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.