School

To home school or not to home school.  That was never a question.

Very soon in our planning, it was clear to everyone (even people that barely knew us) that having me try to teach our children would be catastrophic.  You know, 6:00-pm-nightly-news-emergency-admission-to-state psychiatric-facility level catastrophic.  It might have been bad for the kids, too.

For many of us, the pandemic effectively revealed core limitations in our parenting.  Limitations in patience.  In household cleaning and management.  In personal maintenance.  And in teaching.  Because up until that moment, we relied on outsourcing to the public school system while reassuring ourselves that we were doing a great job managing and teaching our children.  Just not between the hours of 8 and 3.  We needed a break.  But let me tell you, the months I spent in 2020 trying to help two Douglasses learn fundamentals of geometry that I could barely remember gave me a deep and abiding respect for teachers.

Upon reading this, Amy pointed out that she is, in fact, a teacher and wouldn't mind a bit of deep and abiding respect.  When she said this, my first thought was that she might be the perfect candidate to home school our daughters, particularly given that we had no other options.  But then I thought it would be hard for me to expect that she do her Fulbright research and home school our daughters.  I may have phrased that incorrectly.  It wouldn't be hard to expect it.  It would be hard to suggest it.

So, to our daughters' great horror, we adopted the only rational approach.  We enrolled them in the Nagoya International Junior and Senior High School, in which half their classes would be taught in Japanese.  Now, to call their command of the Japanese language negligible would be grossly overstating their abilities.  Tessa in particular managed to avoid learning any Japanese despite mandated time on the language app we purchased for her.  I consoled myself with the knowledge that there is nothing like immersion combined with impending social humiliation to help people learn.  I'm pretty sure that's the guiding principle behind junior high schools everywhere.

At this school, Math, social studies, design, and gym are in Japanese.  Upon learning this, both daughters immediately raised a hue and cry, one of the few moments in which they have agreed since coming to Japan if not since birth.  "Math??!  Math is in Japanese?  That's impossible."

"Yes, Math is in Japanese" I responded in my calmest, most supportive, most educational tone.  "But it's not impossible.  Numbers are numbers.  They transcend culture."

"Transcend this, dad."

At their school, moral studies, comprehensive studies, music, and science are taught in English.  Oh and English is taught in English.  We told them, you'd better do good in English.  Lily looked supremely confident.  Tessa looked uncertain.

Our daughters on the first day of school.  They were acutely aware that they were not wearing the official uniform and would therefore stand out.

Um, a bit, I responded.  The clothes could make you stand out just a bit.

Our daughters walking in to the foyer of their school.  We were expressly forbidden to get any closer, a threat that was hissed repeatedly at us as we approached the school.  I now realize we do a lot of hissing in our family.  So we hovered by the gate and watched anxiously to see if they needed our help.  I'm pretty sure that made them feel really supported.

Amy spent the majority of that day fretting about how they might be doing and whether they needed anything and did I see anything on the home page of the Nagoya Times about a tragic accident at the school.  I had to use my undercover therapy skills to keep her relaxed.  SCBT (Stealth Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).  It's only effective when she doesn't know it's happening.  When we returned to pick them up, our fears proved wholly unfounded.  They emerged from the school in the middle of a group of six girls all laughing and joking.

However, our girls continued to express concern that they lacked the appropriate school uniforms.  We decided to bite the bullet and buy the school uniforms, which were a cool 142,470 yen.  Finding the store that sold the uniforms was pure hell.  Google helpfully provided a route that led us from the Higashiyama line to the Sakura-Dori line to the Sakae exit up three blocks directly to a store that sold ... Louis Vuitton hand bags.  I triple checked the name and the Google directions.  Both were correct.  According to the infinite wisdom of Google, we were exactly where we were supposed to be.  Out of ideas, I stood on the sidewalk with my face pressed against the glass trying to see if there were any Nagoya International Junior and Senior High School Uniforms behind the racks of LV X YK Coussin PM.  

Nope.

To the horror of my family (Amy included) I entered the store and gave a suave nod to the exceptionally well dressed clerk and then had Google Translate ask whether they sold school uniforms.  The proprietor adopted what I can only assume is a patented pained expression and said "this ... is not that store."  For some reason, Google Translate kept autocorrecting my "no shit."  The proprietor waved his hand vaguely behind me and said "it is five blocks that way."  So we left his crappy high end store, vowing never to purchase a Louis Vuitton bag, and walked five blocks in the direction of his wave.  Google continued to assert that we needed to turn around and return to the Louis Vuitton store.  There was a tense five minutes where we stood on the corner of a random street in downtown Nagoya and waited for one of us to have a good idea.  Or any idea.

Ultimately, it turned out that the uniform store included link to their address embedded on its website.  In our defense, the link was buried underneath a mass of Japanese phrases.  We managed to force Google to direct us to that address, which was a nondescript, five story building.  However, I was able to decipher the name of the uniform shop on the sign outside and we rushed inside.  We entered the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor and ... nothing happened.  "Tessa," I said, "it's on the third floor.  Press the button that says three."  "Transcend this, dad," she responded while she repeatedly pressed the third floor button.  Because buttons.  However, the elevator did not move.  Because not open on Wednesdays.

The following day, Amy and I went to the shop after lunch.  Two very nice employees managed to inform us that our daughters needed to be present to be measured for the uniforms, and that the uniforms would not be ready until mid March (when the school term was over).  Through gratuitous use of Google Translate, Amy was able to determine that one of the women had twins and a few jokes later, viola, we could have the uniforms later that day if their size was "in stock."  My perspective was - any size is their size.

If I've lost any readers by describing (in excruciating detail) the process of purchasing school uniforms in Japan, I can only say one thing. 

Worth it.

The Belt

This is going to drive my linear readers crazy, but I've gotta go back in time a bit.  You see, there was an epilogue for the belt story.  Some of you are probably like "an epilogue?  The belt thing didn't warrant a story in the first place" while others of you are like "wait, did he write something about a belt?  Or is that a metaphor?"

Nonetheless.

After twenty two hours traveling with my family, there were a few things I really wanted; a beer, a bed, and a belt.  So, after fulfilling the first two objectives, I forced Tessa to accompany me on a belt purchase under the guise of exploring Tokyo.  We found a five floor mall and after what seemed like twenty two hours, we found an H&M store.  In Japan, H&M stores are exactly like H&M stores in the US, except everything is written in Japanese.  I nevertheless managed to meander my way around the store with Tessa in tow until stumbling upon the belt rack.  And there I found this beaut.

I approached checkout with a great deal of trepidation.  There were four lanes and a long line of people waiting, which gave me a lot of time to practice what I was going to say.  But the cashier threw me off my game.  As I approached the counter, she blurted a stream of Japanese at a terrifying rate of speed.  In that moment, I realized that our language app had to have been playing at quarter speed, because as far as I could tell she said one very long word to me.  She looked at me expectantly and I'm sad to say I panicked.  'Hai!' I said while grinning and shaking my head.

"Dad," Tessa whispered, "You just said yes while shaking your head."

Thinking back to my hours of work on the language app,  I realized she was right.  That didn't make much sense.  What was the word for no?  I drew a blank.  So I improvised.  Nodding with what I hoped was an appropriate level of intensity, I said "Wa!"

Loosely translated, Wa means 'the.'  

At this point, the clerk decided her best bet was to make the rest of the decisions about the transaction herself, including whether I wanted a bag, whether I wanted a rewards card, and whether I wanted to sign up for the Tokyo H&M Rewards Credit Card.  The answer to all questions was apparently Hai.

I can't say that I'm proud of what happened next, but I know Tessa wasn't.  I shifted into the purely pragmatic mindset that has served me so well as a forensic psychologist.  Identify the facts and act accordingly.  Two facts were clear: a) I had been in sore need of a belt for twenty two hours, and b) I had just acquired a belt.  So, rather than carrying the belt back to the hotel in a bag (which seemed kind of insane), I took the belt out of the bag and started ripping the tags off.  To Tessa's dawning horror, this occurred in the middle of the hallway just outside the store.  

She turned paper white and said 'dad, what are you doing?'  

Although it seemed pretty obvious to me, I said 'I'm going to put my belt on.'  

She said 'I'm out,' and immediately walked into the nearest store.

As I threaded the belt through the loops, it occurred to me that this was probably what philosophers might call an inflection point and astrophysicists might call an event horizon.  That moment when you have passed through to the other side and decided not to be embarrassed by events that would cause an aneurysm in the teenage set.  Although it's not a cool place to be, I've gotta say that it's pretty comfortable.  I'm seeing a tracksuit and Brooks running shoes in my immediate future.

I've included a reenactment of the interaction below.  Tessa covering her face perfectly captures her embarrassment both at the mall and in our apartment as she said "Dad, who does a reenactment of putting on their belt?"

This guy.

Why wouldn't I put my belt on in a hallway?

This isn't a real post ...

 ... but I thought you might like to see where the "magic" happens.

Today the magic happened here ...

I'm sitting in the Istanbul Cafe in the Osu shopping district while the ladies peruse the numerous second hand clothing stores. I'm simultaneously working on my novel and the next blog post, which will almost certainly lead to some confusing cross branding.  If dystopian sci fi ends up in the blog, my apologies.

Before you accuse us of being bad parents for not having our children in school (or drinking on a Wednesday late late afternoon - 5:00 adjacent), as far as we can tell, there is no school today.