Emails from Kirsten and Naoto
December 2004

Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 01:14:39 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Construction and Christmas Cake

Dear Friends and Family

So the bad news is that Naoto has to go to Ottawa again for a month and a week. He'll take off on the 13th for 10 days (back by Christmas, but not my birthday) and then he's going for a month again in January or February.

Whine whine whine whine.

Okay, now that's over.

Maika's sitting up now. She fell down for a few days, cracking her skull on various hard surfaces. Now she's into these cool gymnastic twists in midair so that she always lands face down on her hands (kind of like a cat).

Mia is loving the whole Christmas thing. She "decorated" our tiny tree with all the hand-sewn ornaments I got from my grandmother. She is also really paying attention to numbers because of a daily chocolate advent calendar.

Construction

So the whole image of a construction worker in the U.S. is a big, lunk of a brawny man who whistles at women as they pass by and who sport 5 o clock shadows, right? All gristly and lumbery. Male. Macho. etc. etc.

Imagine then, coming daily upon construction workers in busy, growing, rebuilding Tokyo who not only have miniature, lavendar backhoes, but who also wear pink and purple construction uniforms. Not to mention the guy I saw today doing roadwork with a navy jacket with roses on it.

It's so hard not to laugh.

There are also old, toothless guys at every construction project whose sole purpose is to help pedestrians pass. I kid you not. Sometimes there are two; one for each side of a detour. When they see me, they get a little nervous, but after their overly large gesturing towards the clearly marked path, I usually am able to follow the safe route.

They always look so pleased and relieved when I get it right.

Christmas Cake

So, in past emails I have described the KFC and overly-decorated dry cake frenzy that is Christmas in Japan. (see the archive website my father has up at http://www.lindamax.com/emails/knemails.html if you want to see past December emails) Now that I actually have to stay in Japan for Christmas this year, I had to have a little planning meeting with Baba about what we are going to do this year.

I absolutely outlawed KFC. We are going to a kid-friendly restaurant for a honest-to-god Western-style ham dinner near Shinjuku on the 24th. There are Christmas lights there to walk around in.

But I asked her advice on the Christmas Cake thing. I have only lived here just under a year now, and haven't had my usual mobility to try every patisserie in Higashimurayama yet.

So apparently, she's taken this Christmas Cake thing fairly seriously. She's appeared, unannounced, two nights this past week with a delectable selection of chocolate mousse, strawberry cream, pistachio-chocolate ganache, and other cakes types from different patisseries. She wants me to taste test them. And goodness me, Japanese cakes in their aesthetic and taste perfection are difficult to pass up.

Either she is seriously researching area patisseries, or she is using this as an excuse to buy Mia cake. I suspect it is the latter.

love and light,
kirsten

Click on my smile to make me bigger, then...
..take a stroll through THE MOSSY GLEN the fiction page of K. Bird Lincoln at
http://www.geocities.com/kblincoln/mossyglen.html

Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:21:37 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Marriage problems

Dear Friends and Family

Naoto's off to Canada for 10 days of training. He'll be back for Christmas, and then he'll take off for a month again of training.

Yuck.

So I am single parenting again here in Higashimurayama. Your day takes on a whole new look when you only talk to a 3 year old the whole day. ("oooh, ducks!" "I'll read you a book if you go to the bathroom now" "no, you can't sit on your sister")

The bright point of this week is that discipline issues are easy because Mia's old enough to understand about Santa Claus. Yes, all I have to do is start humming the tune to "you better not shout.." and she's an instant angel.

God I love advent.

Although I am really having a hard time with Japan's representation of Christmas and Santa Claus. "no, Mia, Santa will still come if we don't eat KFC." "no, Mia, he won't bake us a christmas cake on Christmas morning." And "no, Mia, Santa doesn't wear traditional hakama and obi"

Marriage problems

So there's a series of articles at the Japan Times (english) about "sexless marriages" here in Japan.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20041212x1.htm

Among the whole "oh no, our divorce rate is going up" and "morality in a non-christian society" hoopla is some interesting statistics about what "marriage" is in Japan.

Yes, in a non-Christian country, you tend to get more people admitting (notice I say "admitting") to extra marital affairs, sex club visits, etc. etc. It was/is terribly hard for me, raised Christian and influenced by Christian-morality U.S. culture, not to judge men in Japan by 'sinning' standards.

Me and many other foreign wives have terrible times with the whole sex industry, and the part it plays in business negotiations here in Japan.

That aside, though, what I find interesting about Japan right now is not only do you find the tension of a younger generation of women suddenly becoming financially self-supportive, but you also get the whole western movie version of romantic marriage influencing a country where marriage was/is more of a financial arrangement then a romantic one.

The generation gap here is so highly visible and divided between pre-economic bubble couples (where husband has no life outside the company) and couples in their 20s and 30s (who are heavily influenced by the Western notion of marriage)

This leads to a soaring divorce rate, and a delayed marriage rate among young women here. These things happen in the States too, but not as concentrated as here in Japan.

No matter what pundits or governments may say, Japan's company culture is still so anti-marriage and anti-family that it's a wonder this country has any babies at all, let alone for people to be surprised that Japan is one of the first developed nations that will begin a population decrease in the next decade.

It's anti-marriage and anti-family because the company culture insists on unpaid overtime, and if not overtime, then it insists on men going out drinking with eachother after hours.

If you don't go out and drink, not only will people talk, but you will never never be promoted. That's when the real deals happen.

Of the two Japanese women here I am friendly with, neither of them gets help with household duties or childcare except FOR A FEW HOURS ON SUNDAY. (and one of them says her husband uses his sunday off to play video games and won't help anyway.)

Lord, can you imagine? Having the sole care of your house and children 24/7, 365 days a year?

I am stressed out and unhappy after only 2 days of it!

Japan shouldn't be studying marriages. They should be studying the effects of a generation of single mothers on their children. Because to all intents and purposes that's what it is.

By the way, you will learn in the article that Japan has the least amount of sex of surveyed countries. Which country topped the chart?

Not the U.S......

FRANCE!

I guess there's a reason for the reputation after all. (ha ha Lydie)

love and light,
Kirsten

Click on picture to enlarge.

Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 20:46:16 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Parks and Pushy Newspapermen

Dear Friends and Family:

Maika is officially lactose tolerant. I had been putting off trying milk products because a friend of mine (hi sarah) with an infant just had a yoghurt incident. But she's okay.

Naoto's still in Canada, but should be coming back in four days.

Don't you love walking out of your house on a beautiful, crisp, sunny autumn day with your two little children to take a walk, and then have a young man with his hair slicked back like duck wings drive up in a minivan, whip himself out of his trousers and take a piss right in front of you?

I swear, you would think he'd be ashamed. Especially with me looking straight at him and shaking my head and making disapproving noises.

I wish Japan's culture included the "go do your business inside" part. "But sometimes you just gotta go!" other Japanese men have told me. All I have to say is that you don't see young women squatting by the side of the road. There's a lesson to be learned there.

I also saw two pizza delivery boys on their zippy motorbikes dressed as santa. That made it better.

Parks

So there's this park two stops down from Higashimurayama that we go to sometimes just for a change of pace.

The cool thing is that extremely random things tend to happen in this park.

A few weeks ago I went there and suddenly human torsos shaped in wood, plaster, and garbage dotted the park. (okay, it was a local art university's exhibition- but still.)

Today I went there and there were two middle-aged ladies playing gigantic alpen horns. (why they were playing alpine horns in the middle of the kanto plain is beyond me. I wouldn't be surprised to see alpine horns being played by Japanese in like, Nagano, or Yamagata (places with actual mountains) because that is sooooooo a Japanese thing to do, but in Tokyo?).

I also love going there on Sundays when its "poppa day". The one day when Japanese fathers take their children out to play. It is interesting seeing the variety. You have your "stand around in sweats smoking as you watch your children" type dads. You also got your "actually down in the dirt playing with the children dads" and then the "bodily dragged to the park by wife" dads who often have video games or phones attached to their face. (oh yeah, that's another rant entirely, sorry)

Pushy Newspapermen

I hate salesmen. They always come to the house when the girls are sleeping and ring the doorbell and knock. But I hate the newspaper men the most.

You'd think they could see the whole "lincoln" on the nameplate and not bother. But oh no, they gotta do their schtick. Then you would think opening the door to my face would make them give up- nope, they still patter on about newspapers.

Ha! Like I could actually read a newspaper? Let alone the whole "why pay for news in print when I can read it all online?" issue.

But they still come, every week without fail, one of the many dueling Tokyo newspaper guys will come here.

I don't know how they make money though, because often the newspaper man will give out detergent, amusement park tickets, etc etc to customers as "treats." My mother in law often has stuff she got from the newspaper man.

Naoto says some newspapermen are borderline yakuza wannabes (chinpira) and to be careful. I did have one guy actually put his foot in the door and try to come in once, I got a little aggressive with that one.

Even speaking entirely in English and faking "no japanese" doesn't work. The next day another guy from the same newspaper came over and said in fluent English "doesn't any Japanese person live here besides you?" Whoops, caught me on that one.

The sneakiest or dumbest one was the guy who came and put an actual newspaper in my door. I was surprised, but I went and got it anyway. Then ten minutes later...ding dong knock knock knock.

I go to the door (expecting a package darn it) and the guy says "yomiuri newspaper collection" or something like that. I look at him blankly and say "what?" He says "I am the newspaper man." I say "no thank you" and start to shut the door. He quickly tries to put a foot in and says "Aren't you Imada?"

Let me ask you dear readers, do I LOOK like an Imada? (the Imadas are actually are newly moved in next door neighbors, I think)

I say "no" and then say angrily "can't you read the nameplate."

The guy blinks and says "there's no nameplate."

oops, my bad. must have blown away in the last hurricane.

I felt stupid so I said, "sorry, we're Suzukis" and closed the door on the confused (or trying to be sneaky) salesman.

I made Naoto buy me a "no salesman" sign in Japanese and stick it to our door.

The very next day, ding dong knock knock knock, "newspaper!"

love and light,
kirsten

Click me make me bigger.

Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 03:18:40 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Happy Holidays

Dear Friends and Family

The big Japanese holiday of New Year's is yet to come so I don't feel this is late (ahem.)

On Christmas Eve, we went into Shinjuku, walked in the lights amidst crowds of young, Japanese lovers, laughed at the long lines of fathers outside KFC's and had smoked ham with cranberry sauce. (we ate our christmas cake the night before) It was truly not as bad a Japanese Christmas as I thought it might be.

I hope the rest of you had/are having wonderful Winter Holidays.

Happy Holidays to all of you who read these emails. I wish you blessings, love, and peace in 2005.

Love and Light,
kirsten

click image to enlarge

Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 15:02:16 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Christmas photos from Kirsten and Naoto

Dear Friends and Family

Here's a link to recent photos of my family from Christmas. Happy Holidays!

kirsten

http://community.webshots.com/user/kblincolnsuzuki
(click on the December 2004 album)

===== Take a stroll through THE MOSSY GLEN the fiction page of K. Bird Lincoln at
http://www.geocities.com/kblincoln/mossyglen.html

More emails from Kirsten & Naoto