Jan. 27, 2012 - Sixth Grade Intermission

I've been pretty caught up with the ocean shipment, so I forgot to share this exciting bit of news: we sold our house!  We actually got three offers on the house, and in consultation with Cartus, the relocation company, we accepted the best one.  Cartus now owns our house; the relocation company, on behalf of Exxon, buys the house from us, and then they are the people who deal with the sale to the new buyer.  We had only until the end of January to sell the house ourselves and be eligible for the incentive payment.  Otherwise, we would have had to take the company's guaranteed offer.  We made it with time to spare.  Yay!!

Since I'm working on the disaster that we currently call home, Greer is going to write today's entry so she can tell you about the "extended campus activity" in which the sixth grade recently got to participate.  Wednesday through Friday of this week is what is called "intermission" at the middle school, and each grade has a special program.  For sixth grade, the first two days the students have Japanese cultural experiences and special activities on campus.  The third day they participate in an exchange with a Japanese school.  Here's Greer:

On day one, we started at our advisory class and then we headed down to sumi-e (a kind of painting).  Our teacher taught us how to do bamboo, grapes, dragons, and many more!  Here is a picture of my favorite one!

I loved doing it, it was art in a new way!
After sumi-e, we headed down to Taekwondo (the teaching of kicking and punching).  The teacher told us that it was from Korea.  We learned the basic ten blocks, 2 different types of kicks, and 2 different types of punches.  After that activity, we headed down to the commons and (me and Zoe) watched people sing karaoke.  If you know me well enough, you know I would never ever go up and sing like everyone else did.  Finally, we had lunch.  I had a buttered bagel, vegetables, and some water.  Then right after lunch, we had a yakisoba cooking class with my homeroom teacher.  First we cut up all the vegetables.  Then we put the oil on the pan with the onions.  Once the onions were brown, we added peppers and cabbage.  Then they cooked for a while and we put in meat (don't worry, it was already cooked) and then the noodles with some sauce.  Bon Appetit! I brought it home and everyone tried it! :)

The next day, we started at taiko drumming.  It gave me a headache!  We yelled, shouted, and pounded on the drums!  It was sooooo loud!  Thankfully, the session eventually ended.  After that, we headed to zori. Zori are shoes woven from straw. Here is a picture of my masterpiece:

I am proud to say mine was the best in the class and everyone else's was falling apart because they didn't weave it tight enough!  Any way, I am glad mine turned out the way it was even though it could have been a little wider and a 1/2 inch shorter.  After that class, we had karaoke and lunch. After that, my class took a hike with Mr. Gibson through Nogawa Park.  After 1 mile of walking, we got to a statue of some sort and he told us that he has a story about it that he will tell us later when we get to a good spot.  So we walked some more and Mr.Gibson (a different story) told us about how in the 1900's, a farmer looking for young bamboo shoots was digging and then the ground started to cave in.  So he dug some more.  Then the farmer found a tomb and he contacted the nearest place where scientists were.  They found out that 12 thousand years ago, there had been people living in Japan.  So Japan built a little museum and Mr.Gibson brought the girls in for us to see first. He pointed out four skulls and he said see those 2?  And that one that is split in half?  And also that one that seems to be looking right at . . . Then he scares all the girls, well except for me and 2 others, by grabbing us all and screaming.  You should have seen it!  All the girls were screaming their heads off and the boys looked in the door and started laughing!  Well, it was funny.  So we started walking back to the school and we stopped at a pile of ashes in the middle of a rice farm, where Mr. Gibson told us another story (the one about the statue).  Everyone believed it until he said "Before you go to bed tonight, pray that Mr. Gibson will never tell you such a stupid story again."  (He has been telling this made-up story for 12 years.)


The next day, as soon as we arrived at school, we re-boarded the bus.  This time in color groups so that we could have groups at Chofu-Daiichi and there would be no confusion.  When we arrived, we were greeted by a Chofu-Daiichi student with a sign.  We put on slippers and followed them inside to the gym.  Their gym was freezing!  But after greetings, a game of dodgeball was organized.  Chofu-Daiichi aganist ASIJ!  Well, we took it easy on them the first game, but they beat us!  But on the second game we beat them!  But it was very close. . . . Next we got back organized in our color groups and we went to different activities.  The first one was where we drew japanese symbols.  I chose the symbol for sushi.  After that, we did some traditional Japanese games.  One of them was a game where you have 8 desks for each team.  There are 2 teams, 1 girl team and 1 boy team.  (The girls always won.)  Each team would stand on top of the desks and they would play rock, paper, scissors.  Every time a team lost, they would take away a desk.  You have to fit your whole team on the desks; if a person fell off or your team had 2 desks left, you lost.  It was really fun.  After part of the day with Chofu-Daiichi, we headed home on the buses with a partner from Chofu-Daiichi.  I got a quiet girl named Yume.  She tried to talk to me in Japanese, but after a few minutes she finally understood me when I said "I'm new, I don't speak Japanese."  So she asked me a question in English. "Do you swim?"  I said yes and she said she did too.  That was pretty much our whole conversation for 30 minutes.  Once we got to the school, I took her to the lunch room and put her stuff down by our table. I showed her the different options and made sure she got the one she wanted.  Once she was seated, I got shredded beef with bell peppers which in fact was very good.  After lunch, our group led the Japanese to many activities, including kickball, pictionary, and flag football.  Then we said goodbye and they took the train home!  End of story, ta da! Well, I finally remembered to take home my art stuff.

Jan. 25, 2012 - They came, they saw, they dumped stuff.

Remember what I said about it being better to receive the ocean shipment by myself than to wait a week until Andrew could stay home with me?  I was WRONG.  Our apartment looks like a moving truck threw up inside of it.  To complicate matters, the movers unpacked nearly every single box, so there are just random piles of stuff everywhere.  We would normally have the movers unpack very little so that we could unpack stuff as we were ready for it.  However, we’ve been told by others here to go ahead and have the movers do it.  That way they can remove all the packing material, which is more difficult to dispose of here than in the States.  However, when you have a mover in every room and only one person (me) to supervise and help, you get random piles of stuff everywhere.  Of course, the fact that I don’t speak Japanese and only one member of the moving crew spoke English did add a wrinkle to the situation.

When they were loading the books onto the bookshelves, they asked if they should put them in any particular order.  Why, yes, I would like fiction grouped together, alphabetized by author.  Poetry in another section, women's studies, sports stories, history.  Don't worry, I said no.

Oh, and we volunteered to have the Cub Scout den meeting (Cooper’s first meeting here) at our house on Feb. 5.  They normally meet at the U.S. Embassy, but their regular meeting place is unavailable that day.  We’ve hosted plenty of den meetings, so we said that they could have the meeting here (which also means we can’t get lost trying to find a new place).  However, that was before I realized that a moving truck was going to throw up inside our house.  So we have 10 days to create some semblance of order.  Did I mention that there are 15 boys in the den? 

P.S. In case you were wondering, yes, Andrew is at fault for me agreeing to take the ocean shipment this week instead of next.  He made it seem like it was the reasonable thing to do.  

Here's a Japanese word I actually used the past few days (to the movers, though I'm pretty sure Andrew should have been using it with me):

Japanese word of the day:  sumimasen  (click to hear pronunciation) means "I'm sorry" 

Jan. 23, 2012 - Our ocean shipment is here and my husband isn't

I have all the blog entries started for the last few days, but I haven't finished them yet, and it looks like it will be a few more days before I get the chance.  We got word last week that our ocean shipment had arrived and it was expected to clear Customs this morning.  The moving people planned to be here at 1:00 to start unloading and unpacking.

They were and they did.

Now there is stuff all over the house.  However, there's one truckload still to come from the warehouse, and that appears to be where half of our bedding and all of our towels are.  Also, some stuff that was supposed to be in storage in the U.S. is here in Tokyo.  Of course, only a small fraction of that is stuff that we actually told them to put in storage.  The bulk of it is just stuff that NOW we wished we had put in storage.

The "best" part of the situation is that Drew was not able to be at the apartment today, nor will he be able to be here tomorrow or Wednesday.  He can legitimately take the time off for moving; however, it just so happens that this week there are meetings he HAS to attend.  If the ocean shipment came next week, he would be able to be at home.  But if we delayed accepting it a week so that he could be here, then having them pack up the house the last week of school (instead of the following week, which would have been easier) will have been wasted.

So I'm here by myself.  Unless I'm really "lucky," and school is canceled tomorrow because of the snow that's currently falling.  Then I will have Greer and Cooper at home with me.  I'm sure they will be helpful?  (Not, if you were wondering.)

For tonight, Cooper is sleeping in Greer's closet:

Jan. 21, 2012 - First birthday in Tokyo

We got to sleep in this particular Saturday, probably in honor of my birthday.  We didn't have to leave the house at 6:30 to take the train to the swim meet because ASIJ ran buses for the Saturday activities.  This was something new ASIJ had started in the fall when they were building a new parking structure on campus.  While construction was ongoing, parking on campus was very limited, so they ran buses on Saturday, which was also great for the people without cars.  Well, the structure was finished by the time school started back up in January, so they discontinued the Saturday buses.  However, I guess the buses were a hit, both for those with cars and those without.  After hearing from the parents, the administration brought back the buses for this Saturday.  I don't know if they'll continue them (because it is an extra expense for the school), but we'll be using them for now.

They have many fewer bus stops for the Saturday buses, and ours is Yoyogi Hachiman, which is a subway stop on the Odakyu line.  Google maps will tell you Yoyogi Hachiman is a 10-minute walk from our apartment, but I'm not sure how they determine that.  Maybe using an 8-foot tall person who walks at a very fast clip.  They definitely aren't using a family of four which includes two children who are constitutionally incapable of walking faster than a stroll and two parents who are constantly checking the map on their iPhones.  I had emailed the transportation director to ask if the Yoyogi Hachiman ASIJ bus stop was directly in front of the Yoyogi Hachiman subway stop.  Good thing I wasn't depending on her answer.  I didn't hear back from her, but we were on the lookout for groups of people that looked like they might be waiting for a school bus.  We saw a likely group of what looked to be high school girls and asked.  Yes, they were waiting for the bus.  Lucky for us that we saw them since the bus stop turned out to be down a road, up some stairs, and across another road from the subway station.  No way would we have even seen the bus if we'd been waiting where we thought we should.

The snow that looked so pretty falling yesterday (though not so pretty when it was time to walk to the grocery store) looked even less pretty today.  Today it was a freezing rain, making for a less than pleasant walk to the bus stop.  No matter, I'm sure the day will improve.  That is, it will improve once the swim meet is over.  Last week, I mentioned that the swim meet was just a middle school meet.  This week, it was both high school and middle school, dramatically lengthening the duration of the meet.  Instead of three individual events and two relay events, this week Greer swam on three relay teams: the 200m medley, the 200m freestyle, and the 400m freestyle, and her individual events were the 50m free and the 100m free.  This week she had a LOT of rest time between her events since the meet was more than twice as long as the previous week. 

Once the meet finally ended midafternoon, we had a half hour wait for the return buses.  This gave us time to revisit our plan for the rest of the day.  We had planned to go to Shibuya to do some shopping, followed by dinner at Outback for my birthday.  However, the freezing rain was still falling, which made walking around Shibuya seem like an undesirable thing to do.  Change in plans: after we got off the bus, the kids and I headed back to the apartment while Andrew stopped by the grocery store.  He cooked a great birthday dinner (stir fry, which I seem to only get on my birthday and Mother's Day, and not always then).  While he was at the store, the kids asked me not to come into the kitchen and they made chocolate-covered strawberries.  They even managed to decorate the serving platter with chocolate shavings (though we didn't think to take the picture until after we'd already served the strawberries).     

Japanese word of the day:  tanjoubi  (click to hear pronunciation) means "birthday"

Jan. 20, 2012 - Snow!

We woke up to an unusual sight this morning - snow!  We thought at first it was just rain, but then we realized it was actually snow.  It does snow in Tokyo more than it snows in Houston, but it's still unusual.  ASIJ is in Chofu, to the west of Tokyo, and they're more likely to get snow out at the school.  It snowed pretty much the whole day, until it was time for the kids to come home from school.  However, the ground was too warm, so none of it stuck.  I tried to take a picture (well, about 20 of them), but the snow just wasn't quite big and fluffy enough to make a decent picture.

The snow, while it looked pretty, was not quite so nice when I set out about 1:00 for my near-daily trek to the grocery store.


Japanese word of the day:  yuki  (click to hear pronunciation) means "snow"

Jan. 19, 2012 - U.S. Embassy and Shibuya ward office

It was a work-at-home day for Drew today.  In the morning, he visited the U.S. Embassy, and the two of us also went to the Shibuya ward office.  Afterwards, we walked to Yoyogi Koen on our way back towards the house.  Yoyogi Koen is a large park, one of Tokyo's largest, not too far from our house.  In 1964, it was the site for the athletes village for the 1964 Summer Olympics.  The Yoyogi National Gymnasium, which was the venue for some of the Olympic events, is still in use.  We may have the chance to check out the swimming pool soon.  There's a swim club that practices there, and I've been in touch with them in preparation for when Cooper wants to get back to swimming (or when I decide he needs to swim again for the mental health of both of us :) ).  As far as dues go, you can definitely see why Exxon gives us a cost of living allowance.  I sent the fee schedule to Cooper and Greer's old swim coach and told them he could share this when parents complained that ESA's dues were too high.  (Here it is, if you're curious: 10 Visits = 40K yen, 15 Visits = 55K yen, 20 Visits = 70K yen.)

Drew's going to tell about his visit to the U.S. Embassy:

In order to purchase a car in Japan, you need an "official signature."  You can satisfy this requirement permanently by making a little rubber stamp of your name and registering it at the ward office, or you can apply for an appointment at the embassy, wait in line, etc... for the privilege of paying $50 a whack to get your signature certified by the embassy - which only lasts 3 months, then it expires.  No brainer, right?  So last Saturday, after much discussion with the stamp maker, and four of his colleagues, he decided it would be best if I confirmed my proposed stamp design was acceptable with the ward office (closed at that time of day), and then return.  At that point he would happily take my money and make me a stamp; the stamp manufacture process should only take two weeks ...

So I'm waiting in line for the embassy (the shorter US citizens line) well before my 0845 appointment.  The Japanese security staff were the model of efficiency, whisking us thrrough the scanning process, at the end of which they relieved us of our cell phones (so no pics from the embassy) for the remainder of our stay on US soil.  I headed into the notary services area and dropped my appointment letter in the collection bin in front of window 7.

A few minutes before 0845 there were signs of life, the Japanese clerk on window 9 opened his window (and number 10 adjacent to him), and I'm excited since I'm the first in line for these services and I have the earliest appointment so it looks like I'll be in and out.  But I forgot I was back on US soil, and apparently US goverment clerks are the same everywhere.  It's 0840, and the guy who I'm convinced will be my clerk (and he was), started to corral a group of colleagues and initiate a heated discussion about the inadequacy of the placement of the invitation letter bin in front of window 7.  This was an extremely inefficient location in his opinion, and he was trying to start a ground swell movement to move it to another window much better suited to the task - window 6, 4 feet to the left.  Well, this debate raged on for at least 15 minutes.  The issue is that it is difficult to see if papers are in the bin in front of window 7 - very inefficent - "we need to improve our work processes and root out these inefficiencies."  A Japanese colleague indicated that there was no matter - someone should be manning window 7 so they would be able to welcome the customer when they dropped it off.  "What am I, a robot?"  They can get a robot to do that job.  If not for the armed Marine guards that I was sure were lurking around somewhere, I would have been screaming at this idiot about where the real inefficiency was coming from ... right between his ears!  Maybe I should have waited the two weeks to get my stamp instead ...


Certified signatures in hand, Drew then gave me a call to let me know when he was leaving the embassy, and I set out to walk to Shibuya.  That's the same area to which the kids and I walked just yesterday, though I was going to the ward office, a little bit outside the main shopping district.  I definitely had an easier time finding my way this time, though my iPhone map did take me down some narrow alleys.  (It may have been more helpful for my overall sense of direction if I had stuck to the main roads.)  There are plenty of streets that look barely wide enough for a car, but not only do cars (and vans) drive down them, they are actually two-way streets, and one car will just stop in a place where it's wide enough for the other car to pass.  There are also plenty of bikers and walkers, so we all just have to watch out for each other.  I do keep reminding my kids that although where they're walking may not be all that much wider than a sidewalk, it is NOT a sidewalk, and they should remember to be on the lookout for cars.  Hopefully the message will sink in without a car accident being necessary.  It should really be interesting when they start riding their bikes.

Drew and I were visiting the Shibuya ward office to pick up our alien registration cards.  We had registered for them when we first moved in, and the now the official cards were ready.  At the local Japanese government office, we were greeted upon arrival and pointed in the right direction.  The woman at the alien registration desk was happy to work with us at any window that was available.  We miss the U.S., but we will say that they have pretty good service here in Japan.

Jan. 18, 2012 - Early release day

Today was a big day for the kids.  They walked to the bus stop by themselves!  And they didn't get lost!  And they walked home by themselves!  Next stop: a subway ride by themselves. :) 
Here's a picture of them as they set out to journey to the bus stop (I asked Cooper if he thought he should brush his hair this morning.  Hmm, wonder what he said.) :

Every other Wednesday is an early release day for the kids, when school is dismissed an hour and a half early.  Today I had a little shopping expedition for us.  Greer's wardrobe is more suited to Houston, so we needed to get some layers for her.  Houston can get cold in the winter, but after a few days, it usually warms up.  Then it will be nice for awhile before it gets cold again.  I think Greer is still expecting that to happen here, even though the highs have been in the 40's the entire time we've been here, and it's often windy.  I keep telling her that Tokyo has a real winter, not as cold as Cleveland or Greenwich, but still a winter; however, I think she keeps hoping I'm wrong, in this, as in so many other areas.  I also wanted to look for another pair of shoes for Cooper.

I knew there were stores with what we needed in the Shibuya shopping district, such as Uniqlo for shirts for Greer and ABC Mart for Cooper's shoes.  The trick would be to find them.  I went to Uniqlo's website, and there were some English words, including "store locator."  Piece of cake!  If only.  While "store locator" was in English, nothing else related to the location of the store was.  I know there's supposed to be some way Google can translate for you, but I haven't figured that out.  No matter.  We would find the stores, intrepid navigators that we are.

We (I) decided to walk - it would take about the same amount of time.  So we put "Shibuya station" into our iPhone and used the map.  Now, some of you are saying, "It's about time."  But I don't think you quite understand where I am coming from.  Here's a picture of the phone that I've had for the last 7 or 8 years (the one Greer thinks I should check to see if a museum wants):

It takes a little time to make a transition from that to an iPhone.  There's a learning curve.  But I'll eventually get the hang of it (or my kids will, and they'll show me what I need to know).  It was supposed to be about a 20-25 minute walk.  If you've read previous posts, you'll understand why I considered it a victory when we arrived in the shopping district after a mere 45 minutes.

We started searching for the stores we wanted, and we found........a Krispy Kreme!  Of course, for research purposes, we decided we should check it out.  Plus, Cooper had already started complaining of being hungry.  After our research snack (the conclusion of our research was that it was good), we quickly saw Uniqlo.  That may not be as impressive as it sounds since I think there's more than one location in Shibuya.  Success - several turtlenecks for Greer.  Greer, being the shopper that she is, thought perhaps we could spend more time shopping for her.  However, it was time to forge ahead looking for shoes, though Greer did want me to take some pictures of her trying on clothes:

We soon found ABC Mart.  Really, I think we did well.  Unfortunately, no luck there.  We've adopted the Japanese custom of removing our shoes when we enter our house.  Cooper's a little tired of always have to tie and untie his shoes, so we were looking for some slip-on shoes for him.  They had some men/women slip-on sneakers that he liked, but they didn't come in quite a small enough size - we needed a half size smaller.  From our walk around Shibuya with Kim, I remembered that there was another ABC Mart right near Tower Records.  We found it, but again, no luck.  We'll have to try something else for Cooper.  A note about Tower Records: one floor of it is for books, which we visited with Kim to pick up a good Tokyo map.  While there, we allowed the kids to each pick a book from the English-language section, since they had been such good sports as we walked all over Shibuya.  We also saw "A Long Walk to Water," which is a book Greer has been wanting me to read.  Since she didn't own it (but wanted to, as she does with most books), I decided to buy it to read.  I have to admit here that I didn't pay much attention to the price at the time.  Afterwards, I noticed the U.S. price of $5.99 was on the back of the book above the barcode.  Next to that was the Tower Records sticker with the Japan price of 1,029 yen (around $13).  I think we're going to be making more use of our e-readers here.

Also on our walk with Kim, he purchased some cream puffs for us from a stand near the Hachiko exit.  The kids and I thought it would be a good idea to buy some of those to bring home for after dinner.  We found where the stand had been (we were pretty good finding things today!), but there was no stand.  We thought maybe it was just a weekend thing.  But as long as we were right there by the subway, the kids talked me into taking the subway home.  I still don't think it's any faster, but I'm not sure they're convinced.  On the plus side, as long as we were at the subway station, we popped into the grocery store to purchase some ice cream treats to replace our lost cream puffs.

Japanese word of the day:  basu  (bah-soo) means "bus"