Concentration skills part 2

Conversation with daughter at toyshop:
Emily: Mum,. I've decided to buy this puzzle. 
Me: That's great, but you do realise that there are only 5 basic colours in it and that it is 1000 pieces and that it will be very difficult to complete.....
Emily: I know.  I chose the hardest one because I want to work on my concentration skills.
Me: Wow, that's great I hope you can finish it.

Conversation with daughter at home later that evening:
Emily: No one is allowed to touch this puzzle.  I'm going to do it all by myself.
Family: That's great... good luck!

Conversation with daughter the following day:
Emily: Mum, you can help me if you really want to.  I've separated out the edge pieces.
Me: Okay, I'll help you with the edge if you want me to.
Emily: Thanks.  But, only if you really want to.


Conversation with daughter one week later:
Me: The puzzle doesn't seem to have progressed past the outside frame, do you need some more help?
Emily: If you really want to you can do it - but I have to put in the last piece in.

Conversation with daughter when puzzle is finally finished:
Me: Here is the last piece - are you going to put it in now?
Emily: Great - wow we did a great job.
Me: Yes, I did.
Emily: I am not usually good with puzzles so the fact that I managed to put in 10 pieces is really impressive, aye!
Me: Yes Emily, you are incredible...

Peas, peas and more peas

 Despite my mother-in-law's best attempts to thwart my attempts at using my original companion planting techniques to grow peas, it looks like the clover has won through and we may end up with a pretty good crop.  I thought I'd go and pick a few for tea this afternoon and quarter of an hour later had more than enough for not just tonight's tea, but tea for the next week!  Fortunately they are all the really sweet ones that you can eat in the shell of so I don't need to actually remove them from the pods.  Perhaps I'll convince the kids that top and tailing them is great fun and they can help me....... although they seem to be able to see through those stories lately!  Perhaps bribery would work better.....

Flying carp

Most of our neighbours are very old and not at all interested in doing anything to make our neighbourhood more interesting or attractive to visitors.  Our closest neighbour however is very keen to try new things and there are often strange things popping up in his garden that give visitors something to comment about.  His latest venture is to try and copy some of the big towns which have large volumes of flying carp over their rivers.  Only our "river" is a very small stream and there are only two poles which can be used... resulting in two lonely carp flying in the stream.  Or  I should probably say lying in the stream.  This part of the stream is very sheltered from the wind and therefore even the strong winds we have been having every day lately don't get the carp up and flying at all.  I guess it is the thought that counts......

Spring Bounty

Things are starting to take off in the garden again (including many, many weeds....), and the harvest for the spring season usually starts with two of my favorites - asparagus and chammomile.  Of course I don't use them together, but both share the trait of tasting sooooo good when they are first picked and deteriorating in flavour as the days pass - all the better reason to use them as soon as you pick them!  I have asparagus planted both inside the tunnel house and outside, and I am always interested that despite the large temperature difference between the two places they both usually start producing at about the same time of the year.  The asparagus in the tunnel house receives no water and as a result (???) is much juicier and sweeter - although both outstrip store bought asparagus by far!

I have chammomile everywhere.... it self seeds and pops up literally all over the garden.  The kids have started picking it for me in return for a small amount of pocket money.... another excuse to get them out into the sunshine!

Kimonos in Kitsuki

The city we live in is an old Samurai town and to try and create a traditional atmosphere people are encouraged to wear kimono to stroll around the old streets.  There is a shop where you can hire kimonos for the day, so when the New Zealand group was here we took advantage of the opportunity and donned kimonos (well they did... I had to drive!) to go to my favorite tea shop and experience a brief traditional Japanese tea ceremony.  It was fun watching them choose which kimono to wear and then even more fun watching the tiny Japanese women huffing and puffing trying to tie them into them!

Diversity

I've just arrived home after running a 2 day leadership camp for 19 university students.  They in turn will have to lead a camp for 88 university students so I was responsible for getting them to know each other, creating an environment where they felt comfortable working together and getting them to really start to think about what is important as leaders.  I enjoy this kind of work more than teaching English as you can have conversations that go a little further than.. Hello, my name is Jo, what's your name?  How are you?  I'm fine thank you.  Nice to meet you!

The thing that makes this program even more interesting is that it is at an international university and there were 11 different nationalities within the group of 19 students.   It makes for lots of mis-communications, lots of strange gesturing and all in all a lot of fun!  It is often a real eye-opener for Japanese students as they are often not used to doing in-depth debriefings, having "arguments" during meetings and really letting go of their inhibitions to make fools of themselves.  It will be interesting to see if they remember any of my incredible pieces of advice and make a great camp.... or ignore my advice completely and make an even better camp!

Sometimes it just clicks

A little out of date, but... this year Easter Bunny arrived again.  For anyone who wants a history lesson, Easter bunny has been coming to our house for a while.  In 2007 the cottage was his hiding place, then in 2008 my mother decided to make an elaborate treasure hunt  which set the bar for the following years.   2009 provided another basic treasure hunt, followed by another one in 2010 (which I forgot to blog about) and then in  2011 Easter bunny really out did himself with series of quizzes etc.  Unfortunately Easter Bunny was a little tired this year and the result was an egg hunt in the cottage rather than all over the neighbourhood.  The children found small bags of eggs, each with a letter in them.  When they put the letters together they spelled two words which were clues to where they could find their big eggs.  Unfortunately Easter Bunny's computer was already turned off for the night when this brainwave occurred to him and therefore the letters were all handwritten... to which my daughter kept remarking "it looks just like your writing, Mum".  

The best thing about Easter this year was discovering that my daughter can actually concentrate on something for more than a few minutes if she wants to.  She was given a basket making set for Christmas and decided to make it for her Easter basket... without one bit of help from me.  She even managed to make it when all the instructions were in Chinese!  It took her over 4 hours and she didn't take one break.  Here's hoping the concentration skills continue to improve enough to fold an entire basket of washing....... Thanks Nanna D for giving me hope that she won't be a flitabout for the rest of her life!

The other side of Japan

When I show people around this area I like to show them parts of Japan that no "tourists" get to visit.  I also like to try and break their stereotypes that all Japanese people are very hard working, very obedient and very much into following the rules.  One way I do this is to take them to my friend's house.... that he built... with, I presume, no building permits, no plans, but that works in with nature and creates a great place to relax with a lunch box!  I could sit for hours chatting on the balcony (and often do!) - just as long as I don't look down at how it is actually constructed!  Thank you Mutsumi and Tom for showing us another side of Japan... I'll be back soon!

The deep end

When I first came to Japan I was basically thrown in the deep end - I had no Japanese language, no knowledge of anything Japanese other than Japanese cars and had never even tried eating Japanese food - let alone tried to cook it.  I remember how hard, but also how rewarding the whole experience was.

With this in mind when groups from New Zealand come to stay we have devised a way of throwing them completely in the deep end on their arrival in Japan.  

Number one - take them into the most remote mountains you can find.  

Number two - drop them off at the bottom of a very large number of very large steps and tell them you'll meet them at the top with their bags.

Number three - show them to their accommodation - a remote temple where they will be sleeping on futons on the floor listening to the wind whistle through the gaps in the wall and rain pound down.

Number four - feed them traditional monks food - seated on the floor with chopsticks.  It's always fun to see how they handle the noodles on the first day in!

Number five - wake them up at 6am and head even further up the hill to an even more remote part of the temple for a seated meditation session and a fire ritual - where you hope the flames licking the roof of the very old, very wooden temple will not set it on fire..

Number six - finish it all off with a breakfast of watery rice and pickles - not forgetting to keep one pickle to use to clean your bowls at the end!

Actually it is a really great experience.  The temple we stay in is called Monjusenji and the priests there are great - always answering all our strange questions and accommodating our strange ways.  If anyone wants to see the Japanese homepage this is the link: Monjusenji

Hopefully an English version will be available soon....

Every time I stay there I learn a little more about the family there.  This time I really enjoyed talking with the younger priest who was a real estate salesman in Tokyo before returning to work at the temple.  When one of the participants asked him how he spent his days at the temple he replied... First I check my e-mail.  Next I check my facebook.  Then I update my blog.  Next I send e-mails to people to try and drum up business - he said his training in real estate sales comes in very handy!  Not exactly the image that most people have of priests in remote temples, but probably a very common reality!  His stories of how they survived their 2 month retreats in the mountains when they were training to become priests were also pretty eye-opening.... but as he said very illegal now!

Heron goes fishing

I have always thought herons are beautiful, elegant birds.  I love the way they stand completely still for what seems like hours on end.  It is always special to see one flying silently over our rice fields or standing quietly at some of the ponds in tourist areas.  However, after seeing this particular heron at work in Dazaifu City I now look at them in a different light!  

It was quite amazing to watch it standing perfectly still on a rock just in front of us, eyeing the huge carp swimming around its feet and then.... watch it dive straight in and pick out the smallest one (which was still pretty big), fly off to a rock in the middle of the pond then slowly juggle it around till it was in the right position to swallow whole.  I'm guessing it didn't need to eat for a few days afterwards....

Need to catch up....

I have so many entries that I need to catch up on that I am going to do a "must blog every day for two weeks" thing again to try and catch up..  I have been really busy lately and things don't look like they are going to slow down for a few more weeks (or months!) so I need to get myself motivated to go through the camera and blog about what has been happening before everything is deleted by mistake.... or the computer decides to die again - like it did 2 days ago!

The main reason I have been so busy lately is because I spent 10 days showing a group of New Zealanders the "real Japan" - in our area and then a bit of touristy stuff in Hiroshima and Kyoto.  I'll start updating that tomorrow, but for tonight here is a quick look at my favorite part of my garden in this season - the front garden (and probably the only part of the garden which is almost weed free right now....).  It is a bit hard to capture it on camera, but the grasses and ferns etc. are finally starting to grow well and will hopefully fill up lots of the spaces in the next few years.  I'm hoping it will become a garden that only needs maintaining every year rather than replanting.  

This garden was "reformed" in 2008... you can see the difference from this post: Garden reform part 1

Great English ... again!

As anyone who lives in Japan knows, Japanese people love to use English on their packaging and most of it doesn't make a lot of sense! Cakes and confectionery often have some very interesting examples. We were given some delicious cakes last week (thanks Minori!) and the box gave me a little laugh too. Thanks Francis Zabier for inspiring such delicious food!

Surprise win

Japan has wonderful courier companies that make getting things delivered in the countryside a breeze. I often come home to an "undeliverable" notice telling me that they tried to deliver something, but no one was home so when would I like them to come again. I generally know what is in the packages that arrive as they are generally ones that I have ordered, but the other day one arrived that had me really puzzled. It was addressed to me, but from a sender I didn't recognise at all. When I opened it I discovered 7 packets of food things.... and was still a little confused. I eventually found the postcard that was in with it and realised that I had won a competition that I entered on the spur of the moment in February.
I can never be bothered collecting all the stickers and things that are needed for these competitions and even if I do enter I never win... so never usually bother, but.... back in February when we had the school bazaar we had to make lots and lots and lots of flavoured rice, which happened to use packets that happened to have a competition running at the time. So I threw a few stickers on some postcards and sent them off... and they sent them back - with lots of food to add to the fun! Perhaps I should enter them more often......

Unliveable living room

I'll do a proper "before and after" post at some stage, but for now here is a "between" post. Today our living room was de-papered and prepared for papering. I have always had a huge amount of respect for Japanese workers and their ability to keep everything very clean and leave things in an even cleaner state than they found them. Unfortunately our decorators don't seem to have inherited the cleanliness genes and our living room is currently in this state. There is a thick layer of dust over everything (I'm not sure why I was obsessed about getting the house clean before they arrived this morning...) and all the work things are just left lying all over the kitchen and living room. I think I may have encouraged this a little when I said they didn't need to worry about putting the curtains back up tonight... they seemed to take it to mean that we wouldn't be needing our living room or kitchen tonight - lost in translation perhaps!
Anyway, fortunately we have a cottage to spend all our time in, a restaurant near by and it should all be finished by tomorrow. A bit hard to tell from the photos, but the ceiling was finished today... amongst complaints that we must have had a heavy smoker in the house. After a bit of head scratching I realised that the fire must have been the culprit - or at least the person who keeps forgetting to open the vents when they put wood into the fire.... not me of course!

Anxious morning

This morning was the morning when all the teacher's transfers were announced to the public via the newspaper. I'm sure I've written about this crazy system before, but I can't find it on my blog anywhere, so I'll revisit the topic and bore you again! Japan has this amazing system in which teachers are transferred around schools at an alarming rate. Yesterday the children finished school at 11:30am (don't even get me started on that) and yesterday afternoon a fax was sent to all the schools from the board of education informing them of all the transfers that were being made this year. No one was allowed to leak this information so for parents etc. it all came down to scouring the paper this morning to see who will be staying and who will be going. It looks like our school has got off pretty lightly this year with only one teacher (my son's... phew - won't get started on that one either) leaving. Having said that though it is possible that two other teachers have also changed but as they are not fully qualified teachers they are not part of any of the announcements to the public.
Anyway, what all this means is that on Thursday all the kids go back to school to farewell the teacher(s) and then the teacher will need to clean out his desk and make his way to his new school ready to start the school year 10 days later. The whole "abruptness" of this system makes absolutely no sense to me...
Fortunately our great principal and vice principal haven't changed so now we just need to wait till the first day of school to see which teachers the kids will get... finally my daughter's last teacher at primary school!

Wedding formalities

Last week I was lucky enough to be invited to a friend's wedding. It was a huge affair - even by Japanese standards, with all the important people from a major tourist town - over 200 guests in total. Most of it was really nice - great food, nice people at my table and of course the bride was beautiful in all three of her outfits.
The only thing I was a little disappointed in was the chapel ceremony before the reception began. I understand that Japanese people really want a piece of western culture in their lives, but.... I would have to say that I have never cried so much at a wedding as I did at this one. And it wasn't because I was sad... it was because I could not stop myself from laughing. As is quite common at Japanese weddings they had a foreign "priest" who conducted the ceremony in both English and Japanese, but in such a way that I still have no idea if he was being serious or actually just taking the piss out of the whole event. I really wish I had taken a video as I can't describe it adequately - just that he was a close second to Rowan Atkinson. All the words were traditional wedding words, but the delivery was like an over the top actor pouring his whole heart and soul into the ceremony with the odd wink or smirk on the side. From what I can tell anyone can become a marriage celebrant here if they go to a quick course... they then get paid very good money for "marrying" people. I thought my laughter was reasonably well hidden, but after the ceremony a friend came up to me and told me that she was sitting behind me and that the whole seat was shaking because I was laughing so much... oops! Mind you she said she was doing the same! Give me a traditional Japanese ceremony in Japan any day.

Spring is in the air....

When I decided that it was time to redecorate the living room area we also decided to get the toilet re-papered - basically because it was horrible and grimy.... like most of the house! The decorating man agreed that it desperately needed doing and that it wouldn't cost much - and he was right. To do all the toilet walls as well as replace the lino floor it was only around 15,000 yen, which considering it took the poor man almost all day to do I thought was very reasonable. The decorating man (I've got to think of a more exciting name for him....) admitted that he gets their toilet re-papered every couple of years just for a change and also because it is not a great place to clean all the time. We both agreed that although we will hold back a little more in the living area, the toilet could be a fun place to play with a bolder theme so we went all out and went with a spring theme.... birds in trees. The kids keep wandering into it and saying they think they are at a hotel and that it is no longer our home - in a nice way!
We also got them to replace the lino in the bathroom which was slowly rotting away and again they did it cheaply - and this time with lots of entertainment for me. I was in the kitchen listening to the guy talking to himself (he did this all day long) - the majority of the "conversations" went like this..... "Now this is a problem." "Mmmm.... not sure what to do about this" and "This really is a problem". Somehow the problems seemed to disappear though and he did a good job - I apologised for choosing a paper that required matching up trees, birds etc. and he laughed and said that he really enjoyed doing it. I guess after papering so many white or cream Japanese walls a bit of colour would make your life a bit more exciting!
The living room was also supposed to be done today, but... of course the paper I wanted is not in stock right now so we need to wait another week. Nothing like dragging it out!

A-chan - regarding our doors - we got a special suction kind of double glass that they can put into the frames that we already have. It seems to be making a difference - there seem to be a number of different options available now that don't involved having 2 sets of doors!

The first three quarters....

Today marked the start of our renovating.... it all started with me finally getting so fed up with our yucky curtains that I felt the need to change them. And then I kept looking at the cracks in the wallpaper, the stains on the ceiling and the general horribleness that comes with a house that has never been renovated in 16 years and felt the urge to get the living area re-papered. And then when we were looking at curtains there were none that we liked, but liked the idea of blinds that can be pulled up out of the way during the daytime and remove the need for horrible net curtains. But, we have the problem that we have very big sliding doors in the living room which you can feel the outside cold air through and therefore need thick curtains to keep out the cold in winter. So... finally getting to the point.... we decided to get the big cold doors double glazed - therefore allowing us to get the blinds we wanted without freezing in winter. Can you see the difference in the photos? - the first is the before, the second is the after - not exactly obvious to look at, but you can definitely feel the difference! Unfortunately only three of the four doors have been replaced as the final sheet was broken in transit and as they are custom made the replacement won't be here for another week or so - just in time for the weather to really warm up and therefore not be necessary!
Next stage is to remove the air conditioner that hasn't been used for about 10 years and put it into one of the cottage bedrooms to prevent the sauna effect in summer.... then the wallpaper and finally the origin problem - the curtains!

One year on and another concert

Today was my daughter's annual piano concert. The teacher was initially worried about holding it today as today was the one year remembrance of the life changing earthquake and tsunami. I think she made the right to decision to go on with the concert and there were some great songs played in memory of those effected and we were all able to have a moment's silence together at 2:46pm - the time earthquake struck.
I have been avoiding watching too much TV today. It is really hard to know whether we should be focusing on what happened, focusing on how much has already been achieved, or focusing on how much more still needs to be done. A bit of everything really.

Anyway, here are the video's of Emily's concert today for anyone interested. She said she wants to turn back time and redo the second one, but unfortunately she will need to wait till next year! Apologies for the slightly wobbly shots... we had tripod issues!

National road

Erika asked me a question about the power pole in the middle of the garden and whether we get any compensation for having it there. In short... no we don't get any compensation because in actual fact that strip of land (shown roughly in between the red lines in the photos) is actually a national road. That's right - it is a road owned by the government.... but maintained by the city..... It is a really frustrating thing for me as every time I want to do anything in this area, like plant a tree, build a pizza oven etc. I get told by my husband that we can't do anything there as it is a national road.....I'm sure no one else knows or cares that it is a national road, but my husband is a civil servant and as such feels the need to follow every rule in the book and lots of rules that aren't in any books. Apparently we can buy this national road, but we have to wait for the right timing. I've asked what the right timing is, but get a mumble in response. In the meantime I'm pretending I have no knowledge of the fact that we have not only a big ugly power pole in our garden, but that I am doing major road works every time I touch the garden there.
And where does this national road lead to? Why to the stream of course... I just don't understand!

For my records.....

Today I spent the morning in a very hot room with zillions of other parents trying to see their children "racing" at the pool. What I wanted to be doing was getting on with my garden renovations. The fact that it was raining (again...) made it a little easier to accept that I wasn't going to get to go outside at all today and the fact that my back was feeling the effects of shifting rocks around made me think that perhaps a day of rest wasn't really such a bad thing.
I've been playing around with an area out the back and cursing a huge power pole that is in the middle of the garden which has our meter on it that needs to be accessed every month. Gotta love Japanese power poles everywhere! I am not very good at planning things so I just tend to start and see where the rocks lead me - which is why I have to redo everything quite regularly! A good example of this is my new herb spiral. I've always wanted a herb spiral so I made a spur of the moment decision to make one in the most inappropriate place. It breaks all the permaculture rules and will probably fall down within a few weeks, but for a few weeks I have a herb spiral! Now if the rain would stop for a few days I might be able to get on with doing the rest of it.

Happy Birthday Mike!

This is my brother, Mike. Today is his birthday! When we were growing up I always thought it was unfair that, being older than me, he always got to go past all the milestones before me. He turned 5 first and could therefore go to school first, he hit double digits first, got to finish school first, got to drink first, got to drive first, got to live away from home first... the list of things he got to do first was endless and of course it was not fair!

Of course there was the minor issue that I was younger and could therefore get away with more things, but of course getting to do things first was far more important than that!
Today he hits the big 40 - and all of a sudden I'm not so sad that he gets to do this first! I can remember thinking that 40 was sooooo old, although my view of this has changed as it grows closer for me!
Happy Birthday Mike. I hope my continual pulling of your hair when I was so young didn't contribute to your lack of it now... Have a great day and start showing the world that 40 can be the best time of your life! Don't worry, I'll be joining you soon......

Egg Vending Machine

Now that we have no chickens we have to actually buy our eggs and I admit the first time I had to I was a little sad... I worry quite a lot about the really cheap eggs in the supermarket and so prefer to buy from somewhere local where I know how the chickens are being treated. Fortunately I have found a great place just across the road from where the children go swimming that sells eggs directly to the public. You can see their sheds (although you can't actually see inside so I can't vouch for the size of their cages...) and the best thing is that the eggs are sold from vending machines so you they don't have to have someone there all the time and therefore the price is pretty reasonable. Gotta love Japan and their vending machine fetishes!

Cloverless

It may not always be obvious, but I try quite hard not to write really negative things on my blog. There are a lot of frustrating things that happen every day and for me focusing on them just seems to make them all worse. But... having said that I also find that if I do a bit of complaining then I often get the problem off my chest and realise it wasn't such a big issue anyway. So on that latest note, I'm going to break my "positivity rule" and get something off my chest so that I don't take it out too much on the person involved....
Yesterday I drove up the road to our house and discovered my mother-in-law in my garden. I think I have mentioned before that we have a pretty good relationship and after a few tears in the past which were shed over plants which she ripped out thinking they were weeds etc. I thought we had an agreement that she would stay out of my garden or at least consult me before she got her digger out. However she seems to have forgotten that recently (either that or she just has far too little to do) and I arrived home to find that she had weeded a big strip between my peas... which I had planted in clover to help improve the soil, attract a few bees etc. The clover was just starting to take off as the weather warms up a little. Needless to say I was more than a little annoyed so called out the window to PLEASE stop immediately as I had actually intentionally planted those "weeds". I managed to say it quite nicely, but for some reason she got angry at me and told me that I should have told her... not quite sure how I could have done that when I wasn't even home when she started it and when I thought we had an agreement that she leaves my garden alone..... I think she is just anxious because her peas failed to germinate this year and so is relying on mine for her dinner!
Phew, that is off my chest. It's not going to bring back my clover, but it does make me feel a little better. Thanks for "listening"!

Splitting Bamboo

Japan has a way of using bamboo like no other country I know. They use it in very intricate weaving of plates, they use it for tomato supports in the garden, they use it to make fences and they use it in another zillion kinds of ways. Until today I've always been puzzled by how they split the very large, very long pieces of bamboo to use for fences etc., but today it was all revealed when I wandered past the neighbour who was making himself a wind/wild boar fence. He was using this tool - a bamboo splitter! Basically an axe-like blade that splits the bamboo into four... very simple, but very effective. Of course now that I've discovered my father-in-law also has one of these gadgets I might go for a wander up the hill and get myself some bamboo to try it out.
Or perhaps I'll just ask my father-in-law to get me some bamboo and split it for me and I'll take a few more photos!