Click
picture to enlarge.Emails from Kirsten and Naoto
October 2004
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 23:27:39 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Country Division Temple
Dear Friends and Family
We returned last week from visiting my family in Wichita, Kansas.
I was a little sad to be back, but have gotten back into the swing of things this past week. (it helps that Mia and Maika are no longer waking up at 3 a.m. and wanting to play)
Mia's started her weekly music/rhythm class again in upscale Kichijoji. Kichijoji is a bastion of foreigness. I love going there (despite the distance and cost) just to see all the imported food and pedestrians!
Country Division Temple
Recenly, Naoto and I heard there was an import store in the basement of the big department store attached to the Kokubunji station.
That station is only four stations away on our local line. As we rode the line, I mused to myself about how silly the names of the stations sound when you translate the kanji of their names literally into English.
For example:
We live near "Eastern Mountain Village". Higashimurayama.
Ogawa "small river"
("Still not funny, Kirsten" "just wait, it does get better")
Takanodai "hawk perch"
Koigakubo "love ditch"
(can't help humming "love shack when I go by that one)
Kokubunji "country division temple"
I have another foreign friend who lives in hawk perch. But I've never even gotten off the train at love ditch.
Anyway, we finally got to the import store at Country Division Temple station and it was very cool.
Lots of Halloween stuff, a whole store devoted to sweet potato cakes (because you can never have enough sweet potato cake), an organic store with excellent miso, and last, but not least, a roof-top restaurant village complete with child-sized toilets in the women's restroom and an outside garden/patio with a view.
Oh yes, we will be visiting Kokubunji again.
Love and light,
Kirsten
Click
picture to enlarge.
===== Take a stroll through THE MOSSY GLEN the fiction page of K. Bird Lincoln at http://www.geocities.com/kblincoln/mossyglen.html
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 23:16:55 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Illegal Disposal Musings and Let Me Buy You a Clue
Dear Friends and Family
Well, I just voted. As an absentee ballot person, I get to vote ahead of y'all. I just hope it makes some kind of difference. I've been reading articles that make me worry about the whole voting process, let alone the way states are handling absentee voters.
We've started the Music Together (http://www.musictogether.com/) class again in Kichijoji as I mentioned before. I really enjoy watching Mia dance and sing parts of the songs. You get a CD of all the music to take home. Not to brag or anything, but Mia heard the CD 2 times and could already sing parts of most of the songs. She likes the drumming part of the class the best, I think.
Illegal Disposal Musings
Maika has just outgrown her first set of clothes. I guess I won't try to save them this time. There's a whole system set up now within the ex-pat (First I was a Kirsten, then I was a Pat, now I'm a Kirsten again) community for exchanging stuff. It's useful as there isn't really the equivalent of Goodwill here.
There's this whole issue of "dirtiness" associated with used clothing. I imagine it is based somewhat on the whole "clean" and "dirty" ideas from Shinto.
Even Americanized Naoto isn't too keen on buying used clothing. This extends to cars (people tend to buy new ones more frequently here.) and stuff.
Imagine a world without garage sales; that's Japan. On top of that, it is extremely difficult and expensive to throw out large pieces of garbage.
I guess that's why people leave chairs and desks and stuff along the waterways instead. There's a little canal/stream that we walk along almost everyday. Recently chairs have mysteriously begun appearing in one particular, shaded place along the river. First it was a dining room table chair. Last week I noticed an easy chair and a few scattered office-like chairs.
Isn't it nice that all the irresponsible, selfish, nature-destroying people have reached consensus about where to illegally dispose of their chairs?
Let Me Buy You a Clue
So we don't ever buy tissues.
(yes, Naoto, that is an exaggeration.)
Okay, we HARDLY ever buy tissues because Naoto gets free ones all the time.
In Japan people love to advertise their products by printing out little inserts into small packs of travel-sized tissues. Then they hire young, orange-haired men and trendily-dressed women to hand them out to people near train stations.
Just by walking for 10 minutes down a major street in Shinjuku can get you a week's supply of tissues.
I wish I was married to a tissue-maker....
Anyway, people also stand around outside of stations and hand out little leaflets advertising pachinko parlors, hair salons, etc. etc.
I get a kick out of watching the people distributing the leaflets. I try to guess what is being advertised by who they choose to give their leaflet to. Sometimes I get depressed if they are being handed out to youngish, stylish people and when I walk by they don't give one to me.
At least I don't get the back and foot massage leaflets that go to old ladies, though.
So anyway, my point here is (and yes, I do have a point) that on the way to Kichijoji, you go out of Kichijoji station and down the escalator and there is ALWAYS somebody standing right at the bottom of the escalator handing out leaflets.
Okay, first of all, they stand right at the bottom and take up space, so you kind of have to scootch around them.
Imagine me, then today, with a diaper bag on my back, a bag of curry bread (for our lunch) in one hand that is also holding Maika. In my other hand I have Mia firmly grasped so that she doesn't trip coming off the escalator. Oh yes, did I mention the blueberry yoghurt in a paper cup somehow cupped in one arm?
So the idiot at the bottom of the escalator tries to give me a leaflet.
Not just tries to give it to me, but effectively bars my path with his arm.
I mean, come on now. Do I LOOK like I have time to go to a pachinko or hair parlor?
And with what appendage, pray tell, was I supposed to receive the leaflet?
I almost growled at the poor guy.
love and light,
kirsten
P.S. We went to the zoo with my Earlham friend Susan and her family right before we went to the States. Her daughter and Mia get pretty silly when they are together.
Click on the photograph to enlarge.
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 22:40:27 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Earthquakes and Politics
Dear Friends and Family
Mia is a week away from being 3 years old. Next Saturday, about 8 adults and 12 children will descend upon our little apartment to celebrate her birthday. Then in the afternoon, we will drive over to Yokota base to do her first, real trick or treating ever.
I am probably more excited than she is.
Earthquakes and Politics
I don't like to talk about politics, much. Over the years, I have figured out that I can't really change anyone's mind with my arguments. I found that most people consider my ideas radical and idealist.
I can live with that.
Sometimes (okay okay, more often than not) I find myself unable to separate my politics from my life, however.
Living abroad can do that to you. When you live outside your country, you all of a sudden find yourself personally responsible for anything and everything your country does. You find yourself respresenting an entire country/culture with your actions.
If I am taking up too much space on a train, it's because Americans are all so selfish and big.
Anyway, to get back to earthquakes (yes, I realize I didn't actually begin talking about them yet) we had 3 shakers last night. They were a magnitude of 6 on a 7 point scale. Luckily, we were not at the actual epicenter of 6. Tokyo only got hit with quakes about the size of a 3, but still.
Earthquakes put you on instant alert. You wonder, is this the big one? Should I be getting up and running out the door?
Naoto is supposed to take care of Mia and I am supposed to take care of Maika if a big one hits.
However, whenever there is an earthquake, I find myself trying to decide what else I should try to take with us. Food? Blankets? Our passports? Our bank books?
What is important? What is really, truly, life or death important?
Oh, there's the question that leads me back to politics.
What is important?
To tell you the truth, I couldn't care less if Kerry or Bush wins the election. Personally, they both make lame candidates in my book.
However, in my list of important things, personal things, Bush has already messed up his turn.
Oops, there I go letting my political opinion slip. Sorry if I squash anybody's feelings.
But then, maybe people who want to vote to Bush can explain to my friend Yumi why her husband (who's been stationed in Korea for a year and has missed the oh-so-important first year of his second daughter's life) might have to be shipped out to Iraq right after Christmas?
Or maybe you can explain to me, as well as many friends I have who are married to non-Americans, why Bush's changes in visa and immigration laws, causing untold delays in processing is a good thing?
Hmm, so far Bush isn't winning any points in the family arena.
And I could probably go on and on, and then you all would probably stop reading because you've heard it all before.
Or maybe you haven't. Either way, I am going to stop now.
Because the aftershocks from last night are still coming. I think I have finally decided that I would try to go for the plastic bag containing all our passports and important financial documents when I scoop up Maika and make a run for the door in the event of a big one.
Despite everything, it is important to me to be an American, and I am proud to have the passport that proves that.
I can't help hoping, though, that this next election might make it easier for me to feel that way here in Japan.
Anyway, let me leave you with the lyrics (somewhat edited) from a song in the musical "Chess."
"No man, no madness
Though their sad power may prevail
Can possess, conquer, my country's heart
They rise to fail
She is eternal
Long before nations' lines were drawn
When no flags flew, when no armies stood
My land was born.
And you ask me why I love her
Through wars, death and despair.
And you wonder will I leave her -- but how?
I cross over borders but I'm still there now.
How can I leave her?
Where would I start?
Let man's petty nations tear themselves apart
My land's only borders lie around my heart. "
love and light,
Kirsten
Click
on baby to enlarge.