try batting these

This afternoon, after picking the boys up from school, we made a quick stop at the swank Shu Uemura shop on Omotesando Street, known for its Eyelash Bar, a selection of tricked-out fakes. My sons didn't know quite what to make of the girl with paper clips sprouting from her lids. I just bought some mascara.

Anita is here!

First I had to take her to the Tokyu Food Show, which occupies an entire floor in Shibuya station, and where you can buy all kinds of expensive treats ... Here we are at the pickle counter. After agreeing to let us take pictures, the salespeople tried to get away, but they weren't fast enough.

third time's a charm

This is the third barbershop we have tried since moving here, and I think this one's the keeper. It's on a quiet corner close to the apartment, and the barbers are friendly, speedy and skilled. (Look closely at the photo above, you can see the lady barber through the front door window, working on Conor. I don't know how she managed to stand and work like that, with knees bent and arms up...)
The boys, for their part, suffered (mainly) in silence...

the art of Korean bbq

Tonight we cooked our own supper at Toraji, in Ebisu. The boys did much of the work, and managed not to get hurt.

We grilled two kinds of beef, which T and I wrapped in romaine lettuce. We also grilled some vegetables (mushrooms, red peppers, onions, slices of pumpkin) and the waiter brought us each a bowl of rice. We also had this savory pancake that looked and tasted like okonomiyaki but was called something else.

jump!

Conor learned how to jump rope today!

We were picnicking on one of the wide open lawns of Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden with three other families we know from the British School. Someone brought the rope, and that was that...he was hooked. New friend Clare is in the hat, and that's Henry, son of another new friend Ally, in the foreground.

While our 7-year-old jumped, Dylan (who will be six in two weeks!) amused himself with a stick and a paper bag...

Saturday

If you haven't seen Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro, rent it today. Having kids is a good excuse to do so, but it's unnecessary. The movie is just so good. But what made me think of it was this thing the boys found in a little playground near Ebisu Garden Place. It reminds me of Totoro's friend, the flying cat bus (even though this thing they're on is clearly a dog). It will all become clear when you see the film.

Baby Loves Disco comes to Japan!

Just the other day I was reading my friend Mary Ellen's blog post about Baby Loves Disco in Wash DC (a good rebuttal to an idiotic Washington Post article casting it as a draw for parents who refuse to grow up). And then on Friday outside the British school a nice lady hands me a Baby Loves Disco flyer and tells me she's the Tokyo franchisee and they're having their first event at Bar 57 in Roppongi next weekend! Here's the official website.

dog spotted on Omotesando Street

Designer jeans! "I (heart) NY" in rhinestones!

our deck...

...needs more plants.

fast food, only better

Our neighborhood Freshness Burger closed down for a week then reopened with a whole new look (and a new kitchen), and festooned with dozens of "Happy Anniversary" and "Happy Birthday" balloons and a big banner that reads "The Party is Here!" to celebrate. They put in a nice big booth and more tables along the floor-to-ceiling windows that open wide in good weather, making it almost an outdoor cafe. And as part of the new decor, there's a framed print of Jasper Johns' Flag on the wall. The menu seems to have stayed the same -- the boys had their usual plain hamburger ("no vegetables, no ketchup, nothing, just meat and bread, thanks") and fries (thick cut, skins still on) -- save for a curious new "Spam Rice Burger Set", which looks to be a slab of Spam between two fried rice cakes with all the usual burger trimmings. Uh, yum?

Babar, and a patch of green at the Children's Hall

Another reason to love the Tokyo Metropolitan Children's Hall, that free play space near the kids' school: the library on the 5th floor. It has a teeny tiny "English and Foreign Language" section but what's great is the outdoor patio and rooftop garden! A fine plot of grass -- full of weeds, but the pretty flowery kind, and it was mowed! -- to plunk down with the kids on a warm sunny afternoon like today's.

It's usually quiet at the Hall during the week, and we had the place to ourselves. C looked at some Doraemon books in Japanese, D picked some wildflowers and I read The Story of Babar, you know, the first one published by Random House in 1933. I never had before. Or maybe I just didn't remember it. But that is one strange work of children's lit. Maybe it's because I'm getting over the flu and haven't eaten much and am rather bubble-brained, but it seemed downright trippy.

Weirder still, though, is Madeline and the Gypsies, where the gypsy lady tries to hide Madeline and Pepito in a lion suit, made out of a real lion pelt, to avoid returning them to Miss Clavel. (This after teaching them bad habits, like going to bed without brushing their teeth.) This is what I'm missing not having girls? And I used to cringe reading A Fly Went By ...

ugh

What do you do when you get sick in a foreign country and your husband is away on business and no, you do not have live-in help (or any regular help for that matter, aside from a house cleaner on Fridays)?

You give the kids the run of the place and hide in your bedroom. You hope they watch only their movies (I'm pretty sure I put all those DVDs of The Wire back on the high shelf) and that they don't go blind (and dumb) from too many hours playing Super Mario on the Nintendo DS. You emerge from your room only to make them microwave popcorn for lunch and to demand that they put the furniture back the way it was. Later, you call your lovely downstairs neighbor, the mother of a darling 3-year-old girl whom you've only just met, and ask if you can send them down for supper, and you shoo them out the door with two frozen pizzas.

With the kids finally under competent adult supervision, you walk to the corner, hail a taxi, and tell the driver in your poorly-accented Japanese the address of the internist down the road, the one who speaks English, whose name you got by calling the international medical information hotline, the one listed in Tokyo: Here and How, the $45 tome all the other ex-pats convinced you to buy, but that you only now appreciate.

The doctor tells you that you've got viral gastroenteritis, gives you a shot and sends you home with some pills and says don't eat for two more days, just take a few sips of water now and then.

I better at least lose a few pounds in this deal...

killing time at the Apple store

and making friends with the Shibuya store staff...

Not even 6 yet, folks, and proficient in Photo Booth ...

adventures in food shopping

fish case at Hanamasa

Sports Day, Year One, BST

Here's D (in blue shirt and cap, on the left) waiting for the baton...
He's got the baton...
And now he's off!

The "Glovers" (blue team) earned the most points to win first place, beating three other teams. It was a two-hour competition at the Yoyogi track; aside from the relay, the kids pushed whiffle balls around cones with hockey sticks, threw bean bags, raced in potato sacks and balanced eggs on spoons, among other things.

we're ok! (the bed shook; I slept)

6.8-magnitude earthquake hits 100 miles from Tokyo

May 8, 2008

TOKYO (AP) — A strong earthquake hit off the coast of Japan early Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, waking up people 100 miles away in Tokyo.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damages, and no tsunami warning had been issued, public broadcaster NHK said. The magnitude 6.8 earthquake was felt as far away as Tokyo to the southwest, the broadcaster said.

The earthquake struck at 1:45 a.m. offshore at a depth of about 25 miles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

NHK reported that a second quake hit in the same area about half an hour later with a magnitude of 5.3.

Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world because it sits atop four tectonic plates. Tokyo has not been hit by a major quake since 1923, when 140,000 people died in the Great Kanto Earthquake.

metro etiquette

"Please refrain from putting on make-up in the train."

well, they are kinda freaky

As the crows fly, Japanese get fed up, reports IHT :

KAGOSHIMA, Japan: Fanning out in small teams, the men in grey jumpsuits scour the streets and rooftops with binoculars, seeking to guard this city from a growing menace. They look for tell-tale signs: a torn garbage bag, a pile of twigs atop an electric pole or one of the black, winged culprits themselves.

"There's one!" goes up a shout.

Sure enough, one of their quarry flies brazenly overhead: a crow, giving a loud, taunting caw as it passed.

This is the Crow Patrol of Kyushu Electric Power, a utility company, on the hunt for crows whose nests on electric poles have caused a string of power blackouts in this city of a half-million on Japan's southern island of Kyushu.

Blackouts are just one of the problems caused by an explosion in Japan's population of crows, which have grown so numerous they seem to compete with humans for space in this densely crowded nation. Communities are scrambling to find ways to relocate or reduce their crow populations, as ever larger flocks of loud, ominous birds have taken over parks and nature reserves, frightening away human residents.

It is a scourge straight out of Hitchcock, and the crows here look and act the part. With wing spans up to a meter and intimidating black beaks and sharp claws, Japan's crows are big, aggressive and downright scary.

Attacks, though rare, do happen. Hungry crows have bloodied the faces of children while trying to steal candy from their hands. Crows have even carried away baby prairie dogs and ducklings from Tokyo zoos...

...The crow explosion has created a moral dilemma for Japan, a nation that prides itself on nonviolence and harmony with nature, because culling programs are the only truly effective method of population control.

Tokyo was one of the first to take lethal measures, under the lead of its strong-willed governor, Shintaro Ishihara. He angrily ordered the city into action after a crow buzzed his head while he was playing golf, city officials said.

In 2001, the city began setting traps in parks and nature reserves, using raw meat as a lure. In the following seven years, the city captured more than 93,000 crows, which it killed by sticking them in trash bags filled with poison gas. Tokyo says the number of crow-related complaints from residents have dropped as a result...

Happo-en, Shirokanedai

T was off again today (Golden Week Rules!) so we explored the 'hood by bike, ending up at Happo-en, a carefully-groomed garden attached to an event hall and wedding salon. I have been here by myself on quieter days, but today the place was buzzing with dozens of young couples accompanied by official-looking persons in blue blazers and shiny metal name pins, either touring the grounds or sitting at tables paging through photos of past nuptials celebrated on said grounds, which are, by the way, absolutely lovely. The bonsai trees are astounding; there's also a pond full of koi, a few strategically-placed stone lanterns, a tea house, a few shrines, etc. Here I am on a stone bridge overlooking a bubbling brook.

love those bank holidays

T's been off for Golden Week, so on Monday, since the weather wasn't great, we headed into Shinjuku to go to the movies. I agreed to see Cloverfield, despite knowing nothing about it. It turned out to be an 85-minute gas, an over-the-top Sci-Fi flick that takes place in New York, so I ate up the scenery (particularly the Brooklyn Bridge) as it was being demolished by some Godzilla-like alien creature. (See movie poster above left, for view of a decapitated Lady Liberty.)

There appears to be about a half dozen theaters within a three block radius here.

We were at the Shinjuku Toa Kogyo, where you can buy beer from a vending machine:


One of the great benefits of polite Tokyo society is that nobody, and I mean nobody, so much as slurps a soda, or crunches noisily on popcorn, or even whispers to a neighbor. Forget New York-style shout-outs at the screen. (I'll never forget watching The Blair Witch Project in Chelsea, while drunk and uppity audience members hurled scorn at those doomed campers, thereby snapping me out of my ohmygodwhattheheckisgonnahappentotheseidiots terror). No, here in Tokyo everybody stays completely silent and still as if Krazy-glued to their seats until the last credit rolls. It actually feels rude to leave before that "Color by Deluxe" and "MMVIII" and all that.

After the movies we wandered the streets in search of a place to stop for lunch, and chose this no-frills kaiten sushi joint, where we ate some raw fish and rice.
On our way to the JR train, we passed one of pretty-boy Brad Pitt's Tag Heuer billboards. Now that's a full day.

charmed life

fashionably-dressed dude spotted near Tower Records in Shibuya

Sunday in the park

When we were in New York, we used to pack some food and head to Central Park or Prospect Park to picnic and run around. On Sunday we did the Tokyo equivalent, in Yoyogi park, but there you can rent bikes and take to the specially designated path, which winds around under a canopy of trees, or bring younger kids who require bikes with "sub pedals" to a separate smaller course, surrounded by azalea bushes. We were not surprised to find that the bike rental operation there is very organized and based on the honor system. (The sign near the warehouse reads, "How to Use this Cycling Route: Rental cycles are available. Just enjoy it.") D and I borrowed a tandem bike for 200 yen for 15 minutes, enough time to do one loop around. Our kids were the only ones wearing helmets.

Some random people I don't know on rented bikes...
Poor T, his kids just hang on him on the weekends, to make up for lack of contact during the work week.

Local dogs in their Sunday best (is that a cheerleader uniform on the chihuahua?)

on the way to work...

This is what my husband sees on the Tokyo Metro (Hibiya line) around 8 a.m. on a Monday

Yoyogi koen

dog park for tiny dogs

young woman blowing bubbles

what's hangin' at the Sapporo Beer Museum

If I could read Japanese maybe I could tell you the year each of these old beer ads first appeared, but I can't, so we will just have to guess.1975?

1982?

1958?

I love the models in bikinis, hoisting big frothy mugs...

There was, of course, a tasting: four kinds of Yebisu. Not bad for a Tuesday afternoon (bank holiday!)

"differently different"

Back in February my husband handed me the Life & Arts section of the Financial Times and told me to check out the lead story. Well, today I finally got around to reading it (I can't be the only one with a foot-high stack of dated reading material) and it was so good I had to link to it here (go to "...and now for somewhere completely different.") It's FT's Tokyo bureau chief David Pilling trying to figure out just how truly bizarre Japan really is -- whether its society, its culture, is really so unique, so "differently different" as some experts, and natives, believe. "Nobody bangs the drum of Japanese uniqueness more than the Japanese themselves," Pilling writes. (Japanese word of the day: Nihonjinron, or "meditations on Japaneseness.")

Some highlights:

"In a hundred tiny gestures and assumptions, Japan can seem just slightly out of kilter," Pilling writes. "When Japanese people refer to themselves, they point to their nose, not their heart. Many restaurants have no chairs. The Japanese count in units of ten thousand, making the population of Japan one-thousand-two-hundred-and-fifty ten thousands, not 125 million as you might have thought. The calendar is different, too. Circular not linear, time tracks each imperial reign – I am sending this dispatch, not from the year 2008, but from Heisei 20."

When he first arrived in Tokyo in 2002, Pilling says he "grappled with a language that, in every way, seemed back to front and set with social land mines." (I can see that.) He says he also "wondered at people's obsessive punctuality, cleanliness and the absolute seriousness with which they conducted every activity." (Yup.)

Pilling mentions a slew of books, such as The Shell-less Egg, which describes the Japanese as "uniquely group-oriented," and "unable to conceive of themselves other than in relation to family, village, workplace, superiors and inferiors, insiders and outsiders." Ian Buruma's A Japanese Mirror is a "compendium of Japan's sex-and-violence-drenched comics and films, so seemingly at odds with an otherwise prim and peaceful society."

He talks to an American academic, Earl H Kinmonth, who "finds the eccentricities of Britain's class system every bit as puzzling as Japan's supposed oddities. If the British were a different color and spoke a difficult-to-learn language, he is convinced every American would find them utterly bizarre." Kinmonth also says that "if you go to a Korean and a Japanese funeral, the Japanese are all stiff upper lip and the Koreans are wailing and gnashing their teeth. But that's only like the difference between an English funeral and an Irish wake."

Go ahead, read the whole thing.

best invention?

Some of the public restrooms here are just amazingly posh, like the one I used last week while I was in Roppongi Hills. My stall was spotless and roomy and completely enclosed, with stainless steel fixtures and what looked like hardwood walls and doors. There was also a baby seat, a compact, perfectly-shaped high-chair, tucked neatly into the corner, with a sticker of instructions (make sure the kid can't climb out, don't leave him in there and go to the sink to reapply makeup, etc.). Mothers who remember the infant/toddler years (my memories are a bit fuzzy) will appreciate how great this thing is. Imagine not having to hold your baby and pee at the same time. As for privacy, well, I can't imagine what could be invented to help us get that back.