Kai on his way to 1st grade, with his randoseru (Japanese backpack) View at Picasa Kai on his way to 1st grade, with his randoseru (Japanese backpack)09-Apr-2007 08:05, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 2.8, 5.40625mm, 0.017 sec

A notice we received when Kai started 1st grade, for a seminar to make parents comfortable with their kids walking to school without them View at Picasa A notice we received when Kai started 1st grade, for a seminar to make parents comfortable with their kids walking to school without them

While we were living in Tokyo I wrote a number of posts about all the fun Kai was having in the Japanese public school kindergarten. I never had a chance to write about the time he spent in 1st grade. Kids in Japan go to school year-round, and their school year starts in April, with only a 2 week break after finishing the previous grade.

The week before Kai started 1st grade, we got a notice in the mail from the school, inviting us to attend a seminar for parents on their children’s safety while going back and forth from home to school (a scan of the notice is above). This was the exact opposite of what such a seminar would cover in the US: they tell the parents that while it was fine for you to walk your children to school in kindergarten, you have to let them walk to school on their own in 1st grade. They patiently explain that your kids are growing up, and its time to let them start feeling independent (Tokyo is densely populated and every neighborhood has its own elementary school, so no one rides a bus). They emphasize that the streets are very safe and you will only embarrass your child if you’re seen taking him or her to school. For the walk home in the afternoon, the kids are organized into groups of about a dozen each, based on which kids live near each other, and they walk each other home. Kai’s school was only two blocks away from our apartment, so we got through it without too much anxiety .

Walking home with their classmates is a part of Japanese kids’ socialization. The schools begin emphasizing the importance of social groups as soon as they leave kindergarten. At Kai’s kindergarten graduation, the local district superintendent gave a speech explaining to them it was time to start relying more on their friends and less on their parents.

After having a great time in kindergarten, Kai was very excited to start 1st grade. The first task for us was investing (and I do mean investing) in his randoseru:

A randoseru is a firm-sided backpack made of stitched firm leather… The randoseru is the most universal and recognizable feature of the Japanese school uniform and is considered symbolic of the virtues necessary to obtain a good education—unity, discipline, hard work and dedication. Traditionally, the randoseru is red in colour for girls, black for boys… Traditionally given to a child upon beginning their first year at school, the randoseru’s materials and workmanship are designed to allow the backpack to endure the child’s entire elementary education (six years)… The randoseru’s durability and significance is reflected in its cost: a new randoseru made of genuine leather can carry a pricetag of over 30,000 yen, almost 300 US dollars…

The incoming 2nd grade class performing at the ceremony marking the start of the school year View at Picasa The incoming 2nd grade class performing at the ceremony marking the start of the school year06-Apr-2007 14:08

The ceremony marking the start of the school year was fun. The video clip on the right is the incoming 2nd grade class playing their pianicas. I was impressed at how well they played – they’re only 7 years old. Kai still has his pianica, and he and Eidan occasionally fool around with it.

Unfortunately, Kai’s excitement turned to misery after just a few days in 1st grade. American elementary schools gradually increase the academic rigor from grade to grade. In Japan, everything is fun and games through kindergarten, and then they bring the hammer down in 1st grade. While kindergarten was mainly focused on fun arts and crafts, in 1st grade Kai was stuck behind a desk all day, listening to a teacher talk in a language he didn’t understand. It was an especially tough transition for him because, while he had two friends in kindergarten who spoke English, no one in his 1st grade class knew any English. The school was supposed to assign him a Japanese tutor, but for some reason they had trouble finding someone. The one bright spot for him was English class, which had an American teacher he liked, and it was the one place he felt like he knew what was going on.

His misery in 1st grade was one of the reasons I came back to the US with the boys about a month earlier than planned (the other reason was that Maria was going to be traveling a lot for her work). That meant Kai was able to re-join his old kindergarten class here for the last few weeks of the American school year. So he’s the proud owner of two kindergarten diplomas from two different countries.

View at Picasa The Tokyo Monorail’s Pokemon train22-May-2007 10:21, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 7.1, 5.40625mm, 0.003 sec	View at Picasa Eidan at the World City Tower’s park22-May-2007 10:12, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 7.1, 5.40625mm, 0.003 sec
View at Picasa Eidan in the grass at the World City Tower’s park14-May-2007 10:15, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 7.1, 5.40625mm, 0.006 sec	View at Picasa Eidan pretending to crash into posts, at the park adjacent to World City Towers in Shinagawa14-May-2007 10:35

The pictures above are from the park adjacent to the gargantuan World City Towers residential complex in Minato. It’s Tokyo’s largest, with 2,090 residential units. Click the bottom right picture for a video of Eidan – from Kai he learned the trick of pretending to bump into a pole and exclaiming “unh!,” as if he’d hurt himself. And here he’s doing it repeatedly. This park was a short walk from our apartment, and during the spring it was a daily destination for Eidan and I in the mornings. We’d play in the park after Maria left for work and Kai left for school, then I’d do our daily shopping at the wonderful Maruetsu grocery store. We’d go home for lunch, Eidan would nap for two hours while I worked, Kai would finish school, the three of us would go somewhere for a few hours, and then be home in time for dinner with Maria.

I enjoy doing write-ups of the parks we visited in Tokyo, but this one isn’t worth much commentary – it’s main attraction was that it was nearby. It’s a new park, and is quite large, but with only a few play structures, and an enormous, smooth gravel area in the middle. The Tokyo Monorail line runs along the edge of it. Eidan always enjoyed when the Pokemon train occasionally came by. Every morning a workman came by to empty the trashcans, and to sweep the entire gravel area with nothing more than an old fashioned Japanese broom. The one astonishing thing is that the grassy area of the park is strewn with rubble. It’s peppered with small pieces of broken concrete and tile, from the recently completed World City Towers. It’s just another idiosyncrasy of the otherwise fastidious Japanese: in so many ways they have the most exacting standards, but when it comes to parks, they’ll just throw grass seed down on top of the rubble and call it a day.

The two pictures below are from a smaller park that was across the street from our apartment in Minato. We didn’t go there much because it only had one small play structure and it tended to get very dusty (the ground around the play structure was just packed dirt, which would blow around when the weather was dry). But it was fun to see the kids from the local daycare literally get carted out for playtime.

View at Picasa The kids at the local daycare in Minato getting carted out for playtime09-May-2007 09:54, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 4.0, 10.8125mm, 0.002 sec

View at Picasa Eidan at the park across the street from our Minato apartment09-May-2007 09:58, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 7.1, 5.40625mm, 0.004 sec

Ikea in Funabashi, Japan View at Picasa Ikea in Funabashi, Japan09-Jan-2007 02:17, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 2.8, 5.40625mm, 0.002 sec

About a week after we arrived in Japan last New Years Eve, I was finding it impossible to work comfortably on our rickety dining room table. We were going to be in Japan for only 6 months, so a cheap desk was in order. Where to go for one? I first tried some sayonara sales (expats headed home and selling their stuff) and some used furniture stores (called “recycle shops” in Japan), but didn’t have any luck. The next option is the same one you might think of in the US – Ikea. There are two Ikeas near Tokyo (both built within the last few years), one in Funabashi and one in Kohoku. We decided to head to the one in Funabashi since it’s very close to Tokyo Disneyland. We figured we might catch a glimpse of it as we went by on the 30 minute ride on the Keiyo Line. Eidan munched on Pocky the whole way and got chocolate all over his face, which got a pair of high school girls smiling and giggling at him for quite a while.

Ikea Funabashi is located on the grounds where the LaLaport Skidome (SSAWS) once stood (the massive indoor Skidome represented one of the last gasps of the 1980s Japanese real estate boom, and the dome proved to be financially unsustainable). All I know about Funabashi is what I could see from the train, but it struck me as quite different from other Japanese cities I’ve seen, in that it sprawled – lots of relatively low rise construction spread over a large area. Next to the Ikea is the grim Wakamatsu residential complex, which I believe is public housing. When I say grim, I mean by Japanese standards – the buildings are old and unattractive, but everything is tidy and clean. Across from the Ikea is the massive LaLaport 3 mall, which we didn’t visit, but it’s probably similar to LaLaport 2 in Toyosu (the only mall I’ve ever been to that I actually enjoyed).

What made visiting this Ikea very strange was that it was absolutely identical to the Ikeas I’ve visited in the US. It felt comforting and unnerving at the same time – comforting to be in a familiar environment, but unnerving because it felt really out of place. Visiting a Starbuck’s or a McDonald’s in Japan is just different enough that you don’t get a sensation of deja vu, but not so at this Ikea – it was exactly the same down to the tiniest details, other than the signs being in Katakana.

After an unnervingly, comfortingly familiar meal of Swedish meatballs at the Ikea cafeteria, we quickly found their cheapest desk and desk chair, but since we were so far out from Tokyo the delivery was way too expensive (more than the price of what we were buying). So we put Kai in charge of Eidan’s stroller, Maria handled the chair, and I lugged the desk all the way back on the train. The hardest part was switching lines at Tokyo station, as it’s quite a long walk through the station to the Yamanote Line. It was quite a workout, but that desk and chair served me well for the rest of our time in Tokyo.

My sister’s boyfriend Paul with Eidan View at Picasa My sister’s boyfriend Paul with Eidan18-Aug-2007 17:25, Canon Canon PowerShot A80, 3.2, 9.625mm, 0.006 sec

In honor of yesterday’s unexpected early winter snowfall here in Philly, I decided it’s finally time to post pictures from our trip to Newport this summer. The first couple of pictures below are from a performance of the Navy Show Band at the Newport Art Museum. The Museum hosts a summer evening picnic series of musical performances. The tourists come for the Jazz and Folk Festivals, and the locals go to the Art Museum shows. The rest of the pictures are from Hazard’s Beach, where the boys spent most of their days during our week and half stay in August. My sister was visiting at the same time, so her kids – Matthew and Alex – are in some of the pictures. They live in Texas, so it’s nice for the kids to have a chance to get together in Newport. I spent my childhood summers at Hazard’s, so I think it’s great the boys get to spend some time there too.

View at Picasa Folks settling in for a performance at the Newport Art Muesum16-Aug-2007 07:22, SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 100	View at Picasa The Navy Show Band performing at the Newport Art Museum16-Aug-2007 07:43, SONY DSC-W55, 5.2, 18.9mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 320	View at Picasa Hazard’s Beach in Newport, RI18-Aug-2007 00:13, SONY DSC-W55, 7.1, 6.3mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 100
View at Picasa Kai and his cousin Alexandra17-Aug-2007 09:06, Canon Canon PowerShot A80, 5.6, 16.21875mm, 0.002 sec	View at Picasa Kai, with his cousins Matthew and Alex17-Aug-2007 09:26, Canon Canon PowerShot A80, 4.9, 23.40625mm, 0.002 sec	View at Picasa Alex, Matthew, and Kai17-Aug-2007 09:27, Canon Canon PowerShot A80, 4.9, 23.40625mm, 0.003 sec
View at Picasa Kai on the beach with charcoal on his nose18-Aug-2007 17:14, Canon Canon PowerShot A80, 4.9, 23.40625mm, 0.008 sec	View at Picasa Alex and Kai18-Aug-2007 17:14, Canon Canon PowerShot A80, 4.9, 23.40625mm, 0.013 sec	View at Picasa Eidan at Hazard’s Beach18-Aug-2007 17:26, Canon Canon PowerShot A80, 2.8, 7.8125mm, 0.006 sec
View at Picasa Paul pulling Kai and Eidan across the sand18-Aug-2007 17:28, Canon Canon PowerShot A80, 2.8, 7.8125mm, 0.005 sec	View at Picasa Kai (with charcoal on his face) and Alex enjoying s’mores18-Aug-2007 17:37, Canon Canon PowerShot A80, 4.5, 19.25mm, 0.017 sec

This particular performance was actually going on for quite a while before I got the camera. What really got me was the boys disappearing between each vignette – if you listen closely you can hear Kai whispering to Eidan about what to do next. Click the image to start the video.

The Kai and Eidan Show View at Picasa The Kai and Eidan Show12-Nov-2007 08:48

For Kai’s solider costume, we had trouble finding a toy gun – the big retailers don’t seem to carry them anymore. But the huge inflatable gun we found in a costume shop turned out to be much better than a regular toy – it’s ridiculously over the top. Eidan’s spidey costume is a hand-me-down from Kai. Eidan loves it, and has worn it at least once a month since he discovered it in a closet after we returned from Japan, so it was an easy choice for Halloween. Kai painted and carved the Frankenstein pumpkin you can see in the background of the first picture – it won 2nd place in his grade’s pumpkin carving contest. The weird thing was he predicted he’d get 2nd place when we were on the way to school.

Our time spent hitting up people for candy was surprisingly brief. Both boys decided they’d had enough after about half an hour. But they had a lot of fun, and that’s what matters.

View at Picasa Spider man in a precarious situation, yet he seems unconcerned01-Nov-2007 05:05, SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 100	View at Picasa Kai mugging for the camera with his ridiculously large gun01-Nov-2007 05:06, SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 100	View at Picasa Eidan in goofball mode01-Nov-2007 05:09, SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.013 sec, ISO 100
View at Picasa Spidey comes in for his close up01-Nov-2007 05:11, SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.013 sec, ISO 100	View at Picasa Kai in his soldier costume for Halloween01-Nov-2007 05:09, SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 100	View at Picasa Eidan and Kai enjoying some juice in the laundry basket07-Oct-2007 23:14, SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.025 sec, ISO 200

But before I go, I should provide an update on the boys. Kai is the dilettante I’m referring to in the title of this post, and Eidan the ruffian. Kai is turning out to be a very bright but lazy boy. The other day when we got home from school, he rejoiced – “it’s sitting time!” I always thought of six year olds as inherently active, but Kai usually acts more like a bored teenager. If I can get him going on something – whether it’s playing legos, baseball in the yard, or something else – he usually has fun, but it’s like pulling teeth to get him in motion. Someone who’s better at getting him in motion is Eidan, who won’t hesitate to grab something like a toy plastic sword and chase Kai around the house with it, with Kai screaming in semi-mock terror.

Here’s a moment that captures both of their personalities: a few weeks ago when it was really hot out, Eidan stripped himself down to his diaper. Kai climbed in their red wagon, and Eidan grabbed the handle, straining with every ounce of his strength to pull Kai down the sidewalk. Kai laid back in the wagon with a juice box in one hand, pretending to crack a whip with the other, shouting “faster, faster!” They both couldn’t have been happier.

Eidan’s vocabulary has exploded in the past few weeks. It’s still hard to understand him, but that’s ok, because it’s very cute. For example, “big truck!” (his favorite expression) comes out as “zhig tuck!,” and “Kai” is “die.” When he’s feeling a sense of urgency he puts “aw” in front, so when he really wants Maria, it’s “aw mommy!” What I found really funny was hearing him repeat phrases that I don’t even realize I’ve been saying: one time when I put him in his chair and pushed him close to the table he said “there ya go!” I asked Maria where that came from, and she pointed out that I say it all the time.

Anyway – enough talk! Here’s a picture and a video of the boys to get you through the next month:

Eidan and Kai sharing my desk chair View at Picasa Eidan and Kai sharing my desk chair23-Sep-2007 07:47, SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.125 sec, ISO 320

Kai reading to Eidan, with Eidan providing sound effects View at Picasa Kai reading to Eidan, with Eidan providing sound effects27-Sep-2007 08:32

View at Picasa Kai and Maria made shrinky dinks of Kai’s favorite Avatar characters, Aang and Zuko16-Sep-2007 10:02, SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.025 sec, ISO 100

I’m writing this post at Kai’s request. Tonight he and Maria made Shrinky Dink versions of Kai’s favorite characters from the Nickelodeon show Avatar: The Last Airbender. Maria sketched them and Kai colored them in. Kai is very proud of their work. (They’re not actually Shrinky Dinks though. We made them from the lids of take out sushi containers. You can use #6 plastic just like Shrinky Dinks).

I have to admit Avatar has become a guilty pleasure of mine. The target demographic is 6-11 year olds, but I think it’s actually more sophisticated than a lot of shows intended for adults. The world created for the show is rich in detail, and draws on a wide range of Eastern religions and history to shape its many cultural and supernatural aspects. As an example, the final episode of the second season revolves around Aang (a young boy, who is the main character) having to clear his seven chakras as a step in achieving his potential as the Avatar. I didn’t know much of anything about chakras going into it, but I looked it up afterwards, and it seemed like they actually made a reasonably faithful adaptation of the concept for the show.

What impresses me the most though is the quality of the show’s martial arts animation. Most animation I’ve seen comes up short when it comes to intricate physical movement, but Avatar doesn’t. What’s particularly impressive is that the animators bring to life the distinct styles used by characters from each of the show’s four nations: “The creators use Tai Chi for waterbending, Hung Gar for earthbending (although Toph employs a Chu Gar Southern Praying Mantis style), Northern Shaolin for firebending, and Ba Gua for airbending.”

Also, I’m a sucker for serialized epics with intricate plots. Each season of the show is presented as a book, with each episode being a chapter. The third season trailer below shows some of the maturing of the characters. Like a lot of shows these days, the main characters are kids, but unlike most others, they don’t behave unrealistically (setting aside their magical powers, of course). I also credit the writers for not shying away from how fast the characters are forced to grow up, given their situation. The Aang we see in the third season trailer seems a long way from the goofy kid he was in the first season.

Given the intensity of the trailer, I’m curious to see if the show loses any of the humor that nicely balanced the action and dramatic elements of the previous seasons. I imagine that writing humor gets harder as a story like this moves forward and the stakes just keep getting higher. But maybe that’s why I’m not a fiction writer . My bet is that they’ll pull it off.

Check out the trailer. The new episodes start airing next week.

View at Picasa I had to disassemble the dashboard of our new Prius to remove change from the CD player, put there by my little “helper” Eidan29-Jul-2007 06:01, SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.025 sec, ISO 160

A few weeks ago I was letting Eidan play in our new Prius, and I took my eyes off him for a few minutes – always a bad idea. He took the opportunity to stuff some change in the CD player. My first impulse was to pick up the car by the rear bumper and shake it, in order to get the change to fall out. But lacking the ability to turn into the Hulk – no matter how mad I am – I had to look for a different solution. I was worried that trying to play a CD might damage the player, so I called the dealership, and the guy I talked to agreed, and said they could take out the CD player (for about $100 worth of labor) and try to get the change out. That sounded like the least bad option, so Maria called later to make an appointment, and instead got an inquisition. “Who did you talk to? That’s wrong! We’ll have to remove the CD player and then ship it out to be fixed or replaced.” The whole thing was going to run $300 or $400.

So I decided to give it a try myself. Car stereo installation guys take out factory stereos all the time, right? First I opened the hood to disconnect the battery, to avoid any accidental shorts. I quickly discovered that “battery” is a bit of a different concept when it comes to a hybrid car. I didn’t see anything that remotely resembled any kind of car battery I’d ever seen since my high school motorhead days. Instead of being smart and looking it up, I decided to live dangerously and turned my attention to the dashboard. While it looked like it was composed of a set of discrete panels, it turned out they were all interlocked. That meant removing the center section (where the CD player is) required starting with the sections all the way on the edge of the driver’s side, and working my way across, resulting in my opening up pretty much the entire dashboard.

View at Picasa The CD player with the change it, and the little boy who put it there29-Jul-2007 06:01, SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.013 sec, ISO 100

This is really not something I wanted to do to our brand new car. The force required to pull out the dash panels felt like it was just short of the level of force that would break them. The one that really had me scared at first was removing the touchscreen panel above the CD player, but it turned out to actually be easier than some of the others. I also had to keep an eye on the various sharp metal edges of the components inside the dash, to make sure I didn’t scratch any of the exterior surfaces on them as I moved things around.

It all worked out fine. It turns out the CD player had a good design, with a small well in the front, so that any small objects (like coins!) would fall in the well instead of getting jammed in the drive. I shook out 52 cents, which I gave to Kai, and then put everything back together. The whole venture took about an hour, and the CD player still worked fine. And it didn’t cost $300 .

Note: I found a number of people posting on various car forums with this same problem (apparently Eidan isn’t the only toddler who’s attracted to putting coins in CD players). I imagine it’s likely other Toyota cars have their dashboards put together in a similar fashion, but I can’t say for sure. Don’t try this yourself unless you are mechanically inclined – there are plenty of opportunities to accidentally damage things. If you do try it yourself, and you have a foreign car, be sure to have a metric socket wrench set handy.