Emails from Kirsten and Naoto
February 2004

Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2004 21:12:29 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Garbage- again and Setsubun

Dear Friends and Family

So Naoto is gone to Canada, and the apartment echoing resounds with silence. (of course it usually resounds silently at this time 'cause he is at work and Mia is sleeping- but that's beside the point).

He was all excited because his airplane ticket (air canada) read "b" class- which he thought was business. He looked up all the amenities online with Air Canada and looked forward to his first transpacific flight without complaining wife and crying daughter in years.

He got to the airport and went right up to the business class check in. There he was told he was actually in economy class. Poor Naoto! He said he was very embarrassed.

Garbage- again

I know I've talked about garbage before, but now as a housewife it is a topic nearer and dearer to my heart.

So I guess I had it easy in Togane for the past two years. It turns out that just separating the cans from the rest of the garbage was cake.

In Higashimurayama, it ain't that easy. You have; burnable garbage, non-burnable garbage, plastic bottles, glass, recyclable metal, and milk cartons. (of course if you want to throw away stuff like large appliances, cardboard boxes, or recycle paper- that's a totally different story.)

All six of these things are picked up at DIFFERENT times during the week. Depending on your neighborhood within Higashimurayama, some stuff is picked up on different days. Needless to say I have a calendar marked with all these different pickups because it is crazily complicated.

This made me realize why there are so few public trash cans along the street, in stores, or in parks. How are you going to deal with having to put 6 different trashcans out each time you want to provide a place to throw out garbage for the public? I am surprised Tokyo isn't more polluted than it is.

I mean, can you imagine parks without garbage cans in the U.S.? Or even street corner garbage cans? It would be a national pigsty. I just can't imagine what most Japanese people do with all their cans, wrappers, and bottles. Am I the only one who finds it inconvenient to be always stuffing goopy wrappers into one's pocket?

Also I have discovered that the non-burnable garbage turns out to be twice as much as the burnable garbage in our household. It makes me shudder to think about where all that plastic and styrofoam is going! Japan isn't that big a country!

Do you think the U.S. is so complacent about garbage because we still have lots of places to put it? I wonder....

Setsubun

Setsubun is a holiday (lunar calendar) in Japan where (as far as this ethnographer can tell) people throw beans in order to scare off demons.

(it makes for messy houses)

http://www.embjapan.dk/Spotlight2/Setsubun.htm It makes just about as much sense as jack 0 lanterns from Japan's perspective, I believe.

Anyway, Mia and I went to the local children's center and did some festive activities such as greenlight/redlight and run away from the demon. (actually I ran away because Mia was so terrified she buried her face in my neck and wouldn't let me put her down)

When she saw the giant bear and dog, she finally let me put her down. (picture attached) Everyone but Mia and another kid ran outside later and threw beans at some counselors dressed in demon costumes. Mia preferred to stay inside and play with a stuffed dog. Not the bravest, my girl.

love and light,
Kirsten

Click on th bear to enlarge

Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 00:36:13 -0800 (PST)
Subject: It's been a while and Feeling Fractured

Dear Friends and Family

So it has almost been 2 weeks since Naoto left for Canada. It feels much longer.

Today I had my first crisis; Mia went poopy before she actually made it to the potty at the same time my Mother (who is visiting for 2 weeks) dislocated her toe and called for help.

Yep, ain't family grand?

I went to the children's center today to get Mia weighed and measured, but she was having none of that. Despite watching 3 other, smaller children get weighed, she wouldn't even go near the apparatus without tears and trauma.

After a while, I just gave up. I guess it isn't really important to know her height in centimeters and her weight in kilograms anyway! I wouldn't understand it even if I could weigh her, being a backwards American still using pounds and inches.

It's been a while

While my five years hasn't been continuous, I do believe that it qualifies me for "experienced" status as an ex-pat in Japan. It means I speak the language, can ride subways, go shopping, and find my way around without stepping too much on the natives' toes.

It also means that many things just don't surprise me or irritate me anymore because I have developed an acute sense of futility living here. (you wouldn't think it reading these emails, but really, I am much more accepting than other foreigners I meet fresh off the boats)

Having my mother here (her presence undiluted by Naoto or other family) has reminded me of some of the things that used to make me crazy.

The second day she was here we went to a bank to change her money to yen. First of all they had a little machine that you had to insert the U.S. dollars into. If the little machine didn't accept it, then it couldn't get changed. Then they asked her to fill out a form with her passport number and address.

When I asked the clueless, yet trying-to-be-helpful young clerk which address (in the U.S. or Japan), she had to run back and have a confab with her superiors before she could answer. Apparently the answer was my mother's U.S. address (let me just note here- how in the world would they verify a thing like that, I ask you?).

But they wouldn't let Mom write her U.S. address without some form of identification that included the address- i.e. her passport. Did you know that there was a page in your passport to write your current U.S. address? Apparently Mom didn't, so she had to write it there and then.

This was satisfactory, because then they allowed her to write the address in the form.

Then we waited, Mia took off her shoes and socks and began running around.

Then the clerk came back and asked me to write my Japan address and phone number (without any identification needed) anyway.

All this to change U.S. dollars (cash) into Japanese yen. (not traveler's checks or personal checks or what have you- cold, hard cash.)

Mom was really irritated, but I just smiled. It was all Japanese bureaucracy- something I have become accustomed to.

It was such a strange feeling to not be irritated.

Feeling Fractured

I was having philosophical moments at the children's center again. There I was; sitting on the steps in the big children's room, half playing with Mia and some plastic trains and half watching the other mothers and children. (mother wasn't there because of her dislocated toe)

I mused to myself that noone in the room knew my name or Mia's. I knew none of theirs.

While I had urges to ask the questions that begin relationships "how old is your son", "when did he learn to walk", etc, I felt this wall of lethargy between me and the others.

It is not impossible to have this feeling in the states as well. You are standing in a train station, or it is your first day in a new class or you are at the DMV.

But here I can use my foreigness both as an excuse and a prop for my own shyness. It is easy to be alone- there is no guilty, American conscience demanding I be friendly to strangers. Sometimes it is a comfortable to be that alone. It is a rest for introverted people (in which group I include myself. After all, I am a scifi geek and a writer!) to not have to pick their way through treacherous social currents.

And yet, it is lonely. With Naoto gone, there is no one within a 30 mile radius who knows who I am. There is no one who knows I went to a Quaker college, or that I like Jackie Chan movies, or that I voted for Kerry in the California primary (absentee ballot.)

What does knowing these things mean, though? Even if I were back in my hometown of Cleveland Heights among high school friends and family who do know all these things about me, none of them know the peace of the gravel yard at the local shrine or how much Mia loves salad-flavored rice crackers.

My life is fractured into parts that do not touch. I feel myself like a multi-faceted stone, turning the appropriate side to face each situation in my life: mother in Japan, teacher, sister, high school friend, sci-fi amateur writer.

The fractures are made clearer by the distance that separates me from most of the people in the world I consider important. Yet, I know that most people must experience this sort of loneliness to some degree.

Of course the only person who spans those divides, Naoto, is not here. His absence makes the divides seem deeper and more inpenetrable.

Which is not to say that I am gloomy and sad all the time recently. I was just in a philosophical mood. Now I am going to go play hide and seek with my Mom and Mia. They are shrieking in the guest room and I am going to go enjoy their silliness.

love and light,
Kirsten

Click on the imagae to enlarge.

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