Kyoto Part II

The next morning, we took a family trip to the shrine.  And by 'family trip' I mean the same thing that most parents mean; namely, we wrenched our children out of bed a full five hours earlier than they would have preferred, forced them to fake their way through personal hygiene, and mandated they consume something other than refined sugar and flour covered by liquid refined sugar.   

We took a taxi to the shrine.  On the way there, the driver was quiet, he drove safely, and he dropped us off right in front of the shrine.  After we arrived, he pealed out of there as if suddenly realizing he violated a national ordinance related to Douglasses at holy places.  It's possible that the word got out about Lily's destructive tendencies at Awomb, because I did see some pretty nervous monks standing in front of breakable objects on our way in.

The Fushimi Inari Shrine gates.

The shrine has thousands of orange gates leading to the top of the mountain.  Many of the gates have beautiful inscriptions written on the sides that I assumed were haiku or philosophical mantras sadly inaccessible to us.  This assumption was proven wrong halfway up the hike, when we saw 'oral health' written in English.  This led me to conclude that most of the inscriptions are part public service announcement, part advertisement.  Bob's Car Wash.  Wash Your Hands.

The shrine is dedicated to Inari, the Shinto god of rice and unhappy children.  So I sort of assumed our kids would feel right at home and maybe, ironically, less unhappy.  But this was naive.

If you find the prospect of hiking up 2000 steps exhausting or the thought of three hours of non-stop complaining even more exhausting, imagine hiking those steps accompanied by a three hour concert of two thirteen-year-olds bemoaning their fate and talking wistfully about how good the kids have it in shrine-free Lewiston.

At a crossroads mid hike.  I'm not proud that I was sorely tempted to let my family get a few feet down the right lane and then run down the left.  Awkwardly, Amy had the same idea, so we all ended up going down the left.

Parents reading this blog will immediately recognize that the expression on our faces is not smiling, per se, but a form of rigor mortis that comes from gritting your teeth for too long due to a constant barrage of complaints.

Upon reading this section, Lily exclaimed "DAD!

I didn't complain.  And that's amazing because that whole day was like waterboarding."

How could I disagree?  The hike did have unremitting interrogation.  Why are we on this hike anyway?  How much longer is this going to take?  Daddy, I can hear Tessa breathe.  Can you make her stop?

So in retrospect, it was a lot like a group waterboarding, otherwise known as the Last Family Vacation.  Every family has one.  Ours is just going to last another 10 weeks. 

And the hike was not without risk ...

The idea of a roving band of bloodthirsty monkeys made the hike even less appealing to Tessa.  She spent the remainder of our time convinced that she would be abducted, and her movements became even more furtive and jumpy than usual.  At one point, we heard an odd shushing, sweeping sound (which later proved to be a groundskeeper sweeping the steps) and she squeezed my hand painfully and whispered "was that a monkey?"  

By contrast, I suspect Lily would have welcomed the prospect of being held hostage by monkeys.  Hey.  Better than a forced march on a Sunday morning.

The shrine was lousy with statues of foxes, or messengers of Inari.  Amy was primarily interested in the "bibs."  We've spent a lot more time than I thought possible speculating on what the bibs might mean, who put them there, and how often they are washed.  I have a lot of pictures of bibs.

Those questions represented the sum total of Amy's interest in the foxes.  She was on a quest to find a few statues of kama inu, or lion dogs.  These have proven surprisingly difficult to find.  Every time we entered a shop, Amy bustled to the back of the store and rummaged through the inevitable fox-centric statuary and finally, overwhelmed by frustration, she turned to the proprietor and shouted 'kama inu?  Inu!  Ka-ma I-nu?'  

Throttled

I have a few slogans for our cellphone company, which I'll call Locodomo because I'm paranoid that actually naming the company in a blogpost will result in something bad.

Here are my best slogans.

Locodomo.  Where internet users go to die (from old age as the page loads).

Locodomo.  Play throttle roulette.

Locodomo.  Want to surf the internet?  The tide is always out.

Locodomo.  UNLIMITED DATA (so long as you don't download anything bigger than 5 MB).

As you've probably surmised, I've been throttled.  The embarrassing thing is that I've been throttled repeatedly and I am the only one in the family who has been forced to tap out by Locodomo.  To be fair, I did not really read the fine print of the contract, which clearly stated (in 3 point font) that they can and will slow you down if you are what they call an excessive internet user that violates the fair use policy, or a 'whale.'  The exact definition of excessive internet use is left vague and ill defined.  I suspect it's left up to the whims of a temperamental Locodomo IT guy named Larry.

My first throttling occurred early in our stay, when I was preparing a blog post.  I uploaded a batch of 250 photos from my phone to my computer, somehow messed up the upload, and uploaded them again.  Possibly even a third time.  It was definitely an upload binge.  But what harm could there be in a few uploads?

2 GB in fifteen minutes?  Bam.  You are done.  Larry put the hammer down and for the next twenty four hours, I was forced to limp along on 160 kbps.  Many of you may be unaware that there is such a thing as Kbps.  I could hear the click and whine of the dial up modem as I stared at my blank screen.

My second throttling occurred after I realized I could watch NFL playoffs and really really wanted to watch the Giants lose.  Well, they won and the Bucs and Vikes lost.  Which brings us to yet another life lesson I'm happy to offer free of charge; streaming a high def NFL game to your laptop consumes an inordinate amount of bandwidth that will render your phone most effective as a coaster for drinks.

So that throttling was definitely not worth it.  Not that I'm necessarily saying a throttling should ever be worth it.

By this time, I successfully complained to a subsidiary of Locodomo about my unfair asphyxiation.  They seemed really sympathetic and sent me a second sim card to swap out in case Locodomo kept suffocating me.  They did warn me that "excessive downloads or uploads" would trigger continued virtual beatings.  I wrote 'hey I get it, I really do.'  I had learned my lesson.

But I didn't really learn my lesson.  I just acknowledged there was a lesson that one might learn.  The third throttling was clearly my fault.  I watched the 49ers lose on one card (and got throttled) and then swapped the sim card and watched the Chiefs win on the other card (and got throttled). 

Despite the throttling, my 160 kbps stream still allowed me to check email and read a webpage an hour.  But Larry must have been harboring a grudge, because after a few hours, I noticed that my speed was down even further.  8 kbps.  At this speed, a sentence of plain text can take a half hour to load.  I asked Amy if she thought double throttling was a thing.  She said 'it is now.'

I contacted our previously helpful subsidiary and noted two things; first, I was pretty sure I'd been Double Throttled and, second, 'Unlimited Internet' and 'Double Throttling' would seem to be mutually incompatible concepts.  The reply I received balanced the impressive politeness of Japan with the terse rigidity of a customer service agent pushed too far along with a dose of inexorable corporate illogic.  I was informed that there are no "true unlimited" internet plans in Japan, and that I'd better be happy with the current 'limited unlimited' plan.  

I responded that I was happy not happy with the plan.

I do not want a bag!

Amy is mastering Japanese one emphatic phrase at a time.  Her philosophy is that it's better to be able to say one thing with conviction than carry on a conversation with someone.  For a long time, her phrase was arigatou gozaimasu (spelling corrected by Lily).  This roughly translates to 'Thanks very much.'  She said it to everyone but me.

Lately, however, her focus shifted.  For the last several weeks, she has decided to master fukuro wa irimasen.  For the astute readers out there, it means 'I do not want a bag.'  It started out innocently enough, after we developed an escalating collection of plastic bags and could not dispose of them.  When we went to the local co-op, she'd say fukuro iie (bag no).  But lately it seems to be getting out of control.  As her self-confidence with bag negation has grown, she has decided to accompany me to stores in the off chance that someone will gesture to a bag so she can scream fukuro wa irimasen.  When the clerk backs off with a panicked expression, Amy's eyes get a little wild, a little glazed over, at the rush of endorphins that comes with having uttered a Japanese phrase in context.  Every time I get off the couch, she sits up and demands "you going to the store?  7 Eleven?  Co-op?  Bags R Us?"  

"Um no," I usually stammer.  "I'm going on an exercise walk" (to 7 Eleven).

In part, Amy's obsession with 'bag no' comes from our burgeoning awareness that the Japanese are oversackers.  I suspect that the bag lobby is extremely powerful here and may in fact have ties to the yakuza, because if you are not incredibly attentive every item you purchase at a store will be placed inside a bag which is then placed inside another bag.  At times, items are first placed in bubble wrap before being double sacked.  Sometimes, a sandwich purchase will also include a freeze pack to keep it cool and fresh, and all of that will end up wrapped in layers of plastic.  Your ecological karma takes a serious whack every time you go to a 7 eleven.  

I worry that Amy's habit may be hard to break; that when we return to Maine, she will compulsively yell fukuro wa irimasen while at Hannaford or during her Statistics lectures.  If this happens to you, just back away slowly, avoid eye contact, and keep your hands away from any nearby bags.

Kyoto Part I

 Kyoto.  The city in Japan you are most likely to have heard of besides Tokyo.  Although this is not the official slogan, I think it's pretty good and sums up our experience of the place.

In an effort to find food that Amy and Lily would appreciate, I discovered Awomb, a restaurant serving vegetarian sushi that had great reviews on our vegetarian restaurant finder, Happy Cow (also known as Supersad Soybean).  We asked our hotel to make a reservation for us, and learned that either a) it could only be done online or b) our hotel staff were deeply offended by the idea that they could be used to make reservations.  So I went up to our room and, after an agonizing hour of attempting to force Google Translate to translate Japanese websites, I made a reservation for the next day (though also possibly for several years in the future).

The restaurant had a very cool hobbit vibe, with a gate and a round lantern and a stone path ringed by trees that led to a half size door.  There were, unfortunately, no unusually attractive elves.

Upon reaching the door, I mustered by best Gandalf voice and said "Bilbo Baggins!"  

My next thought was that no one gets me and that no one wants to.

The hobbit door.  The average person's head is well above the lightbulb.

We removed our shoes and were asked to wear
sandals, which Lily found revolting.  Shared footwear is not something she or Amy can appreciate (in their minds, 'you could learn a lot from walking in someone else's shoes' translates to athletes foot).  Lily gagged as she thought about all the feet that had been in the sandals over the last month, and it probably didn't help when I remarked that some people probably don't wear socks when it's hot.  I risked a glance around the restaurant to make sure Lily's gagging didn't offend anyone.  "Keep it down," I whispered.  "You're ruining our first impression."  

She pointed out that my Gandalf impression already accomplished that.  

At that moment, the hostess handed me a large clipboard that held a laminated piece of paper on which a dissertation in Japanese had been written.  Depending on the accuracy of Google Translate, it was either suggested etiquette for customers or the top fifteen things that would get you banned from the restaurant.  After scanning the list, I realized there was a good chance my children were going to hit at least ten of the fifteen and Amy had another three covered.  As I was trying to think of a polite way to run out of the restaurant, Lily backed into the wall and bumped into a wooden decoration and sent it banging to the floor.  It was the kind of banging that kept on going, you know, bang bang bang BANG .... bang.  Bang.  Everyone in the restaurant turned to glare at Lily.  A few 'gaijins' were thrown her way, and I'm willing to admit that I was the one saying them.  (Because honestly.  How hard is it to enter a restaurant and avoid sending the nearby Ming dynasty vase to the tile floor in a million pieces?  As a Douglass?  Apparently impossible.)  Our hostess glared at me.  I cooly returned her gaze and tapped the clipboard and said 'not on the list.'  Or something pretty close to that.   She gave me the type of look you get from your garbage men when you tell them that you ran out of garbage bags and just spent a week throwing food scraps and dirty diapers in the garbage can.  Revolted and resigned.  Although they tried to be exhaustive, you just really can't anticipate the Douglasses. 

Then we started upstairs.  I took the lead, followed by Amy, Lily, and Tessa taking up the rear.  As I approached the top, I heard Lily mutter "oops," and turned around just in time to see one of her slippers tumble down the stairs, hitting every single stair with a loud bump.

After Lily retrieved her slipper, we were seated in a space as far away from other paying customers as possible.  I assume they considered seating us at another restaurant.

Our meal.  The intended process is that you take a piece of seaweed (upper right), roll it into a cone, stuff some rice into it (lower right), select one of the fillings, and then an optional topping (lower left).  Then you wash it down with mushroom soup (center right).

Although most of the food was excellent, one of the fillings was absolutely inedible and caused a group gagging (except for Lily, who essentially refused to eat anything).  Kudos to whoever figures out the offending filling.  Though again, those aren't the kudos you want.  But they've gotta be better than eating that thing on the upper right.  Blech.

After the meal, the girls engaged in a relentless campaign of commenting on a) how cold it was, b) how far they'd walked, and c) how difficult the transition to Japan had been for them.  This was all in service of being allowed to return to the hotel and lay in bed and watch Gilmore Girls or (insert other show) on their phones while eating junk food.  I'll only say that it was a very effective campaign.  I later learned that Tessa was unable to find another good show and defaulted to watching a 24 hour sumoathon.

Amy and I took the high road.  At least that's what I think it was called.  My Japanese is good not.  We took the metro to the Kyoto Botanical Gardens, where we were able to appreciate the 'dormant phase.'  I'm told this is a worthwhile expenditure of an afternoon by botanists and marital therapists.

Some pretty aggressive sculpture

Even more aggressive avian features.  The 'kite' seems to be a distant relative of the Australian magpie, which as you all know is the deadly psychopath that routinely ravages the Adelaide countryside and strikes fear into the hearts of umbrella carriers.  The kites are worse, as they are approximately the size of Rainbow Dash and have the temperament of Nightmare Rarity.  Those My Little Pony episodes dig deep into your psyche.  We should all hope the American crow doesn't learn from their cousins in the east.

As I stared at this sign, I kept returning to the idea of what kind of business this might be and what the owner might have requested from the graphic designer.  You could make an argument for fish massage, but the guy in the hat seems pretty happy.  I'm not great on fish facial expressions, but the fish not so much.

On the way back to the hotel, Amy and I wandered through the Nishiki Market, approximately four blocks of food stalls, tiny restaurants, and shops.  It was packed in the winter, so I can only imagine what it must be like at the height of the tourist season.

This was a matcha flavored rice paste snack.  I bought a ten pack.  It was voted everyone's least favorite snack.

That night, we found the best Mexican food I've ever had in the basement of an office complex.  Now most of you are probably turning to your partner or child or stranger sitting next to you saying 'he lives in freaking Lewiston, Maine.  What does he know about Mexican cuisine?'  

Well, I'll have you know that I've also had really good Mexican food when we lived in Australia.  

But this was better.

I obviously took this picture most of the way through the meal after realizing that a picture of the nacho tower might convince skeptics out there.

 

Two hoodlums lurking at the back.  I told Amy we should steer clear of them.  

Amy pointed out they were our children and I said 'exactly.'

Meito City Ward

"I'll just head on over to the Meito City Ward and take care of our registration cards."

If you ever find yourself saying anything remotely similar to this, you need to stop yourself.  You are about to make a mistake that your spouse will hold over your head for years.

Amy looked at me with the world-weary expression of someone who has heard many stupid things in her life and is assessing whether this might be the stupidest.  "What did you say?"  

"Registration cards.  I'll just head over and get them stamped.  Maybe they can tell me how to sort our trash."

You see, in my mind, I was about to head over to a small city office that had two windows and a bored clerk who would be happy to spend fifteen minutes explaining not only how to get our registration forms approved but how to sort our trash into the eight different piles required by the city.  In my fantasy, the clerk had a good command of English.  My plan was to 1) establish rapport, 2) use my well practiced but limited Japanese (Konnichiwa!), and 3) sign a form and perhaps receive a welcome package consisting of a small chocolate in the shape of a rabbit (it is the Year of the Rabbit after all).

But Nagoya is not Lewiston.  Nagoya is a city of three million.  So the small city office is not small.

As you might be able to tell from the picture, there are more than two windows and the only thing that remotely resembles English are numbers.  Also, in case you can't tell, none of the clerks look remotely interested in practicing their English or bantering with a forensic psychologist.  However, I've discovered that the benefit of looking desperate and hapless is that someone will eventually wander over and ask if you are in the right place.  And by place, I'm thinking she meant country.  The woman had a badge that we ultimately deduced meant 'information' or 'help for the stupid.'  She produced a required form that was completely in Japanese and, correctly assessing our looks of terror, she then brought an instructional guide in English.  After a painstaking process of learning how to spell our name in Katakana (one of the three alphabets) she shepherded us to window number four.  There another very nice woman managed to correct all of the mistakes we made on the form and provided us with a card.  Our number was 148.  The problem, and it seemed profound at the time, is that the numbers were read aloud over the loudspeaker in Japanese.  We were therefore trying to listen for 'hyakuyonjuuhachi,' which only sounds like 148 if you are slurring your words because you've had most of a bottle of Sake.  Which in retrospect would have made the entire experience more enjoyable and equally efficient.  But we were in luck!  Word had spread throughout the Meito City Ward workforce that there were two clueless Gaijin camped out in the waiting area and these Gaijin did not seem likely to leave on their own account.  

The steely eyed determination of someone who wants to learn how to sort trash.

So after twenty minutes of arguing about whether they called 148 or 209 over the loudspeakers, we were interrupted by a reluctant employee who beckoned us over to window 3, where we either agreed to pay something for healthcare insurance or authorized the sale of a kidney.

Then we were asked to go to the last window.  Window 2.  Although we didn't know it at the time, it was the dreaded Pension Window.  You see, in Japan, you must pay into the National Pension System even if you are a temporarily unemployed forensic psychologist.  By now, it was about 5:10 pm and they were turning the lights off as we stood at the window.  But we were too close to our goal to take a hint.  We were greeted by a surly man who looked exasperated when I kept repeating konnichiwa to all of his questions and then decided that his best course of action in dealing with two clueless Gaijin was to repeat the same Japanese phrase over and over again while jabbing his finger on different parts of an orange form on which there was not one word of English.  By this point, however, I have to admit that I was distracted.  I was wondering whether we could legally leave the building without filing the pension paperwork, whether anyone would try to stop us, and whether I could vault over the last row of seats.  But the chair backs looked pretty high and the 'Information' lady looked like she worked out, so I stuck it out.

There was a happyish ending to this story.  After ten minutes of jabbing and konnichiwas, an incredibly nice man emerged from the nether regions of the office and explained (in English) that we might be able to receive a pension exemption but that we needed to do this in a different office.  Although I recognized this might be a desperate gambit to get us out of the office, I was grateful for the out.  The nice man repeatedly apologized for his near flawless English.  Amy laughed and said 'your English is much better than my terrible Japanese' - but she tried to say this in Japanese and ended up saying something roughly like 'your poodle is eating our trash.'  Which is a pretty rude thing to say while laughing.

The nice man smiled and said he was going to destroy the paperwork that we painstakingly completed earlier.  He gave it to the other guy who ripped it into more pieces than seemed truly necessary.

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.

The Old Apartment

This all happened two weeks ago.  I am woefully behind on the blog.  Even if I omit all of the really boring things that happened (which represents about 98% of my experience), there's a lot to cover. 

Finally in our Nagoya hotel room, Lily fell into the fetal position both from fatigue and despair at the lack of good programming on the hotel television.  She curled up tighter when I suggested it was "nothing that watching a good sumo match can't solve."  

Parenthetically, this was before she discovered Gilmore Girls on Netflix.  Now she only curls into the fetal position when we cut her off before she finds out who Rory is going to date.

Amy and I went to the lounge, where we both assumed the adult version of the fetal position.

Nagoya from 24 floors up.  

Breakfast at the hotel.  At this point, both teens were secretly wondering whether they might be able to live at the hotel or possibly be adopted by the Hilton family.  From their perspective, the only downside was being in the same room as their father.  But perhaps he might get his own room or pay for our stay by working in the kitchen (or both).  

That afternoon, we took the metro from Sakae to Hongo Station, which was a few blocks from our new apartment.  

I feel compelled to note that it is impossible to rent an apartment in Japan as a foreigner.  Not virtually impossible, but plain impossible.  As some of you know, I spent most of the summer hyperventilating every time I searched online for a place to live.  There was nothing.  My search terms were comprehensive and ranged from 'furnished apartments rent Japan' to 'warehouse space desperate foreigners."  Our success in renting an apartment was completely dependent on the kindness of a friend.

We later learned that Japanese landlords are reluctant to rent to foreigners because they are convinced we cannot understand the trash sort system.  As someone who has lived here for 3 weeks, I can tell you that is absolutely correct.  The first week, we had piles of trash stacked in the apartment while we debated what exactly went in the blue bag versus the red bag.  It got dark pretty fast.  

Although we did find this helpful guide online, we honestly just run downstairs every day and see what other people have stacked in the dumpster area.

Shots of the interior.  We weren't hoping to take 'spartan' to the next level.  Our rental furniture had not yet arrived.

Lily demonstrating an advanced modern dance move known as the shindig.

Lily's attempt to break into the little known but ultra competitive Genkan modeling.  

This is our tatami room.  As a quick wikipedia search will tell you, tatami rooms are traditional Japanese rooms that are designed to serve as spaces of peace and meditation.  Years ago, they were a sign of nobility.

Those days have clearly passed.

Lily had other ideas.  Her first plan was to use the space as a "flop room" (not to be confused with flop house) in which we could randomly walk in and flop on the floor.  She claimed that flopping filled her with a sense of peace and gravitas.

Her second idea was far more ominous.

Upon seeing this sign on the door, I should have immediately recognized that I had no place in that room.  But, a remote, primitive and immensely powerful part of my brain has long refused to acknowledge that I am older than twenty four.  That part of my brain continues to insist that I can do anything younger people can do, including walking at 4 mph and getting out of bed in the morning.

So I agreed to do the workouts with Lily (you should be grateful that there is no visual record of that experience because it involved a lot of sweating and grunting and complaining).  She brought up an "easy" workout on youtube and it is here that I will offer some very useful advice to my elderly readers.

If the yoga instructor a) looks nineteen, b) can touch her toes, c) behind her back, and d) while speaking in a calm voice, you should immediately end the video.  Don't be seduced by the "easy" label on the video.  That is a lie.  You can tell by the suggested video links to the side, which will include EMS Rescues and Pain Management Without Opioids, and Pain Management with Extra Opioids.

What I now realize I needed is someone who understands both me and my body.  In the future, any and all ab workouts must be led by a fifty-something, "stout" individual who intersperses an occasional crunch with several sips from a craft IPA.  You know, a routine I can do without injury and which simultaneously works abs and biceps.

If I can't find that online, I'm starting a yoga vlog.

In closing, I should mention that Lily crushed the ab workout.  I didn't end up in traction, but I had to find creative ways to avoid using my abs for a few days.