Kyushu Quakes, Remembering a Year On

Taken from this album 

On Thursday night we had the strongest quake we'd ever felt. Tiger slept right through it, unlike Hayate. We saw on the news the next day that it had originated in Kumamoto and seven or eight people had died. We checked in with our friends in the area, tidied up the spills and went about our business as usual. The next night a magnitude 7, the highest on the Japanese scale, struck. I was sleeping Japanese style with the kids (futons on tatami) downstairs while the husband slept upstairs with the still rattled Hayate.

The quake made an extraordinary sound, like nothing I've ever heard. The closest I can think of is a wave just as it crashes over your head, or the rushing in your ears just before you pass out. As the quake rolled on and on I grabbed the baby and braced myself in the door frame while shouting to Tiger to wake up. Some how neither the quake, my shouting, or the many dogs barking across the neighbourhood woke him. I couldn't leave the doorway with the baby in my arms so I sort of leaned out and grabbed Tiger by his toe (literally) and yanked as hard as I could to pull him to safety. He got a large friction burn from me pulling him across the tatami (tatami burns hurt much more than carpet burns, in my opinion) and then spent days telling people he'd been injured in the quake... technically true but a little misleading.

We were in Japan when 3.11 happened. You don't really get over something like that, and we've always consequently been very conscientious about disaster preparedness. However, we were just weeks away from leaving Japan and there were piles of packing and sorting everywhere. One relief was that I had passed the baton literally two weeks before to the new neighbourhood association rep. I had spent a year as the "information officer in the event of emergencies", meaning in a disaster like this I was supposed to monitor the radio, pass on evacuation information etc to the entire suburb. Why did they entrust a barely literate foreigner with this very language heavy and important role? The short answer is, as with most things, because Japan.* Other responsibilities including taking the role call to ensure everyone in the block I represented was safe, something I was also very glad not to have to do since many of our neighbours had typically Kyushu names, meaning the kanji were read in a totally different way to standard Japanese, and I never completely mastered them all.

The supermarket shelves were bare, both because of panic buying and because the highway collapse meant the trucks couldn't get through.

Saturday dawned hot and bright, but in a foreboding, over-ripe way. All around the neighbourhood the fledgling birds of spring had been shaken from their nests and their tiny bodies quickly began to rot in the hot sun. A stench hung over everything. Heavy rain and gales were forecast for later in the day, meaning landslides would inevitably follow. With foundations shaken by the quake we felt we were on the brink of an extraordinary disaster, but no one knew quite how big it would be. Tens of thousands of people evacuated. Our neighbours gathered in nervous groups, going from house to house to form consensus in the unobtrusive way of well established neighbourhoods, discussing whether we should leave to. The consensus was no, but fearfully. The neighbourhood association had generators and other emergency supplies on stand by. On TV we saw a university dorm had collapsed, trapping students inside. We watched all day, as hope slowly faded. A fourth year engineering student, a member of the music club, died. A first year student, who had left home just weeks before, died. There were amazing moments of relief, too: A baby girl rescued unharmed from a collapsed house after six agonising hours.

The magnificent castle at Kumamoto we'd visited on our "let's contribute to the local economy" holiday right after 3.11 was terribly damaged, and the highway we would take to the airport when we left had partially been swallowed by the earth.     

Source

We slept in our clothes, torches in hand, and aftershocks rocked us through the night.

Alerts... we didn't get a lot of sleep

*The longer explanation is the the positions are predetermined based on the rotating allocation and the system may not be changed, even for reasons like 'this person is literally incapable of performing the required tasks'. Because Japan.

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Orientation Meeting for Prospective Adoptive Parents (Flashback Friday)

The gorgeous image is by Brett Davies, taken from here.

This is a post I wrote over a year ago, and it has been sitting in my draft folder because I was worrying about potential invasion of the privacy of the other people I discuss. After a log time thinking about it, I'm confident that it would be impossible to identify any individual mentioned here, so I am publishing it.

It’s interesting how telling people we were adopting opened floodgates of infertility stories. I wonder how many Japanese couples are struggling to conceive while feeling like they are the only ones. One teacher I worked with who had recently had her first child told me that she tried for eight years, another for five. One of my naginata friends and her husband were never able to have a child. I feel like an interloper in this world of private pain and monthly disappointments. I’ve never tried to conceive and have no reason to believe that I couldn’t. We are adopting as our first choice, not as a last resort after all else has failed, but the people around me always assume the latter. Early in our exploration of adoption in Japan we attended an orientation meeting with a private adoption agency. It was a pretty eye opening experience. Our cheerful responses about looking forward to adoption seemed incongruous in the atmosphere of sadness. At the start of the meeting we all introduced ourselves, and the other attendees all discussed the length of time they had been trying to conceive and the fertility treatments they had tried. After the introductions we realised that the majority of couples there were not potential applicants but successful adoptive parents who were there to help with the orientation. In fact, only one other couple was there for the orientation, which was the only meeting in Kyushu that year and was compulsory for applicants with the agency.

After the introductions we watched a video about the agency that outlined their policies, after which we were expected to give 感想, responses or impressions. There seemed to be an expectation that we would object to the policies, for example not being permitted to request a specific kind of child (age, race, sex or ability). We then watched a second video about a couple whose adopted daughter experienced some delays in her physical development, and how they felt about it. Again we were asked for feedback, and again there was a heavy expectation that we would be uncomfortable with the possibility of adopting a child who may be disabled. When we responded that if we conceived a child naturally we would have no control over sex or ability either, there was some surprised murmuring around the room, as though the comparison hadn't occurred to anyone else. I learned later that the government agencies (CGCs) often prefer to keep infants in institutionalised care until they are old enough to access if their development is "normal" before placing them for adoption; a policy that becomes a sort of self-fulfilling-prophesy since it is a well documented fact the institutionalisation in early life causes developmental delays.  After running through the policies in greater detail and also going over the costs, we broke for lunch.

The afternoon session was "small group time", and we sat with a group of parents who had successfully adopted through the agency. Most had brought their children with them, and the kids had a fine time playing together while the adults talked. This ongoing support network was the thing we most liked about the agency, although we later learned some less positive information and are happy that ultimately we did not proceed with them. After telling us about their experiences the "sempai" parents then asked us some questions and encouraged us to ask them anything. In a slightly humorous moment, one gentleman asked us earnestly if we were comfortable with the agency's policy that required us to tell our hypothetical future child s/he was adopted. Trying to keep a straight face I responded that a Japanese child with two white parents would probably not find that to be particularly shocking news. This led to some questions about race; were we really OK with not having a say over the child's race? One woman explained that while she was OK with the rule when it came to disability, she had difficulty agreeing to accept a child of any race. "What if the baby were black?" She asked. "I mean I don't mind, but other people might be so cruel and I really worried about if I could handle that."

In the late afternoon we merged back into a single group and the two prospective adoptive couples were asked, again, to make some comments. We said we'd enjoyed seeing all the children playing together and that this ongoing support was wonderful. The other couple said they had decided to try a few more rounds of fertility treatments before revisiting the idea of adoption.

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Vindicating My Face (Flashback Friday)

OK, my face can be kind of scary, but I've got nothing on this terrifying "training baby" doll!

The infant home we spent a couple of years visiting had a very progressive attitude toward having people through for training purposes. University social work students, prospective foster parents and all sorts of other interested parties were able to spend time there getting first hand experience of the system and of the children's needs. Some were timid and earnest, wanting to learn everything and assume nothing. Others, usually women who had experience in education or childcare, were overly confident that "all children are the same" and that exactly how they had always interacted with other children would be just fine with institutionalised kids as well. On one occasion I had a slight run in with one of the later kind of visitor.

The very first baby I held at the home was a little boy just a few months old who I shall call Napoleon, because his real name is equally grandiose and also because he was particularly tiny. While a lot of babies were in and out of care, or stayed for a month or two then left for good, no one ever came back for Napoleon. Visiting every week, I was able to develop much more of a bond with him than with kids I saw less frequently. One day, when he was about 15 months old, Napoleon was having a hard time. He was teething, he had a slight fever, and another kid had hit him over the head with a wooden block. I was giving him a cuddle but he was crying very hard. At this in-opportune time, a staff member came in with a new "observer", an older lady who took one look at the situation and announced "He's scared of you because he isn't used for foreign faces, I'll clam him down." She confidently strolled over, plucked Napoleon from my arms and spun her back to me to shield him from the terrifying sight of my big nose and lack of epicanthic fold.  "There there" she said, "you're OK now."

Actually, for a few seconds Napoleon did stop crying. I guess being unceremoniously grabbed by a complete stranger will have that effect. Before she could congratulate herself on her success, however, the "observer" copped a punch to the face (from Napoleon, not me). He punched and kicked and squirmed until she put him down, upon which he ran back to me, threw himself into my lap and buried his face in my neck.

Miss you, Napoleon. My scary face thinks of you often.

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Science! Look Mummy, SCIENCE!

Stolen from http://xkcd.com where it even comes on t-shirts!

I came home from work one day, and Tiger was watching Tom and Jerry. Boulders were rolling down a hill and a witch turned them into dandy lions. "Mummy, SCIENCE!" Tiger shouted, pointing excitedly at the television. The man person smiled and shook his head.

The program was Tom and Jerry & The Wizard of Oz, which is wrong for a lot of reasons but I was at work so it isn't my fault. Anyway. Tiger wanted to know why the Wizard wasn't helping them, and the man person tried to explain that he couldn't actually do magic, his tricks look like magic but really he uses science. Between the man's imperfect grasp of Japanese and Tiger's imperfect grasp of reality, the take away message became magic=science, but this is a big secret. Thrilled with his discovery (he likes being in on secrets), Tiger spent the next few weeks yelling "SCIENCE!" whenever anything fantastical happened on television. While walking to school one day he asked if there was anyone who could really do magic, and I said no, which he didn't like. He thought about it for a little while then said "there are people who can do magic, except it's really science, right?" That's my boy, channeling Arthur C. Clarke's third law before he's even figured out how to brush his teeth f(^_^;

Check out the other posts in the ninth Carnival of Atheist Parenting

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The Tea Ceremony of Awkward (Flashback Friday)

This is basically a slightly-edited version of an email I sent friends a few years ago, so the tone is a little different from my usual posts. I debated about posting the story because it seems ungrateful of the kindness we were shown and that really isn't how we felt... it was just very, very awkward! So, while reading please keep in mind that we were very grateful, and our desire not to too obviously reject the hospitality we were being shown is in fact the source of most of the cringe involved in this tale of woe!

On my last day of the winter holidays 2009-2010 the then-secretary of my Naginata club (and mother of one of my co-workers) had invited me and my little sister Verity (who is also vegetarian and was visiting Japan at the time) over to her house for afternoon tea. We got a lift with an English teacher I'll call Nunally who did Naginata with me. The secretary had a huge house on a steep hill overlooking the bay on one side and the city on the other. When we arrived she was wearing a beautiful kimono, and it turned out that “tea” actually meant a full tea ceremony. She had a dedicated tea ceremony room in her house. Verity is not a fan of green tea at all, let alone matcha, and she hates red bean paste, which is often in the sweets served with the tea, so we were a bit nervous. It went beautifully though, and Verity even managed to down a second cup. When it was over we signed hugely with relief and patted each other on the back. Little did we know. 

We left the tearoom and were ushered into the dining room, where our hostess had prepared a full New Year’s meal. Why she didn’t mention she was feeding us I have no idea. It was all exquisite and hand made- the soup had spinach leaves that she had grown in the garden and tied individually into little knots- and every last dish had seafood in it. We sat there petrified as she brought out dish after gorgeous dish that we couldn’t eat. She even made steamed shrimp custards in antique cups garnished with roe. She had hand rolled sushi which was vegetarian except for some crab cake, so we tried to subtly poke that bit out and eat the rest. Watching us mangle her dainty sushi she kindly suggested that if chop sticks were too hard for us we could use our fingers. Verity took a bite of something that looked like a segment of citrus fruit but turned out to be herring roe. I attempted the salad but it had shrimp AND spam (an ancient traditional Japanese ingredient). She brought out some chicken which we declined. It was excruciating. We managed to drink the soup despite the fish stock and crab cake, then pleaded fullness; so she packed it all up into Tupperware for us to take home. At that point we just wanted to die but we retired to a sun-room for three hours of attempting to make conversation (our hostess and her husband couldn't speak English, my Japanese was basic and Verity's non-existent) while being served half a dozen kinds of black tea each in a different antique cup (the monetary value of each being the main talking point each time). During this conversation I stupidly responded to a question about beef in Australia that we were vegetarian. “That’s why you didn’t eat the chicken” our hostess commented, then after a moment Nunally asked “what about seafood?” “Well, no, we don’t eat seafood” I squirmed. “What about in soup stock?” she persisted. “WOW this tea is GOOD” Verity chimed in. Argh! We felt that nothing could ever feel more awkward than that conversation.

Then they asked what sights I had taken Verity to and I explained that we hadn’t done much because I was sick, and had to go back to work the next day, but that before going back to Australia Verity wanted to try an outdoor hot spring (rotenburo). “Yes” they exclaimed, “you must! We’ll take you to one tomorrow while Sophelia is at work”. Now, hot springs are naked affairs, and before hopping in you all sit on a row of stools washing and thoroughly rinsing off any soap. For some reason Japanese people think that this is too complex for gaijin to understand, so I had visions of Verity being surrounded by old naked Japanese women trying to school her on the finer points of soaping. I tried to subtly diffuse the situation by saying to Nunally in English “Verity has her period now, so she can’t go.” Rather than tactfully transmitting this to our hostess Nunally just directly translated it into Japanese, including our hostess's husband in the announcement.

“What a pain” said our hostess, “will it be finished by Thursday? We could go on Thursday.”

“She doesn’t know when it will finish...”

“Well when did it start? How long are they usually?”

We were wrong about the vegetarianism being the peak of awkwardness.

Eventually feeling fairly safe that I had got her out of it, we headed to Nunally’s car for a lift home only to hear our hostess say “See you at 11 tomorrow then.” They had decided to take Verity sight seeing but had neglected to tell us. For me, it was over, but Verity got to enjoy another full day of awkward.

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Monkey on the Lam and Lack of Sleep

Did I mention the lack of sleep?!

I haven’t posted in a long time because it actually turns out, and this may surprise you, that (I’m pretty sure no one has ever mentioned this before) being first time parents (are you ready for the big reveal?) is ACTUALLY really difficult and time consuming. I know, right? Who would have thought! So in lieu of an actual post here is a collection of random things that have happened lately. As you read please imagine the screen covered in small finger prints in shades of egg, banana and ketchup. Otherwise it won’t match the rest of my décor.

Two weeks ago the biggest news in my town was a wild boar wandering into the more fashionable of our two shopping malls and running amok. Tiger asked me of the boar had been male or female. I responded that it was probably a young male if it was wandering around by itself. “I think it was female” he replied. When I inquired why, he responded “Because it wanted to go shopping!” So many gender stereo-types already at such a young age (T.T) At the time, I thought “wow, you really know you live in the country-side when a wild boar is the main topic of conversation”. Little did I know that a major story would break the following week that captured the attention of the entire prefecture: A monkey went missing from the mountain where he usually lives! His name is Benz and he is 35, which is about 100 in human years, so grave concerns are held for his well-being. Tiger’s school made a special announcement to all students and a huge effort has been made to locate Benz. The husband and I, clearly not being locals, immediately thought of the Colbert Report:

We are now in week two of the Benz saga and having spent a long time in a hospital waiting room yesterday I can confirm that the TV news is still playing hourly updates on the situation. Additional search party recruits have been brought in. There are several tribes of monkeys on the mountain and Benz was originally the leader of the B tribe, but after a torrid affair with the head female of C tribe he defected and became leader of the C monkeys. Speculation is running rife that he may have tried to return to the B monkeys and been rejected, or possibly had another extra-tribe affair and been caught out by the unforgiving C tribe females. I am not making any of this up. Seriously. This has been a huge story down here. 

The World According to Tiger:

On our first full day with him we went to the pool. He was pretty scared and wanted to know if there were sharks. I said no, just humans. Then my JUST-turned-8 son came out with this gem: “Some humans are sharks.“ Deep kid, very deep.

Two days later we took a train to an amusement park. It was a short walk from the train station. Tiger is not a big fan of walking, but is a huge fan of whingeing.

Tiger: The amusement park is really faaaaar.
Me: Not at all, it’s near!

After a few seconds of pouting he puts on a cute voice and asks

Tiger: Why is the ferris wheel the same size as my thumb?

Feeling happy at the change of subject I put on my best friendly teacher voice and say

Me: That’s because, you know, things look smaller than they actually are when they're far away.
Tiger: Aha! Far! You just said it was far away!

Damn it (>_<)

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Graduation Day: The Boy Who Lived

April, 2010. It was the first day of school. The boy was about the start grade eight. It was his little sister’s first day at Junior High; her first time wearing a uniform and having a different teacher for each subject and a million other firsts. The sakura were blooming and pale pink petals fluttered through the air. As he had nearly every day for a year, he walked with his friends. They joked and laughed, faces turned to one another and eyes crinkled against the chilly spring sun. They didn’t see the car, coming around the corner too fast. The car couldn’t see them past a hedge on the corner, and didn’t bother to slow down. The impact crushed his ribcage, bone stabbing his lungs and tearing his diaphragm. His skull shattered, his brain swelling and escaping its suddenly fragile casing. For a time, he died.

For a week afterwards, a teacher was at his bedside twenty-four hours a day. He was not expected to survive more than a few days. His tanned, wiry body looked half the size it had now that it was surrounded by machines. A machine breathed for him. Another fed him. The school councillor prepared the other students for the inevitable. But the boy did not die. He remained comatose for more than a month. His family were warned not to expect too much, even if he woke up. He had been so terribly broken. When he did, one day, open his eyes and struggle to draw breath into his scarred lungs by his own power, I felt worse for his family than if he had died. His eyes were vacant. His face was expressionless. He didn’t respond to sounds. I imagined his mother spending the rest of her life caring for the shell of her child and silently cursed the paramedics who had brought him back from that first, small death.

I was so wrong.

He came back to us, more and more every day. He learned to smile. He sat up. He managed to swallow by himself. Finally, almost year after the accident, the hospital asked if he could come back to school as part of his rehabilitation. His mother, who had long ago quit her job, came with him. At first he could only join one class a day. He didn’t have the balance to sit on a school chair. He couldn’t climb the stairs to get to the science labs. He couldn’t speak. But he fought every day to get back what he had lost. He fought and he smiled every time he dropped his book or had to go to the toilet with his mother’s help while his friends looked awkwardly the other way. After a morning of struggling at school, he went back to the hospital and did more rehabilitation. At the start of this year he was walking by himself without a stick. He could speak, but it was very slow and difficult to understand. His mother moved to the side of the classroom instead of sitting beside him. He began trying to get his old life back, trying to reconnect with his friends.

It was hard for them, too. They missed him. They wanted to support him. But they were fifteen, bursting with energy. All they wanted to do was strip down to their undershirts and play soccer, pushing their growing bodies to their limits. They wanted to run, jump, even somersault across the sports field. He could only watch. They felt guilty when he watched them. They began running out of the classroom as soon as the bell rang, escaping before he could struggle from his chair to ask where they were going. He tried to engage them in the jokes they’d enjoyed before, but he had missed a year of television and didn’t get the current gags. His thoughts moved too slowly to understand their conversations, newly turned to topics more ‘adult’. Every time he was left out, he smiled. Every time I saw him smile, I wanted to cry for him.

In November the school festival included a number of speeches by students who had won essay writing awards during the year. I was surprised to see the boy’s name on the program. It was difficult for him to climb the stairs to the stage, but he did it alone. He spoke slowly. He words were still a little indistinct, a little difficult to understand, but his voice was loud and strong. “I wanted to come back to school” he said. “I never have a break; rehabilitation never stops. But I wanted to come back to school. I wanted to graduate with everyone. That’s why I can get through every day.” It was the first school festival since the tsunami and great earth quake. The student council had chosen the theme “生きているから” (because we live). For the boy, this meant something so much more. He did not die. He came back to us. He reclaimed his body, muscle by muscle. He was able to tell us in his own words how he felt.

Today is graduation day. Today he will walk across the stage on his own feet. Today he will stand with his friends to thank the teachers and parents who have supported them, with his voice loud and steady. Today he will graduate, together with everyone. Because he lives.

This was originally posted March 1st, 2012. I'm re-sharing it for Elleroy's Monday Blog hop. I hope it makes your Monday better.

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Miss Fatty and Miss Watermelon

Painfully thin

“I’m such a fatty” she says, tracing a huge invisible belly with her hands in case I don’t understand her Japanese. She’s seven years old and built like a whippet. Her older sister and older sister’s two friends nod understandingly. “We should go on a diet” they agree. I kneel down and put my hands around the littlest girl’s waist. My fingers almost touch. “Look how tiny you are!” I say. She laughs. We joke around as I pretend to miss-hear their names and repeat back silly words instead: “Watermelon? Your name is Watermelon? Nice to meet you Miss Watermelon.” We begin making nicknames. I become “Hot Teacher” because I constantly complain about how hot it is. The littlest girl names herself Debu-chan, Miss Fatty. I tell her I’m going to call her Hana-chan instead, Miss Flower. She beams and hugs me. Later she jumps onto my back. She weighs so little that I only realise I am holding her when I notice a foot tapping against my hip.

This is what I want childhood to look like. Facing the horizon, not the mirror.

I read so many stories about little girls and body image and how to talk about this stuff, but when I find myself on the spot and trying to make myself understood in Japanese and in a context that will make sense culturally I always fumble. I wish I had told her that her stomach muscles are amazing and that she can to handstands and cartwheels and finish the monkey bars faster than anyone else in her class and that all these wonderful things her body can do matter so much more than how it looks or what numbers are attached to it. But instead I just told her that she was beautiful. And it’s not good enough.

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