Kate’s Quests

I had dinner at my student’s house tonight.  Her husband is in China for the year (for work) so it’s just her and her seven year old daughter (the daughter is actually the student).  We got on the topic of the Americans here and I was telling her that D.J. and I were hoping to go to Hiroshima soon.  She said that she had never been and I asked her what she thought about the Washington (a carrier that’s nuclear and replacing the Kitty Hawk soon).  There have been protests outside the gates of the base – one in which I was on base and they shut down the gates for safety, trapping me inside for an hour or so – and I wondered her opinion on it.  She agreed with many of my students that even though she doesn’t necessarily like the fact that there will be a nuclear powered ship here, Japan needs America’s protection.  She said that when North Korea tested their missile over Japanese waters, her daughter cried while watching the news and informed her that she wasn’t going to go to school anymore.  She said that she wanted to die at home with her family and not alone at school.  Isn’t that just the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?  I almost died.  I just wanted to reassure her.  We’re not going anywhere anytime soon!

While walking the length of the mall I came across quite the deal on a new car.  It was a “speseial prais” for Yokosuka residents.  They shouldn’t have!  No…really.

I went to the home of one of the teachers I work with yesterday for lunch. She had four other teachers over and we ate Japanese food and just socialized. It was a holiday (it was Golden week) and yesterday was Boy’s day. She’s leaving the school, which is a shame because I really love her. She’s like another Gramma to me. We get along really well and I enjoy her classes the most. I think she’s the most easy going and relaxed and it translates to the classroom. It puts the students at ease. She has some health problems and says that the stress of the job hasn’t been good for her health so she’s cutting out now (she’s in her late 50’s to early 60’s – I think). Another teacher is also leaving, but I’ve only met her once or twice before.

We talked a lot about politics and religion and it was really interesting to listen to them talk about where they thought Japan was headed. They were all very concerned about the increasing crime rates. When they were growing up in the 50’s, they could remember crimes that happened very well since there would only be one newsworthy crime every couple of years. Now, they say, there are way too many to remember – at least one per day. They said that while growing up (right after WWII), while they still had rules governing morality, they weren’t supposed to have any pride in Japan and instead of highlighting the lines in their books, they had to sit and cross out every sentence in their textbooks. While this was happening, they were watching TV shows from America (Patty Duke and I Love Lucy especially) and fell in love with American culture. They said that they thought the American idea of individualism was so great that they took some of those ideas and incorporated the bad parts of that view into their culture without incorporating the good. They felt that the sense of community that was so prevalent in Japanese culture is increasingly disappearing. They were saddened by the fact that the rules of morality that they had been brought up with (it was a government instituted code taught in schools) has gone by the wayside and they felt like Japan needed something to bring it back into a moral place. They didn’t feel that instituting religion was the answer, but that something needs to be done. They worry that the young people of Japan don’t have the upbringing or spiritual background to be good people anymore.

It made me wonder if America (with all the different religions and senses of right and wrong) will fare any better.

A friend and I went to the Hard Off. You may remember me talking about it here. Anyway, I bought some Japanese dishes that I thought were gorgeous. What do you think?

The platters:

Here are the normal bowls:

And smaller bowl with a lip:

I wanted to leave Japan with some unique Japanese furniture and last Thursday the opportunity presented itself at a Bazaar.  We bought a jewelry box, a tonsu and a bar.  The woman selling the furniture told us that the brass on the bar is over 100 years old, a lotus and promotes peace and harmony.  I figured that was the only way to get happy drunks in the house.

I ended up pushing the bookcase over and putting the cat tree in front of the window.  The next place we rent won’t be nearly as small (I’m crossing my fingers).

I put the Tonsu in the office.  Another guest bed will eventually go there, but until then, the boys have a new toy.

I took my Japanese friends on base the other day. It was very exciting for them. They couldn’t get over how cheap everything was. I’m just not a base kinda girl. Overseas and especially stateside, I would like to stay as far away from the base as possible. It’s just all concrete and barbed wire to me. It feels oppressive seeing as how you have to show ID just to go home. No thank you. I’d rather live in a normal neighborhood in any country than on a base.

Anyway, we all had a good time and afterwards we went to Starbuck’s to relax and one of the girls said that her opinion of Americans had changed dramatically since having met me. She explained that she had been to America once (I believe SanDiego) and was on the shuttle to a shopping mall from the hotel. An older American lady sidled up to her, got right in her face and said, “I HATE Japanese.” She was shocked and hurt and went she came back to Japan, she figured all Americans were aggressive, blunt, forceful, obnoxious and mean. This was why she hired a Canadian man as her daughter’s teacher and when he left, they hired me. He confirmed her idea of Americans by telling her that yes, all Americans are like that. Canadians, he said, were a much calmer and nicer lot. But, she said, I really changed her mind about Americans. That’s one down and only 127 million more to go.

Shara stays over at our house quite frequently and when she does she often has two kitties jumping on her.  They use other methods to wake D.J. and I, but when you’re sleeping in the guest room, there is no escaping it.  They use the ladder to get into the loft and then they leap down, usually landing on her legs.

I can’t imagine that she enjoys it all that much.  Leo is the usual culprit.  He seems to enjoy launching himself off of the top of the loft more so than Zorro.

It often starts when they know Shara is in the guest room.  She tries to keep them out by closing the door.  But that does no good in this house since Zorro has figured out how to open all of the doors in the place.  We once came home to our home in Seattle to find every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen wide open.

Anyway, Zorro will open the door and they’ll both go scurrying under the bed.  Shara will most likely turn over and they’ll run back into our room.  Leo will slowly decide to investigate Shara and jump up onto the bed.

Yes, I know that there is a bicycle in the bedroom.  There’s just no other place to keep it.  The Japanese aren’t real big into storage areas here.  Anyway, Zorro then gets curious.

And let the games begin!

We got a new channel the other day on JCom.  They did away with the Reality TV (we never watched it since they usually only played episodes of Cheaters and court room dramas..yikes).  So we got the SciFi channel, which would thrill my dad and my father in law if they were here.  And since it’s a brand new channel, they’re playing all pilots.  I’ve seen the pilot of both the X-Files and Quantum Leap.  I loved both shows as a kid, but my first love was Quantum Leap.  It’s highly embarrassing now, but as a 10 year old I loved Scott Bakula.  I thought he was dreamy.  OMG.

And now?  What a weird 10 year old I was!  Whose 10 year has a crush on this guy?  D.J. is laughing and pointing at me, saying, “I know!  This one, right here!” Must have been the streak of gray through the hair that dazzled me so.

You can get these free soft drinks for only 150yen.  You can also get free salad for 200yen.  I think they mean free refills, but it still caused me to ponder.

It says, “We’ll advise you about your ’stickiness’ about your daily life.”

Doesn’t everyone take their advice from a tea towel?