Christmas Creeps Incognito through Santa, back stage

Five-year-olds sang "Silent Night" to me in English and Japanese this morning at a day care's Christmas performance.
In the dark, on the stage, fighting the urge to cough the Santa beard hairs from my throat, my plastic black belt about to give way, I felt my eyes moisten.
The children gripped glowsticks like roman candles and belted out, in a key one octave higher than they could truly manage, this perennial, Bavarian, Christmas classic. It couldn't have been worse.
And yet, strangely disconnected from the "normalcy" of the holiday neurosis I once lived, I wanted to shout out "HO! HO! HO!" and merry christmases with the voice and howl like that of the Grinch on Christmas morning standing over Hooville.
I tilted and waved and clapped like an electronic storefront Santa, but shared an honest moment with "Momo-chan" standing next to me, who in a wink discovered that it was indeed NOT Santa Claus on the platform chair, but her kindergarten English teacher who weighed a considerable amount less.
She smiled warmly, understandingly, and then perhaps sang the most off-key of all with her own holiday epiphany.
In the silence around the earnest singing and only the chords of the song on a piano underneath, I looked out at the parents, grandparents and teachers of the nursery/day care, and saw the faces of people in my own hometown neighborhood, my family, of me at the age of five when I was in a preparatory/day-care. The air was thin and cold, awakening old memories put in storage boxes in the corner attic crawl space of once-upon-Michaels past.
I remembered the curly tail of my monkey costume at a Christmas show for Little Red Riding Hood School getting caught in the bench just like in practice, something I dreaded, and the audience laughing. (I'm not sure what monkeys had to do with Christmas, but there it was.)
I remembered the plastic light sabre my mother couldn't hide very well sticking out of the bag of Christmas presents in the no-longer-existent Northglenn Mall, standing by the fountain, a crowd of people around her, and she nonchalantly and unsuccessfully trying to hide it like a child who's wet her pants in the kitchen right before a meal.
I remember knowing the NORAD Santa tracker along with TV meteorologist Stormy Rottman were full of it in saying Santa was making his way down through North America at nine p.m. so we'd better all get to bed. Somehow, I decided I believed that Santa made his visits in the blink of an eye at midnight EVERYWHERE through the magic of Christmas, and if only my sister and I could stay awake until that magic hour.
My escape from the stage, today, was much the same -- "as leaves before the wild hurricane fly" like in the Clement Moore poem, with my memories fleeing as the music stopped.
I shook hands with a few children as I came off the stage in a hurry to catch an auld lang syne or two in the back room of the gym where apparently my reindeer were waiting. But a small crowd of more children were forming, hoping Santa would stay in their memories just a little bit longer, today.
A teacher shuffled them aside, and in a flash, the Christmas was gone.

Reinvention

Japanese are very adept at absorbing a foreign concept and making it uniquely their own. They are so good at this that sometimes even the original source is forgotten and folks believe that it was always Japanese in the first place.
Take baseball. While, yes, Japanese do understand it wasn't invented in Japan, the product out there, detail-oriented and overly practiced creating such perfectionist hitters as say, Ichiro Suzuki (arguably the greatest batting machine ever. period), certainly has a uniquely Japanese imprint. Strikes are called before balls, unlike the States. Ramen is offered for sale in the stands during games. Players bow to the field like they would a sumo doyo. (See "Mr. Baseball" with Tom Selleck for other more common practices, although often overly stereotyped in the movie.)
Take "Auld Lang Syne." (You know, the nostalgia-inducing Scottish song we sing at New Year's). In Japan, the melody was adopted with new lyrics, albeit nostalgic old days doing homework dutifully via light of fireflies to do honor to one's family and country, and became "Hotaru no Hikari" (literally, "Firefly's Light").
The American Civil War Union anthem, "Battle Hymn of the Republic" has become a bright, friend-making song sung at kindergartens here.
I have been met so often with open incredulity in explaining these songs' true origins that I almost begin to wonder whether they weren't actually originated here in the first place.
Take rock-and-roll. No, don't. Not here in Japan. I don't think they ever got it, completely. The whole complete rebellion thing ends when the 20something gives up the purple hair for the company job. Boy-band after girl-band after boy-band gets cranked out like pornography in unoriginal, sappy succession to no outstanding lasting musical advancement or fair.
Sometimes, I've noticed, in an attempt to take a foreign concept and to force it into a new and creative Japanese product, it fails terribly. I have had a shaving cream that doubles as a face wash which means either I'm planing the contours of my face painfully through soap bubbles or washing stinging menthol out of my eyes.
This last product, I must admit, was made by Gillette (owned by the Procter & Gamble Co., main office Ohio) although it may have been made for the Japanese market.
That's another thing that adds to the confusion of trying too hard, re-applying foreign concepts indiscriminantly: foreign companies are just as eager to attempt the smorgasborg mentality. Gillette is one, Coca-cola is another. They are one of the largest drink marketers in Japan, mostly of a variety of bottled teas and canned coffees sold via vending machines. Their major coffee brand is "Georgia" which is where, I have to tell my Japanese friends who think it is a Japanese product with a cool name, the home of Coca-Cola is: Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Other than deflating vague nationalist product connection here locally for my own sick pleasure, I find this re-application misguided and occasionally plagiaristic and, really, offensive. Mostly, the original meaning and history is jettisoned for a short-lived, sexy or worse, cutesy, product endorsement pitched and wasted in a minute and limited market, but enormously popular for 15 seconds. (I say "15 seconds" because that is often the lenth of the typical TV ad, unlike 30 in the States, as opposed to Andy Warhol's "15 minutes" of fame.) One of my favorite Gipsy Kings songs was used for the background of a beer commercial and ever-etched in the minds of Japanese as such. In fact, if your band's tune is lucky enough to make it to the product endorsement level, you've made the big time, but only briefly. Many Japanese remember the commercial better than the original. Hardly anyone, in fact no one I've met here, knows who the Gipsy Kings are.
Also, the strange popularity of cars with bizarre names in English completely unconnected to their real meaning baffles me. I used to drive a "Parsley." One could see the "Today" driving up and down the road alongside, perhaps appropriately, with the "with." The large mini-van "Voxy" may have been an attempt at "Boxy," and the "Cube" an expression of the box-like design of a smaller car. But, the "Noah" (another mini-van) doesn't carry any animals and hardly resembles an ark. My wife used to drive a flat, pistacchio-green "Pao" which is the onomatopoeia of a trumpeting elephant.
Anyway ...
I think there is hope, though. I heard "Kimigayo" -- once Japan's oft-protested yet nationalist-defended, crusty "unofficial" official national anthem -- performed stunningly by a single artist at a Japanese national soccer friendly. It was breathtaking, fresh, young and powerful. Maybe the younger generation is trying to find a new identity, something based in something they know, something they recognize and take pride in, and re-invented with new feeling. Now, that could take the world by storm.

Aging and the Contemplation of the "In-Between"

I used to take advantage of every in-between moment ... for example, while in elementary school, during math, I would finish the English homework so I wouldn't have to take anything home. I'd read the newspaper and do the crossword while eating breakfast or on the john.
I'd use the Internet while eating lunch and be on the phone while finishing a school paper on the computer at the same time (while maybe finishing the crossword, listening to music with headphones).
I wasn't diagnosed hyper or "lacked focus" or did drugs. My head just felt like it was "on" all the time. It was like a 3-D clockwork dynamo of inner-connected rings spinning and whirring, usually more intently in the time "between" I was supposed to be here or there.
It could have been my sugar intake.
But anyway, I felt that way, and I don't any more. Rarely does anything I experience these days inundate all my inner and physical senses like that now.
Before, I felt like I was on the verge of epipheny.
Now, I'm happy if the taped American football game on satellite turns out to be interesting.
I don't want to be too cliche to say it's just my age, but if it is, perhaps, I shouldn't be too afraid of age.
Japanese women, for example, live the longest on the average than anywhere else in the world. Japanese men consistently rank in the top three for longevity, often number one. I think this last year, Japanese men's average lifespan was 79 or 80 years.
While the number of senior citizens increases every year here faster than the general population growth, I've witnessed a decent and positive treatment of the elderly for the most part.
Many Japanese still care for their aging parents or grandparents at home, but some submit to care in day centers which wash and bathe and even play with those in their care, often doing crafts or exercise.
Not that that doesn't happen in the States, but with the same devotion to duty or appreciation.
My father was recently hospitalized after surgery and spent some time in a senior rehabilitative home that was afforded by his insurance, and I was appalled at his treatment, based on what he said. Overcrowding, patients of advanced dementia sharing space with simple physical rehabilitation patients, apathetic staff attention, billing errors. Quality and devotion of payment seemed entirely based on whether your check had cleared. I couldn't imagine the intensity of care from the staff would increase by the amount you paid, only the increased obligation to smile by management or accounting if perhaps they came across you.
Yet, while I have this general sense that growing old in Japan may have its benefits of appreciation, I wonder if I have earned it.
Now, I am no saint in this, because as my father endured his recovery from serious surgery I remained in Japan and only kept in contact by phone or through contact with my siblings or mother. I demonstrated no devotion by flying home to visit, to care for my father, to assist my siblings and family. I had the excuse of living abroad and having a family of my own to care for, I couldn't be expected to fly in and do ... what? in a short visit.
But, as the edge of age and waning energy creeps into my lone in-betweens before I go to bed at night, I wonder if my children will be there for me when I am older, whether living here in Japan will make me feel any closer to the golden epipheny we come to dream in facing our passing.
Or will I have wasted my energy on myself all these years instead of on those around me.

Neighborhood Bulletin

A clipboard of community related events, evacuation procedures, police advisories and seasonal warnings and updates rotates around our neighborhood in the form of what is called the "kairanban" 回覧板. Although often mundane, sometimes I find some misguided gems.

Here is a sample:

"Watch out for all unregistered illegal foreigners and report them to police."
After reading this on the police advisory sheet in the neighborhood bulletin, I wondered if my neighbors would be asking to see my passport. A crude caricature of a skulking man and woman appeared below the heading.

Bike theft is a common crime. Often bikes are stolen by people trying to get home from the bar district near the station. Today's police bulletin suggested not one but two bike locks -- one for each wheel. I see abandoned bikes dumped below the highway next to a car repair garage. Stacks of these without registration are dumped, recycled, or left to rot around town.

Catalog for hosiery and support underclothing for older citizens. Last time I checked, there was a community sign up sheet for products. Now who, I thought, would want everyone on the block to know you were buying a man-girdle?

A flower planting NPO calls for area volunteers to help with a seasonal planting of a large bed near the bypass intersection near where we live. While noble, it's on Sunday about the time my children get up. Not this year, thanks. Usually, retired senior citizens make up the green-thumbed ranks.

Crimes against senior citizens are increasing. Usually phone scams or bogus investments ply hundreds if not thousands of dollars from unsuspecting people. Today's bulletin warns of people, mail or phone calls claiming to represent the phone company demanding lump sum payments via bank transfer. It surprises me how many folks don't even question such attempted larceny.

Singing Trucks

When I first came to Japan, I would hear the sounds of cheery, child-like music coming from a canned speaker on a moving truck (you could hear it shifting and revving blocks away) on certain mornings. I thought it was the ice cream truck.

I was utterly excited because, however improbable it might be, I thought I had discovered something to rescue me from the mire of culture shock I was in at the time.

I imagined the lost ice cream truck of youth, playing the repetitive "ding-a-ling-a-long" song over and over only in Japanese, calling neighborhood children to beg change from their parents to buy an icee, popsicle, or ice cream sandwich.

It's funny how the mind can play tricks on you.

Oh so it was one Saturday, I sought out this magical ice cream truck in my neighborhood.

What I found was a large, blue garbage truck, picking up trash, playing -- I learned later -- a children's song. In Japan, I was told, the point of the song was NOT to attract children to come buy ice cream, or even to come help the sanitation workers lift bags onto the truck. No, the purpose was to ADD to the beauty of the environment, perhaps to lighten the aromatic necessity of the truck, by playing a bright children's song. (The song, I might add, varies from area to area. The trucks in our city play "Red Dragonfly" 赤とんぼ.)

Needless to say, I was heartbroken and dissatisfied, but amused, daresay speechless. It almost breaks your hunger for ice cream, such disappointment so far from home. I don't think I cried.

Now, in my 13th year in Japan, I revel in the quaintness of the sound. It also let's you know, this song, that the truck is in the neighborhood and you better move if you want to get your garbage out in time.

Takijiri Shrine - the Edge of the Netherworld

I live near a World Heritage site that is an ancient pilgrimage route winding through the Land of Kumano, in Japan.

There are only two WH sites in the world that are pilgrimage routes (the other is in Santiago, Spain).

This one is special for its continued spiritual significance for Japanese, and now for many westerners too, even today.

It is a land separated from what many know as "Japan" -- such as Tokyo, manga, bushido, geisha and sumo -- but was and is a place that thousands sought and worshipped to relieve themselves of earthly troubles and sin of physical life.

One of its major starting points is Takijiri Oji (or Shrine), pictured above, where folks can cross the "edge" of the spiritual world just like former emperors for Kyoto a thousand years ago, or commoners and others from all walks of life later.

In fact the name of this land, "Kumano," meant "edge," and this shrine was their last stop before a hard journey wound up and into the land of the deities.

Behind the shrine, a path ascends sharply up into the mountains and toward the sacred "San Zan," or three sacred grand shrines: Hongu Taisha, Hayatama Jinja and Nachi Taisha.

I haven't really hiked this trail since before I got married. My wife (fiancee at the time) and I walked it four days from Hongu to this place, Takijiri, just after a typhoon had come through during the spring holiday. Folks usually go the other way, with Hongu the goal, but the typhoon had changed our plans.

We camped in a valley after I misjudged the distance one evening, and were harassed by animals (or spirits) that night, ran out of food another, but still made it back to Takijiri. I knew I would marry my wife that day after sharing the route. She stuck with me after my navigational mistakes. And I remember this great, big smile she had when we got down off the mountain, like something had awakened in her.

So, a couple weeks ago, we took a couple of our kids to Takijiri, again. Because I want to hike this trail with them some day, too. It's a beautiful spot in a world that is slowly being overrun by electric wire and concrete, crude oil spills and the onslaught of apartment housing and oversized vehicles.

It still seems to be a purifying place, deep, spooky and reverential.

I hope you all come and see it, too.

Let me know if you need a guide.

http://www.tb-kumano.jp/en/index.html

The Local Place

The local temple in our area is a perfect place to walk with the kids and get out of the house before dinner.
It's called "Tou-kou-ji" 東光寺 and contains the kanji characters for "east," "light" or "shine" or "brightness" and
"temple."
It has a fairly steep entranceway for cars that must be at a 45-degree angle. We often go up the spirally back road, also a bit steep but safer for me to drag a wagon or push a tricycle up.
This temple on the night of the New Year will ring its bell 108 times for each of the 108 temptations of man. Locals can also come at midnight and ring it and pray for a healthy and prosperous New Year, which my son and I did last year.
A graveyard also sits atop the hill, but more natural and functional and acceptable than a plotted funeral land back in the States.
Cherry blossoms up the steep grade are awesome as they rain soft, pink petals on your head as you work your way around.

Where is Zimbabwe?

Dancer-musicians from Zimbabwe came to my son's elementary school last month.
It was the start of a 40-day, cross-cultural tour for them in Japan.
We were lucky that our local international non-profit supported their visit.
Parents were also invited to watch the school performance in the old gym of the school, so my wife and I went and took our youngest daughter.
Two men, both performers and coordinator-teachers for their group, and four boys, aged 7 to 15, danced and sang traditional songs and played traditional instruments particular of their country.
The walls of the gym were covered with pictures and explanations about the country, the lives of the youth who had come so far to Japan.
While their multi-rhythmic performance was delightful and exciting, I was more impressed that one of their main languages is English. It is due to the unfortunate imperialistic history of Great Britain in its attempt to enslave and rob the continent. Cecil John Rhodes made a fortune in diamond-mining and even renamed a great swath of land in southern Africa, "Rhodesia." Only within recent history have the Zimbabweans reclaimed their full independence and re-named their country.
But any recipient of the "Rhodes Scholarship" today would probably not be so eager to impress the very source of their grant came long ago from blood diamonds and slavery.
Certainly, the current leader in Zimbabwe, Mugabe, is no better a despot.
However, as an English teacher in Japan, I thought it was extraordinarily poignant that a people from an even more different and juxtaposed culture to Japan than the United States spoke English. That the language is still a major tool for understanding and traveling about the world.
That the homogenous culture of the Japanese, who have spent more than anyone in Asia to learn English, but who lag consistently behind other more aggressive Asia countries in mastering or scoring high on TESOL or TOEIC tests, could try a little harder in stepping out of the "Japanese mind" box and embrace a foreign language that just might broaden their global acceptance and advance their communication of ideas.
It's frustrating because my children speak English and Japanese. My relatives in America speak to them openly and encourage them to embrace challenges. When we visit the States, they are exposed to people, friends, from a multitude of races and cultural backgrounds.
In Japan, my son is often asked to "say something in English" like it is a card trick, some bit of magic that they themselves cannot do. English is taught in schools by teachers who often have no background in speaking it, who do not wish to teach it, and have never traveled abroad. Their classrooms are like painful seiges of grammar patterns and awkward sounding greetings where memorized phrases are life buoys, and screwball jokes such as "I am a pen" perpetuate.
I like many things about the Japanese, but this cultural flaw is frustrating.
So, I was happy to hear the Zimbabweans speak, glad my son could understand, me and wife, also. I wonder if it was too much to hope that my son realizes he has something special inside him that is not magic but essential to learning and understanding the greater world, something to embrace, not to hide from and make jokes about.
The way many students stood up to dance with the young Zimbabwe men in traditional dress, maybe they sort of get it too.

Wampaku Day Care Gets Their Goats

My two-year-old came home the other day from day care and told us she played with "Yuki," which we took to mean she had a new friend in another class.
Turns out Yuki is one of two goats (or "yagi") Wampaku Hoikusho (Day Care/Nursery School) has purchased with the intention of making cheese and using goat's milk at some point next year.
They have two females, Yuki (with horns) and Chi-chan.
Millie is fascinated by them and at a "parents day" observation day last Saturday, we got to see the kids cavorting with the two leashed "mehh-mehhs" (goats go "meeh-mehh" here in Japan.)
Millie chased (and mushed, by accident, we think) bugs and ate many, many apricots (called "biwa"). Sometimes, she would put an unpeeled one in her mouth, and chew the fruit out of it until nothing was left but the skin and the pit.
The children in Millie's class also pricked plums with large toothpicks to be made into juice. Parents helped. After removing the "navel", the point where it was attached to the tree, we were directed just to stick it many times, and then put it into a glass jar. The teacher added a couple kilograms of sugar, and when it was full with plums, she twisted the cap shut to be left out to make the juice.
(I might add here that if brandy or white liquor or other alcohol was added, we could make a fine fermented drink!)

Going to School -- Finding the Inner "Wampaku"

It is a 10-minute walk to my son's elementary school.
To get there, we have to walk through a tunnel under a thoroughfare, walk around a community Buddhist temple, round through a block of aging houses with few children finally winding up at the hill facing the school.
An older lady living along this narrow paved road bordered by sour, grated ditches, greeted my daughter and I once with a snuffing, white pug named after a famous "talent" who sounded to me like a heavy-smoking lounge singer. My daughter gave it a cautious pet.
There is the beer machine where I purchase cans of Asahi Dry when we have none in the house. It is illegal for anyone under 20 to buy beer in Japan, but certainly a few high school kids have tried after dark, before the machine shuts down at 11 p.m. The machine sits out front of a local shop with no signage mashed in-between houses. From outside I see vegetables, work clothing, candy and school notebooks.
There is an old park nearby with rickety iron playground equipment, the kind they have taken out of most school grounds back home for fear of likely lawsuits. There is also a gate　ball ground -- a game similar to croquet on a dirt-field. It is a game I've only seen seniors play. No one is here today though.
Another 400 meters would put us at a rock yard next to the seaside, heavy trucks and fishermen only.
My daughter's day care / preparatory is called Wampaku Hoikushoわんぱく保育所. "Wampaku" refers to a wild, free-spirited child -- one who may be a curtain-climber inside, but a lover of dirt and bugs and adventure outside. My daughter is this. It might be the smell of cedar floors, the nature walks to "Cat Mansion in the Woods" or "Behind Mountain" up through bamboo orchards and plum trees, and crocodile-belly-crawl calisthenics (even the infants do this) have all awakened her inner "wampaku."
She is alive and curious and wild as a miniature goddess Diana, picking roley-poleys, running from spiders, collecting acorns and sticks for "nature projects", quarreling and cavorting with her friends.
"Kaito cried today wah wahhh" she tells me in Japanese. "His poop is stinky." What about Millie's poop? I ask her. "Millie's poop is stinky." We laugh.

今日はかいとくん泣いてったいぃ～ん. かいとのうんちくさい！
ミリーちゃんは？
ミリーのうんちくさい。

Recently, the days are warm and getting longer, and picking her up we find her climbing wooden playground equipment at the school that is taller than me. My mother would have a fit for a two-year-old to be up so high. Teachers stand nearby chatting. All the children are encouraged to pursue their inner "wampaku."
She seems me and comes running, barefoot, through the mud. Her classroom teacher wipes her feet. She gives me a hug. We grab her bag. She puts on her shoes as we leave the building.
"Where's Mama?" Again, in Japanese. She's home, I answer in English, with your brother and sister. "Papa's car" she says in English as we get in my tiny, white Suzuki.
As we drive past a freshly planted rice field, I can hear the frogs singing.
I clutch my inner wampaku.

Mother's Day -- A Family Outing

It's Mother's Day, today, and my holiday.
Not so for a group of junior high school kids belonging to some club -- perhaps tennis, perhaps track and field, perhaps ping pong, could be any -- who are out running alongside the road.
We pack up our three kids in our family car and head to Heisogen Park 平草原公園 in Shirahama Town. Heisogen has open space, lovely flowers, a fitness/walking path, and today, lots of kindergarten children. Two schools have their annual spring school trip　遠足 or ensoku. One is a Christian kindergarten called Kinan Youchien 紀南幼稚園, and the other is a Buddhist Kindergarten called Uenoyama Youchien　上ノ山幼稚園.　Kinan kindergarten is operated through the local Catholic Church, who has a fairly strong presence in Japan despite not having converted a great number people.
I have found that most Japanese consider themselves both Shinto (a sort of druidic or animistic native belief that god is manifested in nature, that there are many local gods worshipped in every town, village, and house) and Buddhist -- the latter brought through China and Korea to Japan. The two, instead of having warred with one another, blended it seems, and for a long time, co-existed -- shrine alongside temple -- peacefully up to the Meiji Restoration.
Today, the parents have probably played a couple games with their respective kindergarten staffs and children. They have spread their picnic sheets in groups in the shade about the park.
The children have played in the grass, like mine did, chasing bugs, beetles, roley-poleys, bees and a kind of stinging caterpillar called 毛虫 or kemushi.
My son plays soccer with me. My two-year-old daughter chases bugs, collects sticks and inedible berries. We scare small, trap spiders hiding in the bushes.
Noone seems to be celebrating Mother's Day, like we are. Actually, we are just celebrating our time together. And maybe, that's what everyone is doing, not following the auspices of a greeting card/florist holiday.
There are thousands of roses on display in a large garden. We walk among many different colors and sizes. We take a picture, my wife holding the baby, the other two posing but really anxious to play in the dirt, to climb wooden outdoor obstacle course equipment, to slipslide into the mental memorybook of our once and happy time together.

Children's Day

Today, May 5, is Kodomo no Hi こどもの日, or "Children's Day", formerly "Boys Day."
It is the last of a three-day holiday known in Japan as "Golden Week."
While most of the folks from Osaka and Wakayama City clog the roads and byways to get to the nextdoor beach resort town of Shirahama, we plan to visit my wife's mother (Grandma, or "Bah-ba" to the kids) and avoid the crowds.
Often, Japanese people display a kabuto かぶと, or decorated helmet for their boy children.
Also, long, colorful streaming carp banners, koi nobori こいのぼり, literally "climbing carp" are flown from a pole signifying a wish for long healthy life for all the children in the family, although it used to be just for boys.
We have a small helmet I received from my studens many years ago even before I was married. It would probably fit the head of a cat or chihuahua!
But, in place of the banners, we have a single, silk poster banner, ornately painted in blue, red, and gold, also a gift from students, that we hang on the wall.
Sometimes children receive gifts on this day, although not like Christmas. My son got a new bicycle as he finally learned to ride a couple months ago. And my daughter scored accessories for her Popo-chan dolls.
We'll probably eat some traditional kashiwamochi 柏餅, a kind of cake with mashed sweet bean paste called adzuki wrapped in a soft, white rice cake layer, all enveloped in a kind of oak leaf, according to Japan at a Glance, Kodansha International Publishing.
I'm holding out for pizza from Old Chicago's! (I kid you not. We have delivery here!)

Golden Week "Aisatsu"

My name is Mike and I live in between worlds.
No, I'm not a kook or a time traveler ... well, not exactly. But, I do live in a rural city in Japan, near a World Heritage ancient pilgrimage route, near or between many cultural paradoxes -- a perfect place for an observer, an escapist, a daydreamer.
My children are American and Japanese nationals. We live in my wife's hometown.
I am renting a house. I'm 41. I just bought my first new car.
My neighborhood includes new and old houses, swallows, sparrows and bush warblers, cats, and many older people. Only a handful of children still remain, and they never do for long.
My son just started first grade. His school is a 10-minute walk. There are 29 kids in his class, and only one first grade class in the school.
My daughter is two and goes to WAMPAKU (literally, "wild child") HOIKUSHO where she collects acorns, twigs and flowers, searches for spiders and butterflies, and runs amock barefooted in the mud and across hardwood school floors.
It is Golden Week, a series of holidays in early May, where most of Japan is on the move and clogging the roads, but we are off today to buy tomatoes and flowers to plant, to grow something, to be together.