Towels and tissues

I’m never really sure, in my experiences here, what is representative of Japan and what is particular to the Tachibana family. It seems however that tissues and hand towels play a very important part of Japanese culture. Handkerchiefs are still commonly used. Paper towels, big in America, rarely make an appearance. Jjij is always wiping things; a nose or a tabletop, a chair leg, children's hands or a door front. I mean always, obsessively. The kids can be eating watermelon and he is at the ready with tissues to catch the drips and towels to wipe their faces between bites. I have been doing the same just to fit in, though really I’m a fan of getting good and messy. But when in Rome…

Origami Lessons

Papa has flown back to NY for work and we have stayed on for reasons I sometimes feel clearly about and at other times evade me all together. When Papa is with us our days are a whirlwind of people, coming and going, trains to and fro, friends on top of friends that we must meet. It is fun (but exhausting), and we eventually end up craving ordinary life. So it is good to be left in Japan with nothing to do. The trouble is, it is not the nothing we are accustomed to, it is the day to day of an older Japanese couple that conduct a rather quiet life together. It is not the sort of life to satisfy a seven-year-old boy with energy exploding forth from his ears. Baba and Jiji are doing their best to provide fun activities. Two days ago Baba took Uta to the movies, and today Jiji took him to a baseball game. He is doing many special things. But the special moments happen when we least expect it, like making origami cranes with Baba after everyone else has gone to bed, or sneaking out with Jiji to eat ice cream cones at the bakery down the road.

Lucky girl!

Sometimes life shows up with the most perfect thing for you at the perfect time, even when you were unaware that you needed it, or that such a thing even existed. Kizuki is still in a little shock, I think, about just how happy this whacky contraption makes her. She had been pushing the laundry basket around. But today Jiji and Uta came back from a little outing with this special gift. With its leaping trio of animals and loud clack clack sound, it is way better than the laundry basket.

Do a little dance

If you sing, Kizuki will do a little dance. She can't help herself. 

New Wheels

Home Somen Shop

I guess Uta is not the only one who wants to eat Nagashi somen at home. Japan thinks of everything!

Nagashi Somen

Uta's new favorite food is Nagashi somen, thin somen noodels that are served in a stream of water. When we were heading out to see friends they asked what Uta might like to eat. He said, Nagashi somen. It was a joke, an impossibility. Not to them. They headed out to Kyoto, a ten minute drive, and chopped down a bamboo tree. With a hand saw, a hose from the garden, a stationary bike, and a heap of imagination, we got to have one of the best lunches of our lives. Yum!

Like peas in a pod

We have been sleeping like peas in a pod, with futons lining the floor from wall to wall. Kizuki is enormous for her ten months and doesn't leave me much space. But it is nice to be close for a change. New York has a way of pulling us apart, all of us are so busy with school and work and what not. We have to travel all the way to Japan to come together again.