Right Ball

On the evening of the first day of e-learning for the kids, Stow spilled a huge cup of Sprite on Sky's computer and notebooks. Sky had accidentally left his computer in our gaming space when he collapsed on the nearby sofa, worn and full of anguish from an anxious day of doing school online. Unexpected changes and lack of certainty are hard for all kids, but they can be crippling for a kid on the spectrum, and Sky was spent. The next morning, when we discovered that the computer was fried, I knew there was no way we were getting through the pandemic and e-learning if Sky didn't have a working computer, so I got him in the car, we drove to Costco and we bought another one. Sometimes, even when money is tight, it makes more sense to take the hit.

Since then, we've had four school Chromebooks (for the younger two kids) crash and my work computer go kaput. We've also had a PS4, an iPad, and a kindle stop working. Pink has started referring to our house as a tech black hole. The only way I finally managed to get the internet to work fast enough for me to teach online was by using an ethernet cable (thanks, IT!!) long enough to snake through the living room, through my study (which had been taken over by the kids), and down the steps to my temporary office in the basement. Even then, when conditions weren't right--and almost ALWAYS related to Zoom--the internet for the whole house would go down. The weirdest day was when my Zoom meeting worked, but no other internet in the house worked.

My ethernet cable making its way in the world.

That's kind of how our pandemic has been going. Today marks the beginning of our twelfth week of social distancing. The kids left school for the weekend on March 13th and never went back. My classes let out for spring break the week before that, and by the end of my spring break, I knew I'd be teaching remotely for the foreseeable future. Like so many families, we experienced lots of heartbreak. Sky missed his first high school tennis season. Pink missed her first flute concert. We had finally gotten Stow set up with a one-on-one aide and were looking forward to see how that change helped him. We haven't been able to see my elderly parents for months and don't know when we will again. We've missed birthdays and other special occasions.....*

It has been HARD. Change of routine and loss of support structures has led to daily meltdowns, some quite traumatic. We've seen regression and loss of skills that make us nervous going forward. The challenges of parenting kids whose inflexibility, anxiety, and inability to really grasp why this is all happening can make a day seem eternal  Not being able to go out for a walk or a drink with a friend to vent has been exhausting. To be honest, the combination of increased stress and uncertainty and decreased in-person support has challenged me and Ren to dig deep into our resource reservoir. And what we've discovered is that we don't have enough to manage this on our own. But, we also have figured out different ways to take turns burning out.

The days are long!

Then, somewhere around week six, it struck me that we were somehow uniquely ready to deal with this situation in a way that many other families might not be. I realized that although this was all Very Hard, we were doing ok--the kids were getting along, Ren calm and relatively pain free, and I wasn't completely paralyzed by stress. That's when it occurred to me that much of what we've experienced up to now had prepared us for this. Thanks to Ren's seven spine surgeries and thanks to special needs parenting, we've had our lives stop in their tracks, and we've had to learn how to adjust when something that was working stops working.

Talk about pandemic readiness skills! Every time Ren has a spine surgery, we go from doing tons of activities to doing nothing. The world around us keeps going, but we freeze in place. Depending on the surgery, this can last anywhere from a couple of weeks to several months. If you've read my posts from those times, you know that there is always a moment where I worry that things will never be ok again. I worry that the surgery and all of the trauma surrounding it have taken us so far out of our "normal" lives that we might never find our way back. But, every single time we have come out the other side wiser--and a little more weathered--but ok. The waiting is the hardest part, but I am learning to lean into it and to believe that everything is going to be ok. It's going to look different. It may not be easy. Some of us will lose more than others along the way, but somehow it will be ok.

I'm also trying to laugh. A lot. This (see pic below) made me laugh yesterday. I don't know why I didn't see it before. I'm sure it has been in the garage FOREVER. Maybe I just didn't pay attention. In Japanese, it says denkyuu, or light bulbs. And, to be fair, the word for baseball is yaKYUU using the same kanji character, but I haven't laughed this hard in a long time.

Right ball

Make sure you're paying attention! Laugh together. Cry together. Keep making your way together. It will be okay, somehow. Even if it doesn't feel like it, it really will!

Right ball, you guys. Right ball.

*These are just examples, of course, and I also know we have been lucky to not have lost as much as so many other people have lost.

** Also, this post is completely insignificant in light of what is happening to black people all across our country right now. Please, listen to black voices, support them and don't ask them to tell you how to help. Stand with them, listen to them, and let them tell you their experiences without being questioned. Also, here are some places you can help.

What to Do if Your Husband Vacuums too Much and Other Useless Metaphors (My Messy Beautiful)

The first year of our marriage, we fought about vacuuming. Ren would often come home from work around midnight and jump straight into his cleaning routine. It didn't matter that his daughter and mother were sound asleep in the other room or that I had the futon spread out and was snuggled deep under the covers trying to catch up on one American TV program or another. He had to clean. I'm pretty sure I was the only newlywed in the history of the universe to complain about her spouse doing too much housework. But it annoyed me, and I hadn't yet come to appreciate how having a kid with asthma and allergies alters your cleaning habits.

I don't remember a lot from that first year other than the arguments about vacuuming, trying to figure out how to parent a less-than-willing Japanese tween, and struggling to make sense of what Ren's 75 year-old mother was telling me to do. I also distinctly remember wanting to give up on the marriage. Lying awake each night on that mat on the floor, wrapped in the warm smell of the tatami, with the lullabies of the cicadas in my ears, I felt alien...uncomfortable in my new skin.

At the time, a good friend of mine said, "It took you two years to decide to marry him. You need to  give it at least that long to figure out if you want to separate." Looking back now, her advice seems pretty arbitrary. Useless, perhaps. But at the time, it made perfect sense. So, I stayed, and we figured out how to communicate over and beyond, below and enmeshed.

When you are from two entirely different countries, speak two very different languages, and are the products of two completely different generations, you learn you have to work hard to meet in the middle. You also learn that life together comes with its fair share of of missed connections. Those early years, married to Ren and living in Japan, I discovered that, a lot of the time, marriage is just about pulling yourself up out of the futon each morning and trying again.

*****

Last weekend, we spent the night in Chicago. By the second day, Ren's back hurt so bad, he didn't want to walk. So we decided that he would drop me with the older kids at Water Tower Place while he and the baby found a quieter, more peaceful (and cheaper) place to park. Since we only have one cell phone, the plan was to meet on the side street next to Water Tower in an hour.

Or, at least, that was my plan as I thought I'd conveyed it to Ren before we parted. Ren, apparently, had a different plan.

Our meeting time came and went. Pink P (6) and Sky (9) found the cutting, cold wind difficult to bear, so we walked back and forth between our meeting place and a space just inside the door overlooking the spot where I expected Ren to appear at any moment. Over and over again, I ventured out into the cold with two miserable kids only to find the street empty and to feel the uneasy knot in my stomach getting bigger and bigger.

Where was he?

Having a kid with Aspergers means you can never let on that you are worried. Or scared. Or upset. Thing is, keeping your cool gets harder when you have a 9 year-old standing next to you outlining in great detail all of the possible ways things might have gone wrong. Sky was sure Ren had forgotten us. Pink was too tired to take another step. Both kids were hungry and tired of carrying their stuff.

When Ren didn't show up on the side of the building, we checked the back and then the other side. We walked three blocks away from Michigan Avenue, toward the lake, thinking he was most likely to have parked somewhere over there. Round and round we went. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes. Forty minutes.

Where WAS he?

Just as I was about to give up and try to find a hotel for the night, just as I made one last sweep around the back of the building, Ren pulled up.

And he was mad.

"Where were you?!" he asked. "Why weren't you where you said you'd be?!!"

Thing is, I was exactly where I said I'd be. (I mean, really, what sense would it make for me to go anywhere else, especially when it's 30 degrees outside?). But I could tell that didn't matter. He hadn't heard me. He'd been too distracted by the city traffic and his thoughts about places to wait for us. The whole time I was searching for him on the sides and back of the building, he was just around the corner in front. For forty minutes, we completely missed each other. And the whole time we were only about 100 feet apart.

*****

As soon as I understood that we were all okay and allowed my anger to dissipate, I realized those forty minutes we spent around the corner from each other could serve as a good metaphor for our marriage. When life gets hard--like it has been lately with a move, a third back surgery followed by a trip to Mayo and then the realization that Ren will probably never regain full mobility, along with the constant joys and sorrows that seem to accompany life with kids on the spectrum--I have to remind myself to actively communicate with my husband. I also have to keep telling myself that when all else fails, sometimes the most important thing I can do is pull myself out of the futon and keep on moving forward.

This essay is part of the Messy, Beautiful Warrior Project — To learn more, CLICK HERE! And to learn about the New York Times Bestselling Memoir Carry On Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, just released in paperback, CLICK HERE!

The Parable of the Dishwasher (and Other Meaningless Metaphors)

We have been married for almost fourteen years, and for nearly all of those years, not to mention all the years before we got married, Ren has refused to use a dishwasher. In Japan, of course, this isn't such a big deal since most people don't have dishwashers and when they do they look strikingly similar to microwaves, or maybe even bread boxes.

We never had one of these contraptions because they are too small, take up too much counter space, and cost more than I like to spend on something so inefficient. Plus, they are not terribly environmentally friendly.

So, it made perfect sense that we never used a dish washer when we lived in Japan. But then we moved to the US and the dishwasher wars began in earnest. No matter how persuasively I argued, Ren remained convinced that using a dishwasher was too expensive and didn't really sanitize plates any better than washing them by hand. After a couple of years of meaningless debate, I finally resigned myself to the nightly duty of washing/helping to wash the dishes while our dishwasher sat full of dried goods and the pots and pans we never used. In case you're wondering, the standard dishwasher provides generous storage space and can even double as a mini pantry should you ever find yourself in need.

Do you know the key to success in an international marriage: it's being willing to wash dishes by hand even when you have a perfectly good dishwasher sitting right in front of you. For the better part of ten years, I hand washed dishes as the underutilized and underperforming dishwasher sat mocking me from across the various American kitchens we've had.

And then, one day, all these many years later, Ren changed his mind.

After this last move, he started using the dishwasher. I didn't ask him to. He just did. And, he saw value in it, so he kept using it. But, do you know what? Not once did I say "I told you so." Not once did he make it seem like he was caving in or pandering to my needs. He just wanted to try something new, and I knew enough to let him do it without adding my two cents.

Because, here's the other thing about international marriage--well, any marriage, really--people grow. People change, and every once in a while, they try something new. Sometimes all you have to do is be patient.*****



OH, AND UPDATE: The giveaway ends tomorrow, Friday, September 13th at 5 p.m. ET, so if you haven't voted, now's the time. Click here for details.



*****Disclaimer: And sometimes they don't. But, you should know not to take marriage or child rearing advice from me. Seriously, you've been reading this blog, right?

Image from: http://blog.japantimes.co.jp/yen-for-living/tag/home-appliances/

How Does He Love, Me? Let Me Count the Ways

Last year for  Valentine's Day, I recounted the story of how Ren and I met and ended up getting married. You  can read  that story here, here, here, and here (What can I say? It's such a good story, I had to tell it in 4 parts.)

This year's Valentine's post is appropriately titled: How Does He Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways. I've already established that Ren is an unconventional romantic (link).  He's certainly no Browning (see what I did there? A literary reference), but it seems he is a pretty typical Japanese man (In fact, just as I was writing this, NPR ran a story--link --substantiating my claim. Amazing timing!). According to Ren, saying "I love you" too much is the surest sign your relationship is in trouble. True love is  understood and needn't be spoken. A friend of mine was with her boyfriend/husband for 5 years before he said the words, "I love you," and even then, he only said it once. Compared to that, Ren's a regular Don Juan. Not only does he say, "I love you" from time to time, he also makes unmistakably romantic gestures. Let me count them for you:

Number 1:

He always fixes my computer problems, even when I am having the same self-inflicted crisis for the fourth time, and it will take days and a complete reinstallation to undo my mess. Usually he will do this without sleeping.

Number 2:

Each morning, he hands me an apple slice when I'm on my way out the door. I'm pretty sure he does it because he knows eating breakfast could actually help me shed my post-partum spare tire, but I like to imagine he does it because he loves me that much.

Number 3:

He let's me write about him in my blog even though he'd much prefer his privacy.

Number 4:

He only buys half of the things he sees on sale instead of all of them. Sure we end up with skeletons in our study, but so far, no other body parts (link).

Number 5:

When Sky is having a total meltdown  and yelling at me for the umpteenth time, Ren drops what he's doing and distracts him with stories of dinosaurs or outer space. 

Number 6:

Not once has he complained when I've left him home alone with the kids while I go have a drink with friends or to work at my office or to shop frantically for something that fits and still looks professional (link).

Number 7:

He doesn't care that I can beat him in most ball sports but that I hate to cook. One of these skills is highly useful around the house. The other is not.

Number 8:
He no longer grumbles when I scratch the car. 

Number 9:
He cooks, cleans, does laundry, makes the bed, vacuums, and changes 90% of Stow's diapers, all while his back hurts and his legs are partially numb. And somehow he manages to do this without making me feel guilty for leaving all the backbreaking work to him.

Number 10:
He once bought me an insulated Pyrex dish and a snow cone maker in the same year. And when I defended my dissertation, he offered to buy me diamonds. Both times, I was moved by the gesture. The second time, I opted for a new phone instead of jewelry, and he was totally cool with that. 


Here's hoping your Valentine knows you as well as mine knows me!

What CHiPs Taught Me about International Marriage

Twelve years into our marriage and fifteen years after our first date, Ren and I discovered our first and only shared cultural touchstone: CHiPs. Somehow, though I don't quite understand how, we both "grew up" watching Poncho and Jon save the day. The discovery that we shared this one thing from our youth made us giddy, if not perplexed. After all we not only grew up in two different countries but also in two different generations.

It can be strange not to share any experiences from your youth with your spouse. In our case, the lack of overlap carries on in our adulthoods. Ren likes Japanese historical dramas on TV, sci-fi and special effects in his movies, maudlin Japanese folk songs in his music, and his reading on the computer. Plus, he has nothing to do with any kind of social media. I like independent films and alternative music. I read books constantly. And I blog.

Don't get me wrong, we agree on some really important things: what we want for our kids, how we will use our money, the importance of hard work and shared responsibility. It's just that our interests and opinions diverge on most other things. And sometimes that can be difficult, especially when life keeps introducing new changes and challenges.

When you marry someone who is from a different country and who speaks a different language, you can't presume to know where he or she is coming from. From your very first date, you understand that you will have to work a little harder to make things work. You will have to figure out how to communicate effectively. You will have to carry out some top-level negotiations (not to mention savvy money-managing techniques) as you decide which country to call home and how and when you will visit the other country. Once you have kids, you have to decide what language to speak at home, what holidays to celebrate and how to celebrate them. Even little the things like whether your kids will use chopsticks or forks (or both) are up for debate. In other words, nothing is a given. Everything must be discussed and negotiated. Sometimes you won't be able to agree because you will be coming from very different places. And you have to be okay with that, too.

Having an international marriage is hard. There are a lot of sacrifices involved, and someone is usually giving up something. But here's the thing: isn't that true of all marriages?

In our case, we were just lucky to figure it out at the beginning instead of at the end.





Image from http://collider.com/dvd/article.asp/aid/8277/cid/3/tcid/3

How I Met Ren, Part 4

Okay, I guess to talk about what happened next, I need to backtrack a bit...

During my two weeks in the hospital, in an attempt to get rid of the stress that seemed to have caused the ulcer, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was bugging me. Ironically, the ulcer attack came the same day that I'd signed a contract to stay in Japan for a third year. So, I took the suddenly revolt by my stomach to be a sign that I'd made the wrong decision. Those two weeks in the hospital, I mulled over my decision and tried desperately to figure out if I'd made the right one.

Ren knew about this. Which is why on our first date, as we (or at least one of us) looked out over the city, he told me I should definitely stay in Japan. He probably should have given up right there. Because my response was something to the effect of: "That's nice of you to say, but I've never made a decision based on a man before, and I'm sure not going to now." But, here's the thing about Ren, he's totally cool with me being a dumbass. Totally. Instead of feeling hurt or frustrated, he simply told me to do what I had to do.

Eventually, I decided to stay in Japan. I can't say if Ren influenced my decision or not because I don't remember. I do remember tossing a coin, though. And I suppose you could say the coin landed right side up.


After we'd been dating a month or so, Ren asked asked me if I would marry him. "I don't know," was my honest reply. After all, I wasn't ready to commit to an international marriage or to life in Japan or to being a step mom. I had things I still wanted to do. "That's okay. I can wait," he said.

And he did. For more than two years. He waited while I finished my stint on the JET Program, while I packed up my stuff and said goodbye to all my friends in Japan, and while I moved off to California to do my Master's at Stanford. Not once did he ask me to stop thinking about what I wanted to do. He just waited. And he managed to wait without seeming like he was desperate. Or making me feel guilty. Or even seeming like he was waiting at all. I'm not sure how he did it, but he did.

And then one day, April 21, 1999, to be exact, I said yes. I know the exact date because it was the day after the Columbine shootings. That day, as I drove from my apartment in Mountain View to the Stanford campus 20 minutes away, I thought about those kids who'd left for school that morning with no idea that it would be the last day of their lives. And I realized I needed to quit being scared of the things I didn't know. I didn't know if I could be a good step parent. I didn't know if I could manage an international marriage. I didn't know where we would live or what we would do. But I did know that Ren loved me, and that, in her own way, Big Sissy did, too. And I realized that if I knew that, I knew enough.

So that night, at the end of our daily two-hour phone conversation, I said, "There's something I want to say."

"What?" (Nani?)

"Oh, forget it." (Yappari, ii)

"No, go ahead." (Nan daroo?)

"Do you want to get married?" (Kekkon shiyou ka?)

"Sure." (Hai.)

"Ok."

"Ok."

"Goodbye." (Jaa ne.)

"Goodbye." (Jaa ne.)

Ren must've been in shock, because the next day when we talked, he said, "You know that thing you asked me at the end of the conversation yesterday? Were you serious?"

I was.


Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

How I Met Ren, Part 3

So here are a few tips from the Ren playbook of luuu~v.

1. Obtain unwitting foreign girl's phone number before she leaves the hospital by promising to introduce her to various mountain trails in Kyushu.

2. Purchase mulitple phone cards to ensure that you have enough minutes to carry on a two-hour conversation on the hall pay phone (much to the chagrin of your fellow patients).

3. Call her, and in the course of your witty conversation, suggest that she stop by when she comes for her follow-up appointment with Dr. Miyajima.

4. When she stops by to say hello, ask her, "So whaddya doing next Sunday?"

At this point, you will totally confuse her because, after all, you are still in the hospital. So you will have to explain the concepts of "gaishitsu" (leaving the hospital for the day) and "gaihaku" (leaving the hospital overnight). When she hears this explanation, she will be flabbergasted because who ever heard of a healthcare system that allows you to stay in the hospital long enough that you actually need chances to go home for a day or two?

5. When you go to pick her up on Sunday, dress your best and take her to the nicest restaurant in town.

6. After a nice meal, take her to the most scenic spot around for a romantic stroll and, at the opportune moment, tell her you think you were meant to be together.

*****

For a guy who hadn't dated in a really, really long time, Ren seemed to find his mojo pretty quickly. I just had a few suggestions:

First, when you take a girl on a date, make sure she knows she's going on a date. (Okay, this one wasn't really his fault. By my second year in Japan, I was used to being asked to meals by all sorts of folks. Since Ren is older, I wasn't sure if we were going on a date or if I would be eating dinner with his kids in exchange for a free English lesson).

Second, while preparing a drink for her to enjoy in the car on the way to the restaurant is an incredibly thoughtful gesture, Pocari Sweat really isn't the drink to set the mood.

Third, don't take a person recovering from a stomach ulcer to a French restaurant and order a five-course meal.

Fourth, when you take her on a stroll to a scenic point overlooking the city, make sure you take your glasses so you can tell her what she's seeing.

Fifth, for the love of God, don't wear your woven leather shoes. I'm sure they were expensive, but they just make her think you might be a middle-aged pimp.

(You know, I actually still kinda feel guilty about these shoes. After the first date, I told Ren I never wanted to see them again. He must've really liked me because I never did.)

Part 1
Part 2
Part 4

How I Met Ren, Part 2

On my third day in the hospital, I was finally allowed to join others in the common area and eat my first meal of solid food. And by solid food, I mean okayu with absolutely no seasoning. For the uninitiated, okayu is what happens when you boil your rice for way, way, way too long. It's a lot like watered-down paste. Made from rice. My first meal after three days consisted solely of okayu rice paste and weak tea. Yummmm. But sitting there, gloomily considering the gustatory challenge before me (after all, if I didn't eat it, I wouldn't be promoted to better food and couldn't secure my discharge), I had a chance to look around the room and see for the first time all of my Miyajima 3 floormates. They were either very old or what appeared to be members of the local motorcycle gang (bozozoku).

As I scanned the room, I noticed a not-white-haired, non-bozozoku, and (gasp!) tall Japanese man helping carry trays to various immobile patients. Maybe it was his matching yellow-striped pajamas, maybe it was the fact that he seemed to be born in the same generation as me, maybe it was his towering height (he was surrounded by old people, after all), or maybe it was the kindness he demonstrated to his fellow patients, but Ren stood out to me the moment I first saw him.

Almost immediately, I got the sense that I really needed to talk to that strange, tall man in the matching pajamas. So, after the trays were put away, I lingered in the common area and pretended to study the pictures of mountains hanging on the wall.

"Those are the Japan Alps," said a voice from behind. No kidding. As if reading my mind, Ren walked up to me and started telling me about all the pictures on the wall. From that first conversation, I learned a couple of astounding things. First, Ren, like me, was an avid hiker and spent as much of his free time as possible in the mountains. Second, his father was born and raised in the tiny mountain hamlet that had become my home. The conversation was brief and soon we returned to our rooms.

That night, Ren appeared in my dream. In the dream, we were sleeping side by side. It was a profoundly peaceful dream. Okay, let me stop for a minute (again) and emphasize the point that I don't normally dream about men, or sleeping with men, or sleeping with tall strangers in matching pajamas. But, there you have it, from the first time Ren and I spoke, he had clearly inhabited my subconscious.

"Weird," I thought when I woke up the next morning. It wasn't like I suddenly realized he was the man I'd been waiting for (Ha!). It wasn't even like I planned to talk to him again. But, I did find myself spending more and more time in the common room. And somehow Ren usually showed up. Later I learned that he spent his time waiting for me to go to the common room and then resisting the urge to run out and talk to me whenever he saw me there. But I didn't know that at the time.

When the day of my release finally came, I packed my bag and sat on the bed waiting for my neighbor to come get me. As I sat there waiting, I felt unexpected pangs of regret knowing I would never figure out what was going on with the tall stranger in the hospital room next door. I didn't even know if Ren knew I was leaving, and I certainly had no idea whether he liked me or not. Eventually, I convinced myself that too much free time relaxing in a hospital bed had made me crazy. I barely knew the guy, after all.

This is what I was thinking as I left the room and started walking toward the elevator. My heart started to race a bit when I realized Ren was sitting at a table between me and the elevator talking to a friend. I had no idea what to say as I walked past, or whether I should say anything, or whether I should even acknowledge him.

And then.

He stood up.

If you know me, you know I am not in the least bit romantic, or melodramatic, or prone to much in the way of sappiness, but when he stood up, I swear I could hear violins swell and everything else fell away leaving just the two of us.

"Jya, odaiji ni (Get well soon)," he said.
"Arigatou (Thanks)," I replied.

And then I walked to the elevator, out of the hospital, and to the car, and made my back up into the mountains.

To be continued...

Part 1
Part 3
Part 4

How I Met Ren

In honor of Valentine's Day, a little story...

When I moved off to Japan to teach English the summer after college graduation, friends jokingly reminded me not to "find [myself] a man" there lest I end up "staying forever." I thought the chance of finding a boyfriend, much less a life mate, in Japan was pretty slim. First of all, I didn't really believe in dating. Second, I had no burning desire to marry. And third, I couldn't imagine any Japanese man being "my type" (Whatever that means. After all, I had no idea what my type was since I had essentially sworn off dating). Okay, let me stop here to point out that my complete and utter pessimism about dating and marriage had nothing to do with any negative experiences related to dating and marriage. I wasn't the child of divorce, and I had never been dumped, lied to or cheated on. I was just insanely independent and probably too much of a realist for my own good. Marriage was the last thing on my mind.

Fast-forward eighteen months, or approximately half-way through my second year in Japan. By this time, I had traveled through most of Japan and been to China, South Korea, and Thailand on my own. Somewhere in Thailand, it occurred to me that it might be fun to share some of these experiences with someone. It also occurred to me that, at 24, I was tired and maybe ready to settle down a bit. It was a completely unexpected and somewhat unwelcome set of realizations. But, for the first time, I was willing to concede that it might be nice to be married some day. I still wasn't ready to go through the rigmarole of trying to attract a guy and date him, though, so I decided that the only way I would get married is if the whole thing happened so quickly that I didn't know what hit me.

And so it was, one cold February night, up in the mountains of rural Kyushu, that I got a severe stomachache and had to go to the emergency room in the city 45 miles below. After a rough ride down the mountain in the back of a farmer's K-truck, and some fervent banging on the ER room door to awaken the doctor on duty, I was deposited at Miyajima Hospital, where it was determined that I was not dying but would need to stay the night. With no car and no good idea of where I was, and with very rudimentary Japanese, I was at least stuck until someone from my town came to get me the following day. But by then, I had been in Japan long enough to know that no one was coming to get me unless Dr. Miyajima agreed that I could leave. What I didn't know is that unlike the United States, Japanese health insurance enables people to stay in the hospital long enough to recover from whatever ails them. In the end, I was at Miyajima Hospital for two weeks. Two weeks! (It turns out I had an ulcer). And, even then, I basically had to promise my firstborn child to get them to let me out early.

Once I got over the shock of what I perceived to be my unwarranted incarceration, I found hospital life to be pretty enjoyable. As the only non-Japanese person there, I was an instant celebrity, and once I got my electronic dictionary, the mind-numbing string of medical terminology didn't seem so bad. To be honest, I rather enjoyed the lazy afternoons spent chatting with my three roommates (once I got over the fact that I was sleeping in a room, a hospital room, no less, with three complete strangers). The best part was when my parents would call from the US (though I am 100% sure they did not think this was fun at all). Since I didn't have a cell phone, they would call the registration desk at the hospital and ask for me. No one at the desk spoke English, so my parents learned to just call and repeatedly say my name (and I'm sure they said it really loudly because that's what Midwesterners do when they think people don't understand them. They talk louder.) By the time the call was transferred through several nurses stations to me, my parents had spent quite a bit of money in international calling fees (pre-Skype, y'all) and were totally flustered. (Tee hee).

To be continued...

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Be Careful What You Wish For

I've always been a bit enamored by the idea that writing a wish and hanging it at a shrine might just be enough to make it come true. (Though never enamored enough to actually pay the $8 or so it would cost to get one of those pieces of wood --called "ema"-- needed to properly convey my wish.)

The last time we were in Japan, Big Sissy pointed the one at the top right out to me.

"Be careful what you wish for," she told me, smiling.

I had to laugh. She knows me pretty well after all these years.

The one on the top right reads (in beginner's Japanese), "I want to marry a Japanese person. Please."

The Less Glamorous Side of Our So-called International Life (part 2 )

This blog post is part two in my description of some of the headaches that come when you try to live a multicultural, international life somewhere in the middle. Like I said in the last post, there’s a lot that’s fun and interesting about this life we lead, and then there’s some stuff that kind of stinks. Here is some more of the smelly stuff...

The Customs
As the parent of bi-cultural kids, I am always worried that my parenting will cause them to favor one culture over the other. Maintaining a balance of culturally distinct customs is challenging. Making sure the kids understand and respect these customs takes a lot of intentional effort and usually requires us to educate people beyond our immediate family. You wouldn’t believe, for example, how hard it is to get our American friends and family to take their shoes off (at least not without a considerable amount of grumbling). It seems like we are always defending these cultural practices to friends, family, and strangers alike. Enough already! For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that there’s a great big world out there with all sorts of awesome diversity in it. And, while we’re at it, let’s pretend that embracing this diversity is a good thing. Believe me, even without your skepticism, my job is hard enough. As soon as my kids start school, they want to chuck whatever makes them different than their peers--aka, all that cultural coolness we are trying to instill in them. Why learn to write in Japanese if none of your friends can? And who wants a rad Japanese bento for lunch if all your friends are eating PB&J and potato chips?

The Holidays
For us, it’s not just about deciding whose Thanksgiving traditions we will follow or where we will spend Christmas. Most of the holidays we celebrate in the US are not celebrated in Japan, and vice versa. So the issue becomes which holidays to celebrate (celebrating them all can be exhausting), and how to pull them off. It’s not so easy to buy a turkey in Tokyo and pretty much impossible to simulate a Fourth of July parade. It’s equally impossible to convince the US post office to hold all our end-of-the-year greeting cards and to deliver them early in the morning on New Year’s Day (like they do in Japan).


(Japanese-style New Year's food -- you should be impressed! Ren made all of this.)

The question of which holidays to celebrate comes down to a complicated equation that calculates how important the holiday is, how difficult it would be to buy whatever is necessary to celebrate the holiday, and whether the parent from the country of origin remembers enough about the traditions associated with the holiday to be able to pass them on. Elucidating the nuances of any given holiday can be difficult. Try explaining to a foreigner why we boil eggs, decorate them, and then hide them for an imaginary bunny. Go ahead. Try it.

In an international family where the parents come from two vastly different cultures, the onus of properly celebrating any given holiday falls squarely on the shoulder of a single parent. The other ends up being a crappy wingman at best.

The Trip
Being an international family necessitates a lot of super-long airplane rides. Super-long airplane rides with small children. Often.

Actually, the kids are getting better and better at flying, but this does not make the flight any shorter. And it doesn’t keep snarky childless people from glaring at us since they know we will ruin their flight.

To all the folks who think we shouldn’t fly with children since we will most likely disrupt your flight: can it!

If there was a better way to get from point A to point B, believe me, I would do it. I’m not a fan of holding one or more of my kids on my lap for 14 hours straight. In fact, I try really hard not even to be in the same room as all of them for that long. Unfortunately, it’s illegal to mail them, so until you can figure out a way to teleport my family to and from Japan, keep. your. trap. shut.


The Trip consists of three pretty persistent minor antagonists: The Cost, The Baggage Restrictions, and The Customs Official.

The Cost
Flying back and forth to Japan with a family of five costs roughly the same as it would to modestly furnish a small house. For the price of two or three trips, we could buy a really nice new car. But what do we get for all that money? Bad service and multiple lost bags. Sometimes we get unexpected nights in airport hotels due to airplane malfunction. Sure The Trip takes us to see our loved ones, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that all we’ve really gotten for the tens of thousands of dollars we’ve spent to go back and forth is extensive time strapped in uncomfortable seats.

The Baggage Restrictions
Okay, so the good thing is that on international flights, you’re allowed two “free” checked bags (They’re free, that is, unless you count the 1000+ dollars you spent on the ticket). The bad news is that they are stricter than ever about the ever-shrinking weight limits. I can pack a seventy-pound suitcase with my eyes closed. Unfortunately, these days, bags have to be 50 pounds or less.

Our trips back and forth are first: family visits, and second: extended shopping trips. There are just things you can’t buy in one place or another. These things –books, clothes, shoes (you try buying a pair of women’s shoes in an 8 ½ in Japan…), underwear, rice flakes, seaweed, dried tofu--must be evenly distributed and then crammed into our suitcases.

I’ve been known to saddle each family member with a 35 pound carry-on just to outsmart The Baggage Restrictions.

The Customs Official
Why yes, Mr. Customs Inspector, as a matter of fact, I do mind if you search our luggage... .Surely you see the small children traveling with me…. It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that they are stir crazy after such a long flight. This is, after all, International Arrivals...What? You want to know if I am bringing anything into the country illegally? Seriously, how could I possibly find the time to be an international smuggler? And, where in the world would I find space in our suitcases for it? I am, after all, Traveling.With.Small.Children. I have been cooped up in an airplane for 14 hours with these three balls of energy, one of whom was on my lap the entire time. It took me hours...no days...to get all of our stuff to fit in the suitcases with just the right distribution of weight. If you open that suitcase, everything will fly out of it, and while I am gathering it all up again, my children will make a break for the door. But, you know, do what you gotta do…

The Middle Ground
There is no middle ground. You can’t live in both places at the same time. Ever. This means you’d better get get over it or used to the two unwanted guests in any international family: Sacrifice and Guilt.

The Less Glamorous Side of Our So-called International Life (a 2-part series)

So you know from the tag line at the top of my blog that I’m mom to three smallish kids (ages 7, 4, and 1>) and stepmom to one big one, and I’m living a bilingual, bi-cultural life with my immigrant husband in small-town mid-America. This blog post is about what it's like to try to live a multicultural, international life somewhere in the middle. There’s a lot that’s fun and interesting about this life we lead, and then there’s some stuff that kind of stinks. Here is some of the smelly stuff(and thanks for humoring the rant. I promise I won't do it often)...


The Stares
No, we don’t look like you, and no, we don’t look entirely like each other. Yes, we are speaking a different language. Yes, sometimes we are even speaking more than one language at a time. Get. Over. It. Frankly, when you stare, it confuses me. Are my kids being too loud? Did one of them just pick his/her nose? It is not out of the realm of possibility that my kids are being inappropriate, so please reserve your stares for those times. Or better yet, mind your own freaking business.

The Questions
When people see a mixed-race, multilingual family, suddenly they feel at liberty to ask all sorts of ridiculous questions. They want to know what we eat, what language we speak at home, which country we prefer to live in, and on, and on, and on. This seems to be the case no matter where we are.

At a local festival in the Midwestern United States, a well-meaning (I guess, though I’m not really sure what kind of woman would ask this question) came up to 10-month old Sky and me and asked,

“Where did you get him?”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Where did you get your baby?”

My first reaction (which I suppressed) was to tell her that no, the dingo did not take her baby and give it to me. Next, I had to resist the urge to say: Well…you see…when a man loves a woman, sometimes they will touch each other in certain ways, and sometimes that will lead to a baby... I’m pretty sure this isn’t what she meant, either. I also toyed with giving her directions to the baby section at Wal-mart. In the end, I couldn’t figure out what to say, so I just pointed at my stomach and walked away.

A question we get with even more frequency than the one about where our children originated is whether we think they look more like me or like Ren. What people really want to know (but can't think of how to ask tactfully--this, by the way, should be your first hint that it's an inappropriate question) is whether we think our kids look more Japanese or American. How the heck am I supposed to know? They just look like Sky, Pink P, and Stow to me. I can tell you with absolute certainty that to every Japanese person we meet in Japan, they look American and to just about every American we encounter in the States, they look Japanese. So there you have it. A definitive answer.

The Language
While this isn’t the case for all international families, ours uses more than one language. This can be immensely beneficial when we want to say something that we don’t want complete strangers to overhear. In fact, speaking a foreign language generally scares people into minding their own business (which is exactly what we want them to do). I can tell my son to straighten up or he’s going to get grounded without anyone thinking I’m being a you-know-what. And strangers rarely feel the need to offer their perspectives on my parenting technique if they can’t understand what I am saying. It’s kind of like having a secret code.

It’s pretty awesome how the kids seem to know which language to use when. But this takes time and leads to some unfortunate misunderstandings along the way. When I first dropped Sky off at Parents Day Out, the teachers were amazed by how much he missed me. “He kept saying, ‘Mama! Mama! The whole time you were gone,” they told me. While I wanted to take credit for all the warm fuzzies they thought he was sending my way, I couldn’t. Instead, I explained, “He calls me Mommy. Mama is food.” He wasn’t missing me. He just wanted a snack.

By far the most annoying part of being a bilingual family is that some folks insist we don’t use certain languages in front of them. Despite what I said about the secret code, we are not actually international undercover agents or scheming to take over the world in any way (though I can see how you might make that mistake). We are also probably not talking about you. Chances are we are talking about whether we remembered to shut the garage door or whether Stow needs a new diaper. Riveting stuff, I assure you.

Don't be so paranoid, and whatever you do, please don't let your paranoia convince you you should tell us what language to speak to our kids! I don't ask you to speak a foreign language to your kid, so it'd be great if you could return the favor! Because, to tell you the truth, if you insist that I speak only Japanese to the kids or that their dad speak only English, it will freak them out. Why in the world would you want to do that?

To be continued...

The Conversations We Have at Our House

This is the conversation we had at dinner last night:

Ren: (in Japanese and then self-translated into English) This has baby bamboo in it. (take no ko = child of bamboo)
Sky: (Mortified) We're eating bamboo babies?
Mom on the Edge: (to Dad in effort to calm Sky) In English, they're called 'bamboo shoots.'
Pink P: Why do people shoot bamboo? Won't they hit the panda bears?

This got me thinking about some of the other odd conversations we've had lately, so I thought I'd post a few.
___________________________________________________

As he left me to board a plane to Japan this summer, meaning we'd be apart for several weeks, Sky: "Mommy, my spit makes my throat numb. And, it tastes like greens." (Since we're not from the south, I wondered if he knew what "greens" were. He did.)

***

My first conversation of the day:

Pink: [Bang, bang, bang!] "Mommy, open the door!"
Me: "I'm in the shower, what is it?"
Pink: [Bang, bang, bang, bang!] "Mommy, hurry!"
Me: "Honey, what is it?"
Pink: "I think my bed is too small."

***

Sky, reflecting on the big questions in life: "I just don't know if I believe in Jesus (pause) or Santa (pause) or Curious George (pause pause pause). Wait, Curious George is a cartoon so I KNOW he's not real..."

***

Sky has a tendency to wake up super early. This gives him time to think about things. Here are some examples of the first words I have heard, usually at about 5 a.m.:

"My spine is useless."
or
"You should really wear more dresses."
or
"Mommy, I don't have a girlfriend."
or
‎"Mommy, did you know that a toilet is a type of chair? It's a type of chair that has a hole in it..."

***

A typical response to any new haircut I get:
‎
Sky: "I liked your old hair".
Pink P: "Mommy, you're not a BOY."
Ren: "Did you MEAN to do that?"

(Pink P was relentless. On day two she asked why I didn't put it back on in the shower, and on day three she declared I was her "best boy!")

***

After explaining to Sky (upon being questioned) that I don't wear skirts because I have always been a tomboy and prefer pants, and after explaining, against my better judgment, what a tomboy was, he said (exactly what I expected him to say): "Then I'm a tomgirl--I like doing girl things and boy things."

***

Pink P: Knock, knock
Me: Who's there?
Pink P: Strawberry Pink P because you eat them!

***


Excerpt from a conversation on the way *home* from school (after a call from the school nurse): "We both threw up on the same table. Ryan threw up first, but I threw up more!"

***

‎"Mom, Pink P doesn't know anything. She doesn't even know what 'alliteration' means!"

***

Sky, as we are walking out the door to school, "When I grow up, I want to own a store that sells hats, gloves, and sweater pants."

***

Sky: Dad have you ever seen a rainbow?
Ren: Yes, I walked on top of one once.
Sky: (after a brief pause to consider this) No you didn't! Rainbows are made from water and sunlight. You'd fall through. Only angels walk on rainbows because they have wings.

***

"Mom, boys have pennies and girls don't."

***

"Mom, first there were dinosaurs and then people. What do you think will come when people are gone: robots or aliens?"

____________________________________________________

There are all sorts of reasons communication is challenging at our house. There's the bilingual thing, the pragmatic language thing and the verbal processing thing. Still, it makes for some pretty interesting conversations!

Top 10 Signs You'll Never Be a Japanese Housewife

10. You can't sew. Therefore, you can't make all of the fancy-schmancy things for school like the lunch box bag, the tea cup bag, the shoe bag, the book bag, the PE uniform bag, the luncheon mat, the sweet little book marks, and the notebook covers. You also can't turn your son's smock into a work of art inspired by Monet. Why? Because you can't sew.

9. You think your kids will probably survive just fine, even if you don't make them gargle with iodine every single day.

8. You don't feel compelled to make cute animals out of the various foods you put in your son's lunch. Rabbit apple slices. Lion mini sausages. Hello Kitty carrots. You can live without creating these things.

7. You think your kids will do okay in kindergarten despite the fact you don't take them to after-school lessons in math, calligraphy, and English (ha! at least you've got them all beat on the English thing!)

6. During the long weeks of the rainy season, you've been known to take your laundry to the laundry mat to dry it.

5. You're pretty sure your husband can get his own beer/tea/coffee, and you're not afraid to make him try.

4. You don't think of an apron as an everyday article of clothing. In fact, you don't feel at all self-conscious doing all sorts of work inside and outside the home without one on.

3. You microwave at least some part of some meal once a day.

2. You don't think the occasional carbonated drink will melt your kids' bones and put them on the path to delinquency.

1. You're not Japanese.




(I should add here my usual disclaimer about how all people are different and how stereotypes sometimes--and in this case, definitely--make for better blog entries.)

Take Off Your Shoes for Goodness Sake!

One question I used to get asked when I visited Japanese elementary schools was: "Do Americans sleep with their shoes on?" What an absurd question, I thought. That is until I realized the question about shoes, like the questions about guns ("Do you own a gun? I heard everyone owns a gun!" and "Aren't you afraid you will be shot?") can be tied directly to the programs my students were watching on television. When I first lived in Japan in the 90s, the selection of US television programs airing on the national networks was puzzling to say the least. There were a lot of Steven Segal movies, Full House, and A.L.F. For someone desperate to watch television in English after a long day of speaking Japanese, these were slim pickings to be sure. I mean, did anyone ever watch A.L.F.? And can you imagine a whole generation of Japanese viewers gleaning their understanding of the US from these three sources?

Finally, I decided to ask one of the third graders who posed the sleeping shoe question why she thought Americans slept in their shoes. After all, I can understand how Japanese kids would think it was odd to wear shoes in the house, but I couldn't imagine why they had the absurd idea that we slept in them. The kid's answer was simple: "Because, on t.v., we never see people take them off, and we never see where they put them. Besides, they already wear shoes in the house." (And by this last part, she meant to say that wearing shoes inside was already a filthy habit, so why wouldn't they wear them to bed?)

Most Americans know that Japanese take off their shoes when they go into the house. They assume this is to keep the house clean and to protect the tatami mats. They don't quite realize, however, how important taking one's shoes off is to maintaining proper etiquette. Japanese people, throughout their history have been concerned with keeping the pure and the impure separate. Have you ever seen a shrine gate like this?



It demarcates the separation of the unclean larger world from the purity of the shrine compound. That's why just inside the gate you will find an ablution pavilion (something that looks like a horse trough full of water and is used for washing oneself before proceeding).



There is a similar clean/unclean demarcation line in the entryway of the house and a designated space, therefore, for removing one's shoes which carry on their bottoms the uncleanliness of the outside. So, yes, taking off one's shoes is meant to keep the house clean, but no, it's not that simple.

Most visitors to our house here in the rural US don't seem to mind when we ask them to take off their shoes, though there is the occasional disgruntled person who comes with holey, smelly socks, or who is wearing laced-up boots. The problem is, though, that many of our American friends and family don't seem to get the spirit of the shoe-removal habit any more than my Japanese elementary kids understood why and when Americans wear shoes inside.

Here are some common mistakes they make:

1) They don't take off their shoes in the designated area, which is usually a swath of tile or a floor mat just inside the door. Instead, they assume that the entire entry area is like a mudroom and can therefore be tracked with shoes. They walk across the mat, across the carpet, and sit down on the steps to take their shoes off. The space for taking off shoes is almost always limited to just inside the door.

2) They take off their shoes, and then realizing they've forgotten something in their car, they go out in their socks to get it. After all, putting shoes on and taking them off again is a lot of work (she says with the slightest hint of sarcasm).

3) They get distracted and walk into the house with their shoes on anyway.

Now, don't get me wrong, I completely understand where these mistakes originate. After all, our visitors do take off their shoes as requested, even though it makes some of them uncomfortable to do so. So much of my family's cross-cultural existence is about meeting half-way. But the thing is, on some issues, there is no middle ground. There are some beliefs/cultural habits that one or the other of just us has to maintain for whatever reason. In my experience, the challenge of an international marriage (or any marriage, for that matter) is figuring out which of these beliefs/habits is non-negotiable and respecting the resulting boundaries. Sure, it gets old having to ask people to take off their shoes, and there is no easy, non-confrontational way to point out that taking off ones shoes and then getting one's socks dirty by walking outside without shoes defeats the purpose.

Sometimes Ren wonders whether people just lack common sense, and I remind him that we have common sense, it's just that the sense we share in common doesn't cover proper shoe removal etiquette. And then I remind myself that there are just certain times where it won't do any good to push him to see things my way. After all, who's to say my way is right, anyway?

The Unexpected Go-Between

A few months after Ren and I started dating, I got called into an unexpected meeting with the head English teacher, Mori-sensei. At that point, Mori-sensei had been teaching for over thirty years, making her just a few years away from retirement. She was under five feet tall and had an annoying(or endearing, depending on your mood) habit of singing to herself. Not only was she the de facto head of the English curriculum at the school, she was also someone I taught with regularly (regularly enough to know that she was by nature unassertive--not the best quality for teaching junior high students). Compared to the other English teacher (Matsuo-sensei) though, teaching with Mori-sensei was a walk in the park. Matsuo-sensei deserves at least one blog entry of his own, but suffice it to say that he had employed the tactics of fear and humiliation to teach English to three generations of students living in that small mountain hamlet, and like frat brothers who love their fraternity more after enduring brutal hazing, every man, woman, and child over the age of 13 demonstrated a deep sense of love and gratitude for Matsuo-sensei's unorthodox teaching methods.

Anyway, on that particular day, as I prepared handouts for the day's lessons, Mori-sensei invited me back to the tea room. In Japanese schools, the teachers' desks are all gathered in one room. There they keep all of their teaching materials which they carry back and forth to the classrooms. Students don't rotate, teachers do. In smaller schools like the ones where I taught, all of the teachers' desks were in that room organized in clusters by grade taught. Since the teacher's room is a very communal space, every school has some kind of tea room/break room suitable for the occasional private conversation. I'd never been summoned to the tea room before, so I followed Mori-sensei with a deep sense of intrigue.

The conversation went something like this:

Mori-sensei (haltingly): "The principal wanted me to speak to you about something...."

Me (perplexed--I wasn't sure the principal even knew I existed): "Yes?"

MS (stalling): "Someone called him."

Me: "Okay."

MS (even more haltingly, face increasingly reddened): "And they are worried because (pause, pause, pause)....(pause, pause) sometimes you don't come home at night."

Me (in my head): What the heck! Which of my nosy neighbors has it out for me? Ugh, it's probably the bitter divorcee Koga-sensei(who happened to be the school nurse at the other junior high where I taught).

Me (out loud): "I see, so one of my neighbors is worried about me? Do you know who called? I'd be happy to talk to them."

MS (with a certain amount of resignation): "The principal didn't say. He's just worried. You see, everyone knows you have a new 'friend.'"

Me (in my head): You've got to be kidding me. I'm 25 years old. Even my mom wouldn't be this nosy.

Me (out loud, as tactfully as possible): "Yes, sometimes I do stay down in the city. Many of my friends live there, you know. I thought it was safer than driving on the mountain road late at night."

MS (dubiously): "So, you are staying with your foreign teacher friends?"

Me (vaguely): "Yes, various friends..."

MS (gaining her footing): "Because, you know, since you have come all this way so far from your family, everyone feels responsible for you. And you do have a new male friend."

Me (keeping my cool despite my desire to do otherwise and dismayed that I actually have to say this to a work colleague): "You don't need to worry, I am not doing anything inappropriate. Besides, my parents know about my 'new friend' and they are not worried, so you don't need to be either."

MS (relieved--not by my explanation but because the conversation was clearly nearing its conclusion): "I'm glad to hear that. I will let the principal know he doesn't need to worry."

So let me say here, that my response to Mori-sensei's line of questioning went against every fiber of my being. What I really wanted to do was chastise her for prying into my private life and attempting to squelch my sense of independence. After all, what I did on my own time was my own business. Fortunately, though, I had lived in the town (and in Japan) long enough at that point to know that a) my business was not my own, and b) reacting as a strong-willed foreign woman would get me absolutely nowhere. I had also managed to do the don't-say-exactly-what-you-mean-and-let-others-think-what-they-will dance successfully for the first time, so, it probably sounds funny to say this, but I was proud of how much I'd grown.

That night, I told Ren about the conversation, hoping to vent my frustration at having every aspect of my private life analyzed by meddling neighbors. Ren patiently listened to my account, and then said something that totally shocked me:

"I think I should talk to Mori-sensei."

Me (in my head): Whaaa~t??? I totally did NOT see that coming!

Me (out loud, not at all sure how this would pan out): "Ummm, okaa~y."

So, we called Mori-sensei (awkward), and we invited her to dinner (even more awkward), setting up a date for the next night. (Whaaa~t?)

Have you ever seen those "meet the parents" movies where the young adult child brings home her unexpected betrothed and all sorts of chaos ensues? That's kind of what the dinner date was like. Only, the meeting wasn't with my parents. And we weren't betrothed. There was no chaos (Japan is almost always notably lacking in the chaos department). And the food wasn't all that great, either.

It was a very, very uncomfortable meal. I had no idea what to say to either Ren or Mori-sensei, both people I like very much, so I said nothing. Ren and Mori-sensei tried to forge casual conversation, but failed. Finally, Mori-sensei got to the point, in one of the most mortifying moments of my existence.

She said, "So, what are your intentions?"

Ren, not missing a beat, replied, "My intentions are pure. Please know I am not playing around. I'm serious about her and will take good care of her."

Holy shit! This is like where the guy meets the girl's dad and asks for her hand in marriage. We're just dating for goodness sake! And then it hit me. Since my folks were thousands of miles away, Mori-sensei had been appointed to be the unofficial go-between in this most unorthodox of o-miais.* Both Ren and Mori-sensei were in the middle of a necessary formality and nothing I would do or say would halt the inevitable.

Now, many years later, we are still friends with Mori-sensei. We exchange new year's cards, and whenever we are in Japan, we drop in for a visit. Still, I will always wonder how she felt about being assigned the task of being our unofficial go-between.



* An o-miai is a formal meeting between two families to determine whether they will proceed with an arranged marriage. In the past, the potential marriage candidates would be meeting for the first time. These days, in the era of the so-called "love marriage" (as opposed to an arranged marriage), the o-miai has taken on a much different feel and, indeed, is usually absent.

Japanese Housewife Handbook: How to Be a Kyoiku Mama

There are two exceedingly important roles in the family that seem to be assigned to every Japanese housewife. The first is manager of family finances and the second is kyoiku mama (or "education mom," which is a totally lame, but linguistically accurate translation of the term). As an independent, working woman, I did not feel any particular need to take on these two vital roles, but they were thrust upon me just the same.

By the end of our honeymoon, I decided that the "holder of the purse string" role was actually pretty vital for the survival of our family. After all, Ren has trouble keeping track of his wallet, literally, not figuratively. The first time he visited me in the US, he dropped his wallet on the airplane. Fortunately, he realized it was missing before we caught our connecting flight, and the wallet which included his passport and various forms of ID was found and returned to us. But there was no cash inside, and there were incriminating traces of barbeque sauce on the outside. On our honeymoon.... Even now, more than ten years later, it's difficult for me to discuss.... Let's just say he fed the fish in Hanauma Bay enough money to sustain them for several generations.

These days, he's only allowed to carry minuscule amounts of cash.

When Ren and I married, Big Sissy was in her second year of junior high school (a.k.a. 8th grade), or just over a year away from her high school entrance exams. Sissy went to an "academic" junior high, so preparations for entrance exams was intense. In fact, the entire school completed the three-year curriculum in two years so the final year could be spent on review and exam prep. The eighth-grade year was spent focusing on studies and preparing for the all-city kendo tournament (for which I was asked to wear an apron, see previous post) held in the early summer of the ninth-grade year. Students participated heavily in the sport of their choice (only one!) for the first two years of junior high school, only to stop completely during the summer vacation of the ninth-grade year to focus on exam prep.

Most kids were already going to cram school by this time. In fact, most had been going to cram school for a long, long time by the time they got to the summer of their ninth-grade year. Not Big Sissy, though. We knew that unless she showed initiative regarding preparation for exams, no amount of money paid to a cram school would do any good. So we waited (and waited) for her to make the first move.

Some parents would view this as extremely risky behavior. After all, how could she possibly know what was best for her? Weren't we sabotaging her chances at getting into the best school by not forcing her to go to cram school? Of course, we knew a few things about our kid that others didn't. First, she was smart enough to get into just about any school she wanted (whether her class performance indicated as much or not). Second, money spent on things she didn't want to do was always wasted money. And third, she'd eventually come around. As far as I can tell, our waiting paid off. She finally decided she wanted to go to cram school the August before her exams the following January and March. This meant we only had to pay for less than 8 months of cram school. It also meant that she was just panicked enough to study hard, putting our money to good use.

Once summer came, however, life became no fun for anyone. For Sissy, regular school was followed by cram school three days a week, and her life began to be filled with one diagnostic practice test after another. It seems like we were going in for student-parent-teacher or parent-teacher conferences once every couple of weeks. Every practice test result came home with a class ranking. Since she went to the best school in our area, we knew that approximately half of the kids in her class would get into the best high school.

Sissy didn't really seem to care too strongly which high school she got into, but since her friends were vying for the best high school, she decided she might as well do the same. And since her "motivation" was external, and not especially strong at that, for the first few months of "serious" study, she was not so serious, and her practice test results reflected this. Just about every test she brought home showed her ranked in the very middle of her class, one or two spots above or below the magic cut-off line. And every meeting with her homeroom teacher went about the same way--"Well, she might get in, but then again, she might not..." You can see why this was a particularly frustrating process for us.

Eventually, Ren and I decided to level with Sissy. "Look," we told her, "Maybe you're not cut out for the best high school. To get in, you have to work a lot harder than you are now. Maybe you should shoot for number two." And like just about every adolescent on the face of the earth, that was all it took for her to defy us and work hard enough to get into the best school. I kid you not, from that day on, every practice test score came back with her ranked in the top five. Top five!

What no one tells you is that when your kid is preparing for high school entrance exams, the whole family is preparing for them. You can hardly tell your test taker to study hard while you run off to the movie or the mall. So, for the entire eight months that Big Sissy got serious about studying, we went nowhere and did nothing. We all watched from a distance as she doodled and fell asleep over her textbooks and fought to get through the material before her. And suddenly, the whole family became acutely aware of Sissy's sleeping and eating habits. After all, if she didn't eat and sleep well, she might get sick, and if she got sick, she would not be able to study. It was no fun for anyone.

The morning of the first exam for her back-up choice, a local private school, arrived, and Sissy woke up sick. She'd fallen asleep under the kotatsu (a small heated table with a blanket over it--everyone knows sleeping under them makes you sick!). The morning would've been comic if it wasn't so tragic. "How could you fall asleep under the kotatsu after all those months of studying?!?" we implored half-angry, half-panicked before sending her off to take the test anyway. She passed.

Then six weeks later, it was time for the real deal, the entrance exam for local public schools. All kids take the same public school test, but they can only choose one school to receive their scores (hence the endless discussions with her teacher about which public school she would shoot for). As planned, Sissy tested for the best school in the region (and fortunately, she wasn't sick the day of the exam).

Two days later, the results were posted on huge pieces of paper taped to the side of the high school's gym. Sissy went alone (though Ba-chan and I sneaked out separately and spied on her) to see if her exam number made the list. Number 583. It was there! She'd done it.

That night, we invited her aunts, uncles and cousins to dinner and celebrated her accomplishment. The next morning, she dressed in her junior high school uniform and we proudly accompanied her to her new school. Where we sat in a gym full of new students and their parents and listened for two hours as each teacher stood up, congratulated them on their achievement, and then proceeded to tell them that life was about to get much more hellish than any entrance-exam hell they could imagine. After that, each and every teacher gave them a homework assignment to do over the summer--homework assignments that generally covered the first third of each of the newly received textbooks they held on their laps, homework assignments that were ludicrously long and insanely detailed in terms of how they were to be executed.

Sitting in that gym, thinking about three more years of exam-like hell literally made me cry. It wasn't over, it was just beginning.