Ready, Set, Go!

My wish list for 2008!
* A winning lottery ticket.
* More time for play, reading, exercise, and creating.
* A new President we can be proud of!
* Continued good health.
* Happy News.
* Peace to All!

Top 7 of 2007

I have had a crazy year, one that has tested my personal strengths, values and limits. But, thanks to supportive family, friends and students, different trials have brought rewards. As the year rolls to an end, here is where I stand: I am in the middle of 4 different insightful books, divas with guitars still rock my world, my daughter still remains the center of our little threesome universe, and I now carry my husband's hand-me-down digital camera everywhere I go. In the mode of my parents, who always love to ask, "What was the best part of ~your trip, your holiday, your year?," I'll give you my Top 7:
1. An extended family trip to Miyazaki in March.
2. Lucy's tap dance recital in June.
3. Visiting Montana family and friends in September.
4. A Sexy Six Girls Tour de Utah, Seattle and Portland.
5. Visiting a friend's pottery kiln firing.
6. Tuesday nights downtown.
7. Lunches with girlfriends.

Christmas concert

Lucy's school had their Christmas concert yesterday (Christmas Eve). Their first spot on stage was this dance, a tap dance to Frosty the Snowman. They weren't always in sync, but were trying so hard and seemed to be having so much fun. Her class is a mix of twelve 3, 4, and 5 year old kids, with a class of smaller 2 and 3 year old that they get to play with often too. I think she is learning a lot of social skills, and picking up a wonderful curiosity, constantly vocalizing questions and offering her own ideas of why things are the way they are. The best thing about the school she is at now is the supportive group of parents that have become a pillar of support and friendship for us. Merry Christmas to my dear family in the USA, and to our cushion of friends here!

Nine little pigs!

They did a cute version of The Three Little Pigs. Lucy was Will, who built the brick house and cooked up a soup for the pesty wolves to fall in when they tried to sneak down the chimney.

Hand bells!

At age 3,4, and 5, her class is learning to recognize musical notes, and played a near perfect "Joy to the World" for the finale of their Christmas concert. So impressive!

Joy to the world!

This is Lucy playing the "mi" note on the hand bell. They played the song "Joy to the World." and were amazingly good. She already has a sense for music, and its definitely not from my DNA! For this hand bell song, she and her classmates learned the song by singing it as "Do si la so fa mi re do so la la si si do,etc" (which I had to just have her recite to me since I have NO clue!) And having learned this, she can sit down at the piano and play it! She started piano lessons just two months ago and has had just about 6 lessons in total, so I am so impressed. We are negotiating now to try and get the piano from her grandparent's house that never gets used for her to have here to practice. Her father seems to have the same ear for music, so he will have to do the coaching!

Winter Break is here!

I had my last classes on the 21st, and have holiday until the 8th of January! Just knowing that I don't have to be up and out of the house by 7:45 (with Lucy in tow) lifts my spirits sooOOO much! Eiji is not so lucky. Instead of Christmas cards, everyone here sends New Years Postcards which have to be pre-sorted(starting this week) and ready to deliver brights and early (about 4 or 5:00am) New Years Day. So, Mr. Mailman Eiji starts a 10-day long marathon of going in early and working late, with no holiday until January 3rd. Lucy is also off from school, so I have entertainment duty for the next two weeks! We have a few plans, including lots of dinners or visits with family and friends. We had a pre-Christmas party yesterday at a friends home, and had Eiji`s whole family at our home this evening for steak and my version of Shephard's Pie. Tomorrow, Lucy's preschool will have their Christmas concert and short English plays (she is the brick-house pig in The Three Little Pigs!). We will have a party with some of the parents and kids following that. Christmas day may be quiet, then we have another Christmas Potluck party with students on the 26th. Then, our vacation will begin. Lucy is getting a new bicycle for Christmas, so maybe we will try to master the no-training wheels riding over the holidays. Japanese usually do their annual big house cleaning the last few days of the year, so I might try to convince Lucy we should play "cleaning ladies" instead of the usual "play house" or "play school." Merry Christmas to anyone who happens to read this on the 25th!

Disenchanted with Christmas!

Just in the last year, I have become disenchanted with so many things. My list includes organized religion, education and politics. Yet, in the same breath, these three things are what fascinate me most. Don't get me started, or this blog entry will be a mile long. What I am really bothered with this season is the commercialism of Christmas. Japan is an amazing place for this! Stores here probably simultaneously (or even a few hours earlier if you consider the time zone time lag) took down Halloween decorations and filled every shelf and advertisement with Christmas images and marketing. My favorite morning radio program has tossed out the questions, "Got you Christmas shopping done yet?" or "What will you eat for Christmas dinner?" and loads of listeners called in with their "Don't know what to buy for my husband," and "Our family's tradition is Kentucky Fried Chicken, champagne, and chocolate eclairs." It makes me lose my enthusiasm and appetite for the holidays. So, my poor family in America had to hear me whine about not wanting to buy Christmas presents. I don't like to mad rush of shopping malls like I used to, and I can't bear to think that I am adding to this marketing frenzy. So, apologies to my family. I would pay anything to be with you over the holidays...but I'm holding out for Hawaii in March!

I have such amazing memories of our family Christmases at Grandpa Eccleston's house, and opening stockings by the fireplace in my childhood home. I guess it is time to create new traditions that will be just as meaningful for my daughter, and fitting for what this season means to me now. I will keep you posted!

Sing Karaoke Gaijin style

One of our friends here in Japan recently told me that she extended her contract in Japan just so she can do more singing at karaoke. Tonight, a regular school/work day night, we went with this friend and a clan of 10 other friends to sing a 2-hour farewell to our new friend, Keith. Keith has been in Kumamoto for 6 weeks, and we decided that he couldn't leave Japan without a proper karaoke experience. Going to karaoke with our Japanese friends and international friends is quite different. Japanese tend to let one person sing alone, and they most likely have a very good voice. Foreigners, on the other hand, sing along to everyone else's songs, and enjoy making a mess of the lyrics and tune for fun. I like being able to sing along without having to sing by myself and expose my awful singing voice. Tonight was Lucy's first experience. We tried to get her excited by singing one song dedicated to her, LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS, and then JINGLE BELLS, D0-RE-MI (Sound of Music), but she was a little shell shocked. Actually, after about 40 minutes, she fell asleep! Oh well, we continued with the likes of Johnny Cash, Bon Jovi, ABBA, Paul Simon, Kumi Koda, Blue Hearts, Green Day and Mariah Carey.

I miss my central heating!

People sometimes ask me what I miss about America. Honestly, beside my family and friends, I don't miss too many things until they jump out at me from the supermarket shelves when I venture home once a year. Strange, but when I'm in the states, most of my nostalgia is food, and most often cheap food like frozen chicken pot pies, Granny Smith apples, pudding packs, and hearty grain breads. But, the thing I really, dearly miss is central heating! Japanese homes, especially the old ones like the home we rent, are not made for winter. There is no insulation, and the outer walls and floorboards are as thin as my mousepad! So, I am sitting at the computer right now, still wearing my jacket, a scarf, gloves, wrapped in huge blanket. And the winter is just beginning! In the worst days of late January and early February, I peek my head out of the futon covers and can see my own breath! We heat one room of our house, then bundle up every time we have to go to the kitchen, toilet or computer room. No fun for the next few months!

GUNS

In my university class discussions at Kumamoto University this week, wherein we addressed the differences between the USA and Japan, almost every class asked me about the USA's gun society. In Japan, you can't get easily get a gun, and really nobody besides the yakuza gangsters, a few wild game hunters, and police (who only carry them in special circumstances) have them. Watch any Hollywood movie and its easy to assume that most Americans have them. Here are some of my own thoughts on guns:

I have never seen a real handgun, and have no real fear of guns. If you choose to join a gang in the USA or the yakuza in Japan, your chances of encountering guns is much greater. But, for the most part, regular citizens in the USA have no exposure to guns in their every day lives.

Yet, I know many stories of people who died in gun related accidents. One was a young boy from our hometown who, while cleaning his gun in preparation for the annual hunting season, shot his own brother by mistake when playing around with what he thought was an unloaded gun. Another incident was the suicide of one of our close friends in high school, who was clearly distressed with overwhelming personal circumstances, but who might not have died if her brother's gun was not so easily accessible.

I have fired a shotgun a few times with family members doing shot practice in the woods. A bit scary, but thrilling none the less. I grew up watching my father and brother bring home deer or elk during the month-long hunting season in Montana. Our family ate this meat year-round, and there was no question that the guns in our house were meant only to be used during hunting season.

A sad story of a young Japanese boy, named Hattori, who was an exchange student in rural Louisiana around 1992 and knocked at the wrong house, dressed in costume for a Halloween party. When the man at the door pulled out a gun and told Hattori to "freeze," he didn't understand, didn't do as he was told, and was shot and killed. Japanese people now know the word "freeze" quite well, and are further bewildered by our insistence on having the right to keep guns. I tried to explain to students today that this, "right to bear arms/ right to protect my own house with my own shotgun," is interpreted differently by different individuals and different regions of people. If a wild dress man came to our home in Montana, we would lock the door and call the police. Others choose to take the law into their own hands.

The USA has many wonderful freedoms, but with every freedom, and every right, comes responsibility.

In Japan, I am very clear in vocalizing my dislike for guns and other weapons. Guns or swords, whether they be metal, plastic or paper, are prohibited from our home, and I am constantly telling children around me to stop pointing weapons at people. I wish I could tell our President the same thing! Violence in any form, domestic or global, only breeds more violence.