Jan. 16, 2012 - Nissin

On Sunday, Whitney pointed out Nissin World Delicatessen to us, and we walked inside for a brief look around.  Nissin is an international grocery store with groceries from around the world.  I decided to return on Monday to spend a little longer looking around the store and to do a little shopping.  I don't think I'll be a frequent shopper there since it's a little on the expensive side compared to the regular grocery stores (which already seem expensive to me), and it's not the most convenient for me in terms of the subway - I needed three trains to get there.  However, I do think I'll shop there occasionally.

Nissin did carry items I haven't seen in other stores, such as a Betty Crocker brownie mix!  I bought one of those to tuck away for later.  Shh - don't tell the kids.  Then I needed oil for the brownies.  (Didn't want to make the mistake of a friend of Whitney's who accidentally used some kind of vinegar in her expensive cake mix.)  The only oil I've been able to buy so far has been olive oil because it had a few English words on the bottle (and it's a brand I've seen in the States).  The nice thing about Nissin is that even if the packaging is in Japanese, the label on the shelf with the price usually has the English name (usually, not always).  I saw a big bottle of Wesson canola oil, but I went with some Japanese brand.  That way (hopefully) I can look for that same bottle in my neighborhood grocery store next time I need to buy some.

I'm having a little trouble with buying fish.  I like to buy fish that has no parts (even the skin) that I will need to detach.  I like all my meat in neat packages that are far removed from what they originally looked like.  Well, I have resigned myself to the fact that I will not be able to do that with fish.  I will, at the least, have to buy fish that still has its skin.  However, I will have to be in Japan a LOT longer before I purchase this (yes, it's octopus):

Many of the grocery stores around here deliver, handy when you don't have a car.  I haven't yet taken advantage of that service, but I did this time.  I was buying some heavy items, and the thought of the three subway rides and all the walking made me decide that 800 yen was not too high a price, after all.

Jan. 15, 2012 - Noodle soup and capture the flag

Today we got together with our friends the Webbs.  Cooper and Isaac, their third grader, are pretty friendly; Greer and Beth, their seventh grader, like to hang out, and Ellie, their fifth grader, goes between the two groups.  We met them at a train station in their neighborhood, and then we walked to their favorite noodle shop.  Once again, I was the slowest one with my chopsticks.  I'm not sure if I'm done eating because I'm full or if I'm done because I'm just tired.

Greer and Cooper are going to tell you about the day. 
First, Cooper:
We really enjoyed capture the flag.  The boys won, of course.  Ellie started freaking out when she didn't know that her teammates had been captured by us.  It was really fun and cold, but I just wore a t-shirt.  My t-shirt said "BOB: The Man, The Myth, The Legend."  Bob is an intergalactic space driver who shot Lightning McQueen with an AK-47.  He got put in space jail.  He exploded space jail and escaped.  Now he's roaming space as an intergalactic space criminal.  Bob is very violent.  Oh, and the noodle soup was good.

Now, Greer:
Okay, so after the subway, we met the Webbs at the exit. Beth and I looked in the various windows and stores as we weaved our way along the streets to reach the soup restaurant. When we got there, I got the soup that Beth, Isaac, and Ellie have always gotten. It is a soup that has soba noodles with a beef broth, I think, and a radish noodley-type thing that is really good. It is a white oval with a bright pink swirl in the middle. After our lunch, we headed to the park to play capture the flag. It is a huge park perfect for playing capture the flag because you have so many good hiding spots and lookout spots. We played for a while, the girls always venturing into the boys' territory because the boys were always Chickens. Ellie was guard towards the end, and no one likes guard duty. Beth and I got caught, and Ellie did not know. She got mad and after 10 minutes she walked away from our flag and quit the game without knowing that we were captured. That is the one thing bad about all the bushes - you can't see if one of your teammates gets captured!:(   Once she left, Isaac stole our flag while we helplessly watched our team lose. Cooper (as our guard) liked to hurt us by stepping on our feet and hitting us. I know -  very fun, not! After that, we headed to the Webb's house and Beth and I took some cool pictures of my eye! Check it out!

I know, I have a pretty eye.
Well, bye for now and here is our word of the day:

Greer wanted the word of the day to be the word for soup.  There are actually several different words for soup, depending on the kind of soup.  But there is one that is a kind of generic word for soup.
Japanese word of the day:  shirumono  (click to hear pronunciation) means "soup"

Jan. 14, 2012 - First swim meet and Kim

Today we really missed having a car.  We haven't missed it too much up to now, even when lugging multiple bags of groceries home (okay, maybe we miss it then).  But today, we really missed it.  Greer had a swim meet at ASIJ this morning, and she was supposed to be there at 8:00 am.  Now our swim buddies in Houston are thinking, "What's the problem?  That seems like a pretty late arrival time to us."  Yes, and we would agree, if we had a car.  If we had a car, it would be just over a 30-minute drive to school.  But without the car.....  If you read Tuesday's post, you know it took Greer and me over two hours to make it to school.  Now, luckily, we figured out all the pitfalls that day, thus enabling us to leave the house only an hour and a half before we needed to be at school.  Definitely, we were missing our car as we headed out the door at 6:30 am.

If anybody was wondering what the trains were like early on a Saturday morning, they are still crowded.  We left our house shortly after 6:30, so it was well before 7:00 am when we caught our first train (of three).  The train was crowded enough that none of the four of us had seats.  We tried to unobtrusively take a picture, but it didn't work.  It's so quiet on the trains (all the time) that the click of the camera is too obvious.

Our first meet was a short one.  Normally the meets are middle school and high school together.  But this weekend our high school team was away in the Philippines at a meet, so it was just middle school.  The meet actually took less time than our travel there and back.  (I don't know if that says more about the length of the meet, or more about our travel time.)  However, my understanding is that we are in for a much longer day next Saturday.

Greer doesn't pick what she swims in the meets; the coach picks the races for every swimmer.  He can enter only 4 swimmers in each event who will be swimming for points, but he can enter other swimmers as exhibition swimmers.  Earlier in the week, he did not know if he would be putting Greer on any relay teams, but she ended up swimming butterfly on the C medley team.  The Mustangs also fielded 6 relay teams for the freestyle relay, and Greer swam on the C team there as well.

Our swim team buddies from Houston (both Stingrays and ESA) would be surprised by how differently these meets are run.  There were no heat sheets.  We did not know the order of events or even what events there were.  Greer's individual events were the 100 IM, the 50 fly, and the 100 backstroke, but we don't know if those were all exhibition events (she is just in 6th grade, after all), or if she was swimming for points in any of those.  Greer kept coming to us to ask us questions, and we kept pointing out to her that of all the people in the swimming pool area, we probably knew less than anybody else. 

We do know that she looked good and had some good times (compared to her Houston times), though we haven't seen any overall results.  I don't think we should be looking for results to be posted to the website.  Probably the coach just has them handwritten somewhere.  (Drew says I'm exaggerating; the results are definitely in the computer; they just must be top-secret.)

Here are some pictures from the meet:

Team suits were ordered back when the season started in December, so we weren't able to get her one of those, but we were able to get her a Mustangs swim cap.  I should have taken some pictures of Cooper playing on his iPhone, but trying to remember to look up and cheer his sister when it was her turn to swim.

Today we also got to see Drew's old friend Kim Choate.  Kim and Drew were in the same research group in graduate school (Kim was a few years ahead of Drew), and he and Drew have been friends since.  After graduation, Kim got a job with GE, and eventually he was transferred to Japan.  He lived in Tokyo for 7 or 8 years, a few of them not too far from where our apartment is.  He and his wife have been back in the States for a number of years now, but he just happened to be in the area on a business trip.  He came out to ASIJ during the swim meet and got to see a few of Greer's races.  The three of us thought it was funny that he had to come all the way to Japan to see Greer swim.

After the meet, we headed back to our apartment.  At our subway station, Kim showed us a grocery store down a side street on the other side of the station, which gives us an option besides the store in the station itself.  Greer showered, we showed Kim our place, and then we headed out for a late lunch.  Kim took us to Kua 'Aina (pronounced “Koo-a eye-na”).  This restaurant originated in Hawaii, but now there are several in Tokyo.  We thought the burgers were yummy! 

We then spent the rest of the day walking around Shibuya with Kim while he pointed out various stores and gave us tips on the area.  It definitely would be handy if he still lived around here.  By 8:00 Greer and Cooper were dragging (the day had started quite early, and they'd been on the go for all of it).  I took them back the apartment while Drew and Kim went out to dinner.  They went to a Korean barbecue place, which we'll tell you about when the whole family has a chance to go.

Jan.12, 2012 - Maybe I'd rather walk

Today I was meeting a group of Exxon spouses at Viron (basically a French bakery with lots of high-calorie bread) near the Shibuya station.  We were meeting at 9:30 at the restaurant, so somebody suggested we meet near the statue of Hachiko by exit 6 (the subway stations have numerous exits) at 9:15 and walk there together.  There were about 8 of us going, and half are new to Tokyo, while the other half arrived in August/September.  It's handy to have a group of people you can go to with questions. 

I walked to my subway station and joined the already sizable crowd waiting on the subway platform.  I thought the size of the crowd meant that the subway must be coming soon.  However, while I'm sure it did come pretty soon after I arrived, by the that time, the crowd had more than doubled, possibly tripled.  Our station is station #1 on the Chiyoda line, so sometimes trains are empty when they pull in, and sometimes they're coming in from the suburbs and may already have a lot of people.  (We haven't figured out how to tell which is coming when yet.)  The particular train I got that morning was empty, so we all managed to fit on.  I was towards the front of the crowd, so I actually got a seat.  However, once everybody was on the train, it seemed way too claustrophobic in a seat, so I got up and moved back toward the door.  Increasing the claustrophobic feeling on a crowded train is that the trains always seem so warm.  Two stops later it was time for me to push my way out.  A small number of people exited the train when I did, but a much larger number of people took our places.  When I looked back at the train, I couldn't believe how crowded it seemed.  I wish I had thought to take a picture.  I saw one of the subway workers with the white gloves who help to push commuters onto crowded trains on the platform.  I don't know if he actually had to do any pushing this time because I didn't see him in action.  May I never be on a train that is having more people pushed onto it.  I had to take one more train to reach Shibuya station.  The train I got on was crowded, but not totally unbearable.  When I exited, again more people got on the train than got off.  I wasn't going all the way to the center of Tokyo, which helped.  My understanding is that the morning "rush hour" on the trains is from about 7:30 am to 9:30 am.  Trains are crowded at most other times, but "rush hour" brings it to a whole new level.  I really did not like riding on the train when it was that crowded.  Next time I'm going to check how far it is and think about walking.  Of course, that opens up so many more possibilities for getting lost.

If you've read other entries about finding things, then it should come as no surprise that I was unable to find the statue of Hachiko.  Here's a picture of Hachiko (that I took later):

For one thing, it would have helped if I had googled Hachiko ahead of time so that I would have known what I was looking for.  Hachiko was a faithful Akita who met his owner at the station after work every day, and he continued going to the station and waiting every day for years after the owner had died.   The Hachiko exit is a popular meeting spot.  Unfortunately for me, the Hachiko exit is NOT exit 6, hence my difficulty.  (Somehow, the rest of the group was already familiar with Hachiko and so weren't thrown off by the wrong exit.) 

However, I did eventually find my way to Viron and met up with the group.  I enjoyed my high-calorie bread, yet another reason it would have been better to walk than take the train.

Speaking of high-calorie items, we had another Domino's night.  We had received this coupon with a previous order:

(Remember, we do our ordering online to avoid the language barrier.) Drew actually figured out how to redeem the coupon! It was worth 1,000 yen off our order! (He wanted to make sure I included this in the blog.)


Greer had her A day today and wanted to write about it:
Hi! Today I had an A day (You learned about it in yesterday's post) and my first day in P. E. and Science. My P.E. teacher, Mrs.Vriend (Pronounced Mrs.Friend), had us play field hockey which I found I was very good at compared to the other boys and girls. After P.E. I had science with Mr.Hoskins who is strict but has a very joking manner. Example, he said, "If you don't answer this question right, I will personally move you back to the third grade!" Of course he was joking.
After Science I had lunch! I was famished. Zoe and I met at the 2nd pillar before the luch doors (Yes, we already meet somewhere so we can make sure we know where each other is sitting). We both got spaghetti after I helped her buy lunch tickets. Then we went to the Kiosk together to get a frozen treat. While we were eating it., we went to our lockers and got our backpacks with 15 minutes to spare. Then we headed to LA/SS where we talked to Mrs.Erwin about our personal assignment. And guess what? She is already mine and Zoe's favorite teacher! After that, it was the usual study center then a swim practice. At swim (which is very easy, by the way) we don't have a specific time to complete the set in and there are basically no sets. Very lax compared to ESA (my competitive year around swim team in Houston). We only did 25s, 50s, and the occasional 100. I know, Grace! A real shocker! I still can't get over how easy it is. Oh, by the way, I still don't know my way home. :(


Japanese word of the day:  asagohan  (click to hear pronunciation) means "breakfast"

Jan. 11, 2012 - Greer's first day

Greer's going to write about her first day of school, but first, I'll share a picture from my trip to the grocery store today.

I don't know if you can see the labels in the picture clearly enough.  Have I found the oils, the vinegars, or neither?  I wish I knew.....

    

     Hi! I am going to tell you about my first day. . . So at 6 o'clock, we woke up got ready for the day and all that. I know that some of you would dislike your mom or dad walking you to your bus stop everyday for the first week, but without them, I would need to start walking to my bus stop at 5:30 in order to find my way! After boarding the 30 minute bus ride I fiddled around with my iphone. When I arrived at school, I had no idea how to get to the office from the buses. So, I asked a nice 7th grader named Alice if she could help me find my way. After I arrived at the office, Zoe and I got our schedules printed. Zoe is a new kid like me and I could tell we were going to be friends right away!

We walked together to our homerooms and then departed. Some nice kid named Diva in my Home room walked me to beginners band after home room. Mr.Wanless, my band teacher, made me feel right at home. Lucky for me, I knew two of the percussionists, Connor (my peer guide) and Julie (someone on my swim team). They helped me with the xylophone, but guess what? It is set up exactly like a piano so it was very easy to learn. After that I had art! Yeah! We worked on drawing Mona Lisa upside down and working on twine figures. Since me and Zoe had art together, we headed off to Mrs. Harvey's class for math. We worked on average . . . wait, she did not tell us specifically what we were working on. She just told us write about average. As we were going over it, it sounded like maybe clothing size. After math we had lunch (finally)! Instead of a lunch account, you use lunch tickets which you can purchase from a machine at the kiosk. Steps to getting your lunch:

     1. Grab a tray and silver ware.

     2. Tell the lunch lady what you want (Spaghetti, soup, chicken nuggets, clementine, etc.)

     3. When she hands you food, pay with a lunch ticket. Usually a 550 ticket is best so you can get a main meal and side/fruit with one ticket and you don't get change or you don't have to pay with multiple tickets.

     4. Eat lunch

     5. Put your tray in a stack, scrape your left overs into food trash, pile up your plates.

After lunch, we had LA/SS (Language Arts and Social Studies) with Mrs.Erwin. So far, mine and Zoe's favorite teacher is Mrs.Erwin! She is sooooooo nice and made sure we understood everything and she told us about stuff we would be doing! She got us started on DLR's and weekly vocab. Since Zoe and I did not know how to do much on the computer, she sent us down to Mr.Erwin and Mrs.Kim (Technology teachers) to learn more about how to use our computers (by the way, we get pcs this year and next year we get macs). After LA/SS, I went to study center and typing skills to improve my typing. After last period, I boarded the bus home.

     Some of you might have some questions so I am going to try to answer some possible questions.

Math, LA/SS, and Science have 2 periods each.

I did not have science or P.E. today because there are 2 different types of days, a A day and a B day.

Every day I have LA/SS.

There is a late bus which I take on days I have swim practice.

And no, I still can't find my way to the bus stop.

Japanese word of the day:  hirugohan  (click to hear pronunciation) means "lunch"

Jan. 10, 2012 - Where's the school again?

Today Greer got to sleep in.  Cooper, of course, said that was not fair.  She doesn't start classes until Wednesday.  I walked Cooper to the bus stop and then at 7:30 woke Greer up.  She had requested the wake-up so that maybe she could call a few of her friends.  After waking her up (and having a conversation with her), I went about my business.  Finally saw her when the phone rang a little before 9:00 (her counselor with the good news about band).  She'd gone back to sleep and didn't even remember talking to me.

Although she didn't have classes, there were swim team pictures today, for which she wanted to be there.  That meant she and I had to take the train to her school, unless we wanted to take the bus at 7:08 and hang out at school the entire day.  In retrospect, that may have been the better plan. 

She and I hung out at the apartment for the morning, playing Words with Friends against each other (and friends from the U.S.).  We had been told by somebody in Admissions who lives near us to allow an hour and 20 minutes to get there by train (as opposed to the 30+ minutes on the school bus).  School dismisses at 2:37, so Greer and I planned to leave the apartment at 12:30, after lunch.  Over 2 hours - should be plenty of time, right?  Not quite.

We left the apartment on time and walked to our station.  Took the subway to Shinjuku station, where we had to change to a rapid train.  Here is where we made our first mistake.  I thought I was pretty careful about which train we boarded, but I guess I wasn't careful enough.  I realized the possibility we were on the wrong train when I heard them call the station before ours.  Hmm, had we made enough stops up to that point?  But I couldn't be sure until the next stop, which was four stops after the one we had wanted.  Yep, we'd gotten on TOO rapid of a train.  Greer thought maybe we could walk back to the correct station.  (I gave her the short answer - No.)  We found the correct platform for the train to take us back to the station we wanted, but before we boarded, I asked various strangers if they spoke English so I could double-check.  Yes, we were in the right place.  Got off at the right station, exited that line, found the next line to take, boarded the right train, got off at the right place.  Here is where we made our second and more time-consuming mistake.  The map provided by the school tells you to cross the train tracks and turn left at a fruit stand.  In the process of exiting the station, we crossed the tracks.  As we exited, we saw a fruit stand in front of us, so we turned left and tried to follow the map.  Well, after walking about 10 minutes (it's supposed to be less than a 10-minute walk), we realized something was wrong.  Turns out that crossing the tracks while exiting the station was not the crossing the tracks that was meant on the map.  We were supposed to exit the station and then RE-cross the tracks.  There was another fruit stand at that point that was the one intended on the map.  I do not think this was solely the fault of the mapreaders.  I believe the mapmakers share some of the blame here.  Anyway, by way of asking various strangers where Tama Station was (they didn't speak English, so they didn't understand my question about American School in Japan, but they understood enough to point us in the direction of Tama station), and by Greer figuring out how to use the map on her iPhone, we eventually found the school, after turning a 10-minute walk into a 40-minute walk.  Greer made it to swim practice and pictures and I made it to Cooper's classroom, albeit somewhat breathlessly, just as it turned 2:37.  (I had been afraid he would forget I was coming and would get on the regular bus instead of waiting with us for the late bus.)  Hey, at least now we know the way!

I realized that the problems with Greer's schedule kept me from talking much about Cooper's first day.  So today I tried to get him to share some things to include in the blog.  First, he's made some friends: Harry, who's also new, Matthew, who rides our bus, and Sean.  Today was his first day of Japanese class (he'll have it every other day).  When I asked him about it, his answer was, "She said a lot of words I didn't understand."  Informative, isn't he?  For homework, he has to go to her website and listen to two songs (while reading the lyrics) several times; one song has various greetings and the other song is the months of the year.  His new school has more recess time than SWE, which he definitely liked.  He has a long recess after lunch and two other shorter recesses.


Cooper's picking the word of the day today, from his Japanese homework.
Japanese word of the day:  Ichigatsu  (click to hear pronunciation) means "January"

Jan. 9, 2012 - First Day of School

Today was our first day at the American School in Japan.  Earlier start than the kids are used to - their bus picks them up at 7:08.  All students at ASIJ, elementary, middle, and high, have the same start and end times and ride the same bus.  The same bus thing was handy since our across-the-way neighbor is a ninth grader at ASIJ and walked with us to the bus stop this morning.  Drew and I rode the bus with the kids to attend the New Family Orientation.  Greer and Cooper sat down together, but the seats were a little small for me and Drew to share, so we made them split up and each one sit with one of us.  So embarrassing - to have to sit with your parent!
As soon as we got to school, Cooper was whisked off to his classroom.  We didn't realize we could go with him, so we had to wait until later in the day to meet his teacher.  Then they gathered the middle school students together and took them off for a technology orientation - they give them laptops for schoolwork.  I'm not sure what happened with the high school students - I wasn't really paying attention to them.  Then our orientation started.  We met lots of people, there was lots of talking (transportation, health center, activities, etc.)  We got to meet the principals of the various divisions as well as the other new parents.  We had invidual appointments with the kids' counselors.  These appointments were scheduled throughout the day, so depending on when your appointment(s) were, you might miss other stuff.  For example, we missed the president of the PTA talking, but that was okay since I'm NOT volunteering this year. :)

The appointment with Cooper's counselor went smoothly, but after all, it's elementary school.  He wasn't with us since he was in his class for a regular day of school today.  Greer's appointment did not go as well.  She was with us since she doesn't start classes until Wednesday (they need Tuesday to get all the middle-schoolers' schedules ready).  She was with us for part of the day and the other part of the day she was with peer helpers or at the tech orientation or getting her locker or something similar.  We got two disappointing pieces of news during the appointment.  First, the kids in 6th grade strings have a year playing their instruments before they start 6th grade strings.  Greer was going to meet with the strings teacher later in the day, but it didn't sound promising for her continuing the cello at school since she didn't start until this current school year.  Second, and this was the big one, they weren't going to be able to place her in a Japanese class.  We thought they would do some kind of mid-year accommodation for their new students, but they only do that in elementary school.  So she will not be able to take Japanese at school until next year.  Of the four of us, she was the most excited to learn and she knows the most words already.

Now, for how we dealt with those two disappointments.  Greer did meet with the cello teacher and when she looked at the music they were working on, she decided it was much harder than what she'd been doing.  They have to take a music class, and the other choices were band and choir.  She definitely did not want to do choir, so she chose percussion in band.  She figured it would help with piano.  However, then we were told by the counselor that there'd probably be a problem since the kids had already been playing their instruments for several months.  She knew how upset Greer was and she promised she would talk to the band teacher.  She called us with the good news the following morning - the band teacher was happy to have her and said the other percussion students would help her catch up.  The strings teacher was also willing to have her if we would be getting private lessons for her.  However, Greer decided that was a lot of pressure, so she chose band.  She still wants to get cello lessons so that she can join strings next year at school.  As for Japanese, we're going to be following up with Exxon to see if we can arrange some lessons for Greer.  We're pretty sure it's going to work out.

On a positive note, Greer joined the middle school swim team.  We didn't know if she'd be able to join since their season started the beginning of December, but she met with the swim coach at some point during the day.  He was happy to be getting a good backstroker and invited her to practice after school that day.  We all went (and Cooper didn't even complain much since he had his iPhone :) ).  She hasn't been swimming since the end of November, but she did well!  They have a meet this Saturday, and the coach is definitely going to have her swim backstroke.  She's happy to be able to swim for her school!

ASIJ runs late buses with modified routes to accommodate after-school activities.  So the four of us caught the late bus at 4:30 and got off at the stop we'd been told.  Now this was of course not the stop where we'd caught the bus this morning, and we had only a general idea of the direction of our apartment.  But after much fiddling around with iPhones, we were able to map out a route home and made it safely there a mere 2 hours later (just kidding).


Japanese word of the day:  gakko  (click to hear pronunciation) means "school"
I also saw the spellings "gakkou," "gakkoo," and "gakou."  Maybe all are acceptable since the Japanese word would actually consist of characters (which I'm still pretty far from learning).  Despite the uncertainty, Greer and I felt strongly that "school" needed to be the word of the day.  Once we start lessons, we'll have somebody to consult. :)