Konnichiwa!
This unfortunately represents the sum total of my working Japanese, which is a real problem because Amy received a Fulbright to conduct eyewitness research in Japan in the spring. When Amy originally approached me about spending four months in Japan, it seemed like the kind of situation in a marriage where you can get a great deal of credit for being flexible without much in the way of costs because your partner is almost certainly not going to get the grant. I always look forward to questions like “can I apply for a grant to spend the winter volunteering to count caribou in the North Dakota badlands?” Absolutely. In fact, let’s apply for a year! I suggest you be on the lookout for these opportunities in your own marriages.
But you should know that every so often it comes back to bite you. Your partner gets that grant. Then you have to suck it up and download a language app that proves you’re less smart than you thought you were.
The ostensible purpose of Fulbright is to send reasonable Americans to foreign places as ambassadors of goodwill. They sent the Douglasses.
Read those last two lines aloud. If that isn’t already the preview voiceover for a B horror movie, it should be. But I suspect we are talking about a new genre here. Documentary Horror. You know, something that would make people say ‘I know it’s real because it’s a documentary but … there is NO WAY that’s real’ and ‘it’s just really hard to watch.’ A mild mannered, self-effacing forensic psychologist trapped between two thirteen year olds watching reruns of My Little Pony on a fourteen hour flight.
In Japan, we are renting a “cozy” three bedroom closet. In such an intimate space, I’m concerned that our family dynamic (which you could call feisty or explosive depending on how close you are sitting to us) will not mesh well with the more contemplative Japanese culture. I usually think this when Tessa and Lily are shrieking at each other over who used up the last of the acne medication or, sometimes, who looked at whom in a certain way. So I’ve spent the last month hissing “pretend we’re in an apartment” or “pretend we’re a different family.” That’s what I do.
Lily continues to vie against Amy for top perfectionist in the family, and she will routinely hyperventilate at the prospect of getting second in anything. In an effort to teach Lily that failure is invaluable as a learning experience, we mandated that she enter a state wide fiction writing contest for ages 10 to 18. I told Amy there’s nothing like a cold, two line rejection letter to help you realize that the best bet for your writing career is Christmas letters. Well, Lily won the damn thing and is now the sole professional author of the family. Her story was, as Stephen King is thought to have said, too scary to read aloud. I’m not certain what her next story is about, but the other day she did say to me ‘Dad, I’d be really sad if you were murdered.’ If you dare to read her story, it’s at the Telling Room website.
In addition to her writing, Lily has been working on her awareness of environmental issues. This fall, she asked for a glass of milk and I finished one carton and opened another one. As I was about to pour the milk into her glass, she shouted “STOP!” When I asked for clarification, she said “if you use different cartons … the milk will be from different cows.” Feeling a surge of guilt about my inadequate education on industrial dairy farming, I demanded “did you seriously think they would just milk each cow directly into the carton?” It turns out that she did. When I proceeded to explain that every milk carton contains milk from many different cows, she gagged and swore off all dairy. I have neglected to explain the same is true for yogurt, cream, ice cream, etc.
I’m sure many of you are concerned about Tessa’s medical condition (the acute crushinitis I mentioned in last year’s letter). It became manifest in the form of a towering and monosyllabic thirteen year old whose name rhymes with Panthony. I remember last year when Tessa was railing against our draconian moratorium on dating. Her exact quote was “all my problems would be solved if I could just date.” I’m not proud that I said “Tess, that’s when your problems will start.” Now, I’m not saying I’m prophetic or about to start a religion, but I do think Tess has been surprised that the lifting of the moratorium did not coincide with a stampede of suitors. Let’s just say that Panthony is slow playing the courtship.
In addition to crushes, Tessa has continued her pursuit of dominance of soccer, racquet sports, and a game I call “we just want dad to lose.” We play it every time we play a card game or a board game or a sport or talk about our goals in life.
My family has started to say outrageous things to “make the Christmas letter.” I keep having to say, ‘I’m not a shill’ and ‘this isn’t propaganda’ and ‘the letter is about how I feel about real things.’ Tess will usually respond by asking “are you going to describe my hair as honey blond or ash blond?” Lily usually doesn’t say anything because she’s reading.
As we frantically check things off our lists, I’m realizing that I need to learn a few other important phrases in Japanese. Most travelers would want to know how to say “where is the bathroom?” or “is that a noodle or a tentacle?” but I suspect I will need some specialized language, such as “we need to hire a juvenile defense attorney,” “that is too much money,” and “what are the detention center visiting hours?”
