Bonfire NIght

We did Bonfire Night on November 6th. I think everyone had a good time... Here are some pics.



Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Sports Day 09

And this was the scene at Sports Day this year. Mairi was a bit disappointed that there were no actual races this year. She was looking forward to winning her race for the 3rd year running - no pun intended.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Ballet Sneak Preview

We had the posed photos for the programme taken the other week. Here are a few scary make-up shots of the prima herself.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Catch Up Time - Yufuin in July 09

Once again, long time no blog. Have totally become a slave to Facebook, against my will, which, along with a festering yet unproductive foray into Twitter has taken its toll on my blogging.
I have also been so busy this Autumn with various Halloween and PTA related things (who goes straight into being PTA president without really knowing what's going on at the school?? But once again I digress), that I have regularly forgotten to take my camera out of the house at all, never mind to the importtant milestones of M's life that I am supposed to be recording. Oh well...

Catch up time again.

Here are some shots in a Flickr slideshow from Yufuin with Ba-chan this summer, before we went to Scotland:


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Photos

We had our family photos taken yesterday by the brilliant Ken Sharp. Now I have the nightmare of choosing which ones I want printed, or whether once again to buy the whole lot of them on DVD.

Check out his blog, on which Mairi features today. If you do decide to use him, please mention my name!!

http://www.kensharp.com/blog/2009/08/19/mairi/

Ballet

So, this is not because I think my daughter is the next prima ballerina with the Royal Ballet. We are going home next week and thereby missing the most intensive training period for the December Ballet Show that M has promised to take part in. SO the teacher suggested I video the class today so that M could watch it, practise, and not forget the steps while we are away. So, in the name of dedication, here is the dance in its raw form. From last year's experience, they will all suddenly look great on the stage, even if it seems far off now!

Swine Influenza Precautions? 豚インフルエンザ対策？

No.
This is the get-up Weechan had to wear to serve the school lunches at her Japanese primary school.
That's fine, but my major complaint was that I had to iron it. My iron hasn't seen the light of day since Granny was last here!

いや。
小学校の第一周は給食当番でした。それはいいけど、Grannyがスコットランドに帰って以来、アイロンを出さないといけなかったの。原則としてアイロンかけない私ですから、タイミング悪いなあ、と思った。

For Granny

Friend Ai-chan came round the other weekend to play, and we had a rare these days dressing up sesh (while the grown-ups watched Wimbledon!). See? I am Tinkerbell!

Morals - Hiroshima A-Bomb Education for 6 year-olds

Today Weechan's 4th period class was "Morals". I was interested to see what that was going to be about.
She came home full of tales of a video they had been shown.

"Okori Jizo" or Angry Jizo, is basically a tale of one little girl's experience of the 6th of August, 1945.
I have heard Weechan's garbled version of the story, which has large gaps in it, but it has obviously made a big impression on her. She can't stop talking about it.

I've just ordered a copy of the book above from Amazon so I can see what the message of it is meant to be, but I'll leave you with the words from the mouth of my babe before she went to sleep:

"So if America and Japan were fighting about something, and they both did bad things, then they just have to say they're "sorry", and "that's OK", and we can all get along again with no more big bad bombs"

In a nutshell really.

I'm reserving judgement on what I think of showing this stuff to 6 year-olds, until I see what's in the book, and I definitely have a raised eyebrow about whether it should be shown in "morals" class. But it's hard to complain about any anti-bomb propaganda, when you live in this city really.
We're not going to be here for bomb day this year, so I'll show you a couple of YouTubes I found while searching for a video version of the above story. None of them will make you feel very good, btw, and you probably shouldn't watch in front of any small children you're not ready for that chat with yet.

The first is an cartoon about the message Hiroshima wants to send the world (my interpretation). I think it's beautiful.



This one is about the post bomb hospitals set up to deal with the survivors. The first hospital you see is the Red Cross Hospital where Dr Y works today. It's all in Japanese, but you get a good idea of what it was like here after the bomb.



And lastly one by the BBC reconstructing the day.

Back to School!

Yes, I did just report that my girl was on holiday.
But the job that I have to do to pay for all her free time, is unfortunately in the Japanese school system, and my hols don't start for another 3 weeks.
So we are indulging her Japanese half, by sending her to the local elementary school up the hill for the last 3 weeks of term.
The walk up the veritable mountain every morning with a jam-packed satchel, in wellies and with umbrella notwithstanding, I'm glad to report that she is loving it.
Control freak Mummy is of course having severe issues about letting her walk up the busy rush hour road by herself (well, with 3 other 6 year-olds), but the gins before bed are helping with that. Having already made friends with the neighbour over the back who is in her class, K-chan, meant that Weechan was really looking forward to her first day there, while Mummy was phone-watching all day.

I expected her back at 3:30.
The torrential rain started about 3pm. No I mean like a power shower. No exaggeration for dramatic effect. It sounded like machine gun fire on my roof.
3:30 came and went.

2 mini Mummies sittng on my shoulders giving me grief:
Paranoid Mummy: " I'm going out to search for her"
Other paranoid Mummy:"Don't be crap. She'll be mortified"

The doorbell rang.
She normally opens the gate herself, but I hear, rather than see her, in the video entrance phone screen. She's too wee to be seen. Bless.
"Open it for me..."

I run down and open the door to find her standing there in endofthelivingworld tears.

Paranoid Mummy: "Oh God she hated it. She will refuse to go back. What will I do?"

Thankfully (I am awful), it was "only" that she was truly traumatised by the rain she'd just had to walk home in, and to boot hadn't heard me say I was coming to open the door, so thought she'd been abandoned.

#crapmum

So far the Japanese she has taught herself and learned at school is still more advanced than what they are doing up there, so she doesn't have comprehension issues yet. This will probably change next year, but all in all a great start.

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.

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!

Finally....

The day I've been waiting for for months!!
1 tooth down, 19 (?) to go!!

とうとう１本が抜けた！

It came out while I was at school.
学校にいる間に自分でぬけた。

Mummy says she hopes the tooth fairy has change....

Resourcefulness!

Weechan was complaining of an inexplicable sore leg the other night, so we thought we'd ice it up. A look in the freezer found something the perfect fit! Nice to have legs that fit in a wine cooling sleeve! It's going to take a few more aerobics lessons for Mummy to achieve that...
この間Weechanが何故か、足が痛いと言いていたから、冷やそうと冷蔵庫の中を見たら、この６歳の足がぴったり入るものがあった。ワインクーラーに入るぐらい細い足、いいな！
もうちょっとエアロで頑張らなくちゃ！

日本語が最近ないと苦情がでたけど、すみませんでした。相変わらず忙しすぎて、さぼってしまった。ごめんね。また時間が許す限り日本語を復活させようと思うけど、あまり時間がないので、変なところがいっぱいあるかも。許してね。

Mummy's School Sports Day

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.


We went to Mummy's students' sports day yesterday. Uncle John was dressed as Mr Incredible. I was supporting the green team and the red team, so I was happy when the green team won!
I love Sports Days!

Developmental Updates

1) We would proudly like to announce that we finally have waggly teeth.

The front bottom 2 have been movable since about January, but, in spite of being hit squarely in the mouth at Ioan's birthday barbecue last week, which even drew a respectable amount of blood, they stubbornly refuse to approach the falling out stage. Tooth fairy be warned: this girl will require a visit soon!

2) We have finally had a common childhood disease!

2 weeks ago, when a bizarre pimple between the eyes turned out not in fact to be an early mosquito bite, Weechan was diagnosed, expertly by Ba-chan of course, as having chicken pocks.
As we have somehow avoided all of the usual kiddie spotty things so far, Mummy was kind of pleased, in a cruel kind of a way. Dalmation jokes did not go down well with the invalid, nor did having to stay of her beloved school for 3 days, but on the plus side, it was only 3 days because they have a drug for chicken pox here, and I can testify that it works. we caght it early and she had not even one more spot from the moment she took the medicine.
Impressed? I was!
Apologies to Alex in my class for passing it on.....oops!

Congratulations Uncle Y!

Welcome to our family M-san!

Last week we had the official engagement ceremony for my Uncle Y and his fiance M-san.

We all got dressed up and went to a posh hotel for a special lunch. Ba-chan even wore her kimono.

The groom to be:

All the present I family together for once!

And my cute new cousin-in-law (?) T-kun.

After the ceremony we went for a walk in Peace Park, which full of the signs of Spring.

Nice day!

In the evening I had a special treat, as we were lucky enough to meet Donald who works for Disney (not that Donald!), and he got us great tickets for the Princess Musical that was in town.
We met him by chance in a restaurant and didn't know him at all, but his kindness made me very happy as I went to the show with Ba-chan that night. We have no e-mail address or contact for him, so we'll just have to thank him here so that it doesn't go unsaid:
Thanks Donald for your kindness, we hope you make it to Cirque du Soleil!

Hiroshima International School Festival

In case I forget to tell you, I'm presently baking up a storm for Weechan's school festival. Please come if you're in the area. It's this Saturday (18th). Please call me if you need more details. All are welcome and there will be lots of tasty international cuisine and games and other nonsense.

Many firsts...kind of....

It was Weechan's first day of school on Monday. Well, not really, considering she has been going to school for a couple of years now. But her first day of Japanese elementary school.
And it's strange, maybe it's my British background, but the buying of the uniform, and the school satchel and all of that somehow made it seem like her real first day of school for me, even though she will probably only go there for a couple of months each year.
Luckily, our nextdoor neighbour's daughter K-chan is also starting school this year so she has a friend there already.

So it was the first day of first grade, and because our surname starts with the 2nd letter of the Japanese alphabet, Weechan is number 1 in her class so she was first into the hall for the entrance ceremony too.

The older kids showed the new kids to their seats, which was a nice touch, and this half African girl was chosen to make Mairi feel at home. She was really nice.

Nerves were raw.

The obligatory ceremonies...

Then first out, with the new teacher, Ms U.

The view over the city from the 1st year classroom is breathtaking.

The girl nextdoor's name starts with "I" too so she sits next to me!

Who's going to do her best at 2 schools?
"Hai!"

Burgers for the Masses

Had a good time with old friend E on Saturday. We made the burgers!