempted fate and Weechan and I replanted her morning glory seedlings and her sunflower seed project a week or so ago.
Everyone says, oh you can't go wrong with these ones, they're practically impossible to kill.
But "everyone" doesn't know about the curse.
I have quite obviously been hexed in a previous life, to the effect that every even vaguely green life form that I come within 3 feet of, shall wither and die before my very eyes.
And usually inside 3 weeks.
In the week since we planted them, the sunflower has already perished, despite my best efforts.
The morning glories and the tomato seeds we planted are still gripping fiercely on to life, but then, we haven't reached the 3 week mark yet.
NO, really, you have no idea the crushing sense of responsibility and doom that comes over me when people give me a simple plant gift.
And now Lorna has given me a rhubarb seedling with the final fatal verbal accompaniment:
NO-ONE CAN KILL RHUBARB.
No-one who's not cursed, I say...
Shakespeare Revisited
A flashback to the Shakespeare production of Romeo and Juliet at Jogakuin the other week.
Do these faces give you any idea how worried I was at the beginning, that I'd made a huge mistake even thinking about taking two 6 year-olds and a 7 year-old to their first play.
After a dodgy start though, they all got really into it, and were trying to guess what was going to happen at the end.
Thanks to the players of the International Theatre Company and the British Council for organizing the tour.
Do these faces give you any idea how worried I was at the beginning, that I'd made a huge mistake even thinking about taking two 6 year-olds and a 7 year-old to their first play.
After a dodgy start though, they all got really into it, and were trying to guess what was going to happen at the end.
Thanks to the players of the International Theatre Company and the British Council for organizing the tour.
All Clear
Do you know I actually asked my Mummy to go to the dentist the other week, when we were passing one that looked cool.
The lady showed me how to clean my teeth properly, I got a new toothbrush and toothpaste, and the dentist said I didn't need any fillings.
Yay, me!
Wednesday 10 June 2009
Tuesday 9 June 2009
Getting it off my chest- so to speak
Had a -I have to admit - rare these days, very annoying race -related experience today.
It was the school staff health check day. On the plus side, being only part-time, I only had to have a chest x-ray, and while getting your shirt off in a bus in the school car park is not the most fun you might ever have on a Tuesday morning, at least I was spared the indignity of having to stand in a queue and make small talk with my colleagues while holding a cup of my own warm pee, as the rest of the full timers did.
Anyway, the process entails taking your paperwork down to a makeshift "reception area" in an unused meeting room, where there are two nurse-types who check it and direct you to the appropriate station depending on what your contract requires you to have checked.
So down I go, and in front of me are 2 teachers being processed, plus 2 pee-clutching English teachers with whom I engaged in light banter as we waited, then after I arrived, about 3 other teachers joined the line.
So the nurse-type (could have been a techie, could have been an administrator who knows, everyone has a uniform here) on the left finishes with her victim, and my 2 English teacher colleagues go to her together
for some reason, leaving me, very conspicuously - right in the middle of the doorway- next in line.
SO nurse-type on the right finishes dealing with the teacher she has ushered into the ominous looking "Stomach Check" station with the sign saying "expose your belly button before entering (!?!?!). She then pushes past me, and goes out into the corridor, checks the paperwork of the teacher behind me in line, and sends her onto the bus for the very x-ray I'm waiting to get.
At first I was just confused, thinking there was perhaps some special reason to let this woman go first - an imminently starting class or something.
So she comes back in with the lady's paperwork, puts it on the desk, pushing past me twice to get in then back out again, and deals with the next guy in line.
I say, very politely, in my best Japanese, "excuse me, is there some reason why you are making me wait? I can come back later..."
She ignores me, doesn't make eye contact at all, continues to deal with all the other teachers in the queue, before coming back, checking that the other girl was definitely not going to be finished any time soon, before unapologetically and silently taking care of my paperwork, and sending me on to the bus for the x-ray.
Thankfully the radiologist was perfectly professional.
Now first of all I should point out that I am in fact married to a Japanese man, of my own free will, and have lived in this country as opposed to going home, which I could have, for almost 20 years, of my own free will. My point being that not ALL Japanese people are like this, in fact like anywhere else, most of them are really quite lovely.
Also, I have just started reading a book, called "The Secret Life of Bees", which looks like it might be quite good, in the first chapter of which I have just read a description of a black woman being jailed and hospitalized after being severely beaten up for the dastardly crime of daring to register to vote in 1965 in America. My point being, that I know that as racism goes, this is hardly the worst thing I could experience.
Nonetheless the urge to shout "IT'S NOT FAIR!!!!" really really loud has been with me all day.
This kind of blatant xenophobia - and I mean that in the true sense of the word- can really ruin your whole day.
Now, perhaps this woman has had a bad experience with some other whitey in the past. Some of us can be just as objectionable as she was. Perhaps she was feeling a bit under the weather, had PMT, or had been chucked by her boyfriend last night. Maybe the English teacher who asked her what her name was in just the wrong tone of voice all those years ago looked just like me, god forbid.
Perhaps so, I can't really say. But I CAN say with 100% certainty that she has never met, nor had any verbal or social contact with ME before, and therefore in her professional capacity, she has no reason to make me wait any longer than anyone else.
I mean, you're not telling me that in a job which deals with people confronting their medical insecurities on a daily basis, that she has never met a Japanese asshole ( I could introduce her to a few if she wants). Maybe the last one she met had glasses, or curly hair. SO is it acceptable for her to then brazenly avoid serving anyone with bad eyesight or a dodgy perm?
Silly cow. Pardon my language.
So, as I famously said on the stage at the teacher training conference a few years back: you get arseholes everywhere in the world. I shouldn't let it bother me. True.
But what really bothers me is, that while I could report her for her rude and unprofessional treatment of me as a patient, as my hubby suggests, I know that if I did, while many of the staff would actually sympathize and agree with me in private; on aggregate, it would be ME that had caused the hassle by reporting it.
Right or wrong doesn't matter here, it's the person that made everyone deal with the whole sorry mess that's the problem. And that's where the real culture shock lies.
Sometimes I think the spitting in your face, name-calling type of racism is preferable, because at least you can answer it back, and everyone agrees it is unacceptable.
More than a minority here, while they wouldn't actually go as far as behaving like this lady, secretly understand her fear of me. And that fear in some way mitigates her attitude to me for them.
After all, it's me that looks different.
And the nail that stands out must be hammered down, as the proverb says.
ITSNOTFAIR
So there.
It was the school staff health check day. On the plus side, being only part-time, I only had to have a chest x-ray, and while getting your shirt off in a bus in the school car park is not the most fun you might ever have on a Tuesday morning, at least I was spared the indignity of having to stand in a queue and make small talk with my colleagues while holding a cup of my own warm pee, as the rest of the full timers did.
Anyway, the process entails taking your paperwork down to a makeshift "reception area" in an unused meeting room, where there are two nurse-types who check it and direct you to the appropriate station depending on what your contract requires you to have checked.
So down I go, and in front of me are 2 teachers being processed, plus 2 pee-clutching English teachers with whom I engaged in light banter as we waited, then after I arrived, about 3 other teachers joined the line.
So the nurse-type (could have been a techie, could have been an administrator who knows, everyone has a uniform here) on the left finishes with her victim, and my 2 English teacher colleagues go to her together
for some reason, leaving me, very conspicuously - right in the middle of the doorway- next in line.
SO nurse-type on the right finishes dealing with the teacher she has ushered into the ominous looking "Stomach Check" station with the sign saying "expose your belly button before entering (!?!?!). She then pushes past me, and goes out into the corridor, checks the paperwork of the teacher behind me in line, and sends her onto the bus for the very x-ray I'm waiting to get.
At first I was just confused, thinking there was perhaps some special reason to let this woman go first - an imminently starting class or something.
So she comes back in with the lady's paperwork, puts it on the desk, pushing past me twice to get in then back out again, and deals with the next guy in line.
I say, very politely, in my best Japanese, "excuse me, is there some reason why you are making me wait? I can come back later..."
She ignores me, doesn't make eye contact at all, continues to deal with all the other teachers in the queue, before coming back, checking that the other girl was definitely not going to be finished any time soon, before unapologetically and silently taking care of my paperwork, and sending me on to the bus for the x-ray.
Thankfully the radiologist was perfectly professional.
Now first of all I should point out that I am in fact married to a Japanese man, of my own free will, and have lived in this country as opposed to going home, which I could have, for almost 20 years, of my own free will. My point being that not ALL Japanese people are like this, in fact like anywhere else, most of them are really quite lovely.
Also, I have just started reading a book, called "The Secret Life of Bees", which looks like it might be quite good, in the first chapter of which I have just read a description of a black woman being jailed and hospitalized after being severely beaten up for the dastardly crime of daring to register to vote in 1965 in America. My point being, that I know that as racism goes, this is hardly the worst thing I could experience.
Nonetheless the urge to shout "IT'S NOT FAIR!!!!" really really loud has been with me all day.
This kind of blatant xenophobia - and I mean that in the true sense of the word- can really ruin your whole day.
Now, perhaps this woman has had a bad experience with some other whitey in the past. Some of us can be just as objectionable as she was. Perhaps she was feeling a bit under the weather, had PMT, or had been chucked by her boyfriend last night. Maybe the English teacher who asked her what her name was in just the wrong tone of voice all those years ago looked just like me, god forbid.
Perhaps so, I can't really say. But I CAN say with 100% certainty that she has never met, nor had any verbal or social contact with ME before, and therefore in her professional capacity, she has no reason to make me wait any longer than anyone else.
I mean, you're not telling me that in a job which deals with people confronting their medical insecurities on a daily basis, that she has never met a Japanese asshole ( I could introduce her to a few if she wants). Maybe the last one she met had glasses, or curly hair. SO is it acceptable for her to then brazenly avoid serving anyone with bad eyesight or a dodgy perm?
Silly cow. Pardon my language.
So, as I famously said on the stage at the teacher training conference a few years back: you get arseholes everywhere in the world. I shouldn't let it bother me. True.
But what really bothers me is, that while I could report her for her rude and unprofessional treatment of me as a patient, as my hubby suggests, I know that if I did, while many of the staff would actually sympathize and agree with me in private; on aggregate, it would be ME that had caused the hassle by reporting it.
Right or wrong doesn't matter here, it's the person that made everyone deal with the whole sorry mess that's the problem. And that's where the real culture shock lies.
Sometimes I think the spitting in your face, name-calling type of racism is preferable, because at least you can answer it back, and everyone agrees it is unacceptable.
More than a minority here, while they wouldn't actually go as far as behaving like this lady, secretly understand her fear of me. And that fear in some way mitigates her attitude to me for them.
After all, it's me that looks different.
And the nail that stands out must be hammered down, as the proverb says.
ITSNOTFAIR
So there.
Friday 5 June 2009
Japanese Primary School Sports day
SO last weekend we had all the plans for a sport-filled weekend: swimming lesson on Saturday with high chance of getting the next badge, followed by elementary school Sports Day on Sunday.
Mummy as ever (fruitlessly?) engaged in the battle of trying to achieve the best of both worlds for Weechan, had arranged for her to be allowed specially to take part in the Sports Day, in advance of her going there every day when the International School holidays start in a couple of weeks. All this to ease her transition so she doesn't stand out like the proverbial sore thumb, nor the nail that requires hammering down, depending on your cultural perspective. Not sure what the teacher really thinks of all this, but she's graciously going along with it.
So, I was ready on Saturday to hit the shops to gather the appropriate materials to make the mother of all bentos (packed lunches), to rival all the neighbourhood bentos, thus assuring my acceptance into the local fold of mothers, as is required for a Japanese sports day.
Needless to say, true to the B-movie script which is life in the On the Pond family, 2 minutes before departure to he shops o Saturday, Mairi decided to ram her scooter into the plastic drainpipe on our balcony, shattering it, and sheering a dramatically sanguine gash into the back of her heel.
Surprisingly, I did not in fact ignore the spurting blood of my daughter and grab the camera to prove this to you, but instead mopped, disinfected and dressed the wound as I contemplated the now fresh page of my weekend plans.
She's fine by the way. It was deep enough to cause alarm, but not bad enough to require stitches.
However.
No pool, no running now possible.
And so it was that we found ourselves as spectators with the neighbours' cousins at the sports day the following morning.
So, I was ready on Saturday to hit the shops to gather the appropriate materials to make the mother of all bentos (packed lunches), to rival all the neighbourhood bentos, thus assuring my acceptance into the local fold of mothers, as is required for a Japanese sports day.
Needless to say, true to the B-movie script which is life in the On the Pond family, 2 minutes before departure to he shops o Saturday, Mairi decided to ram her scooter into the plastic drainpipe on our balcony, shattering it, and sheering a dramatically sanguine gash into the back of her heel.
Surprisingly, I did not in fact ignore the spurting blood of my daughter and grab the camera to prove this to you, but instead mopped, disinfected and dressed the wound as I contemplated the now fresh page of my weekend plans.
She's fine by the way. It was deep enough to cause alarm, but not bad enough to require stitches.
However.
No pool, no running now possible.
And so it was that we found ourselves as spectators with the neighbours' cousins at the sports day the following morning.
Weechan decided she wanted to wear her uniform anyway, to show solidarity for her classmates.
There were lots of the usual events:
Eye of the Typhoon
It was not just the school kids' day, but also a community event. Here is the lovely T-chan, daghter of one of Mummy's colleagues, who has just moved into the neighbourhood.
Our district was in the white team.
But Weechan's classmates and our neighbours were in the red team, so we could just support everyone without getting in trouble.
This horseback battle always impresses me: you have to make a pyramid.
Then run at the enemy and try and steal their hat.
Really surprising no-one usually gets hurt.
2 of Weechan's classmates are Dr Dad's colleagues, so they had plenty of important doctory things to chat about.
The view from the sports field.
As in any country, the parents are avid fans!
As usual, despite best efforts, we ended up standing out a mile for all the wrong reasons. Weechan was a bit shy.
She was really looking forward to running in her race, but we enjoyed watching all the fun anyway.
This game didn't involve any running so we took part in it.
Mummy even got one in!
But in the end the red team lost.
Twice!
But the big kids were really kind to Weechan so we achieved our aim. She can't wait to go every day.
K-chan and Weechan's classmates entertained us with a great dance.
And then the neighbours invited us to join them for their impressive bento.
Next year, I will show my culinary mettle, I promise!
Thanks to the I-family for their picnic hospitality!
Christmas is over...
Yes, it's June. And this is Dr Dad finally sawing up the remains of our last year's Christmas tree from Iwakuni.
Does that tell you something about our family?
Mmmm.
Do You Believe in God Burger?
"Fresh sandwich" with added burger and "gekikara" chilli sauce!In a recent Facebook waste of time quiz, my darling sister accused me of making this place up, as she has continually accused me of making up rules for games and cheating in general since our early childhood days. I can only say it is a sad thing when people have to stoop to attacking the character of others in the face of fair and square defeat.
Sadness at the state of the world and humanity in general aside, this is definitely the burger of choice in Hiroshima in my book. The old "I hate MacDonalds" rants have been forced to the surface at school these days, so God Burger has been enjoying somewhat of a revival in my close circle.
These 3 were certainly happy to be taken there the other day, when I couldnt be bothered to cook for a playdate tea the other night!
Wednesday 3 June 2009
Happy Anniversary to Me!
I even got flowers!9 years ago today we tied the knot in Japan.
Wow!
And the love just keeps on burning...
In spite of these pyjamas!
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