Rainy Yokohama

Back in May, when the girls were at school on Saturday because sports day was postponed, Steve and I decided to trip it out to Yokohama together. Yokohama is the port city on the south side of Tokyo Bay and is well known for being "China Town". I'd been there before with my homestay family over twenty years ago and had had some of the best Chinese food I'd ever eaten. Keen to go back!

The train ride was long, and we made it more complicated (but not longer) by progressively jumping onto different trains spontaneously, so there were a stack of unecssacary changes. I still find it fun to just ride around on the fast and well timed trains of Tokyo though, so even that was a highlight. 

The rainy cold weather was not. When we arrived in Yokohama we regretted not wearing raincoats instead of taking the umbrellas, because the wind was terrible. We did some walking around, mostly for me to take photos of the pokemon manhole covers, and ended up down by the water. There was an impressive rose garden (which would have been much more lovely if it were not raining) and a triathlon was being run as well. 

No lovely view of the bay though, since it was so rainy. So we walked back through China town and stopped for a thirteen course banquet for lunch. Delicious! 

We took a train a couple of stations up, walked through a shopping area (to avoid the rain) randomly came across this DeLorean promoting the Back to the Future musical. 

And took fun photos in the Snoopy store. 

Then we braved the rain once again to visit the Cup Noodle Museum, which was interesting and cool. The guy who invented cup noodles was still working at 95 when he finally cracked instant noodles that can be eaten in space. Steve approved. 

We had some very interesting (should I say questionable?) beers at a brewery, while we watched the rain do more rainy-ness and then jumped on the train home again. 

Making the most of it: going out even when it's rainy and wet and the girls have school. 

The Saddest Thing

Two words: Animal Cafe. 

Also, trigger warning - this is not a super uplifting post and contains descriptions of poor treatment of animals. 

Last year, I was very resolute that I did not want to be a part of any animal cafe visiting experiences. I dislike zoos (though Australia does do them very well) and I don't want to see any animals in boxes that they don't belong in. This time round, for some reason, I was mildly interested in going to an animal cafe. I think Steve reporting the conditions of the cat cafe that the girls and he visited last year being tolerable. And the draw of wanting to see hedgehogs too. What we didn't do, was enough research. 

We had a vague plan that we would take the girls to one, but when we were out in Asakusa being ninja and samurai, they really began to notice all the different options there. The asking to go increased. I guess part of me thought: "Let's get it done now and then we can cross it off the list." So a quick google and a short walk later and we were at one that had a variety of animals. 

I wish I could say we walked out, but after you are there, and they have space (often there is a booking system with a long wait time), it's much harder to say no. I think too, I was focused on understanding what the guy at the front desk was rattling off in Japanese to me that I didn't properly look around at the conditions of the room. Hindsight is 20/20. 

The place had small hedgehogs in tubs, two owls, a marmoset that was free range and at least fifteen otters. The otters were the worst, because they were in enclosures behind perspex that had no stimulation, no natural landscape, nothing. One of the connected "rooms" had a single bathtub that they were nearly the length of when they were swimming, so they would jump in, do a lap and back and then out again. Poor poor otters. 

We tried to make the most of it, but the regret was so high. Why did we give this place money for the appalling care they showed for these animals? It really tainted our whole day after that. We had a lot of talks with the girls about it. I think they even had regret, though they were also more enamoured by the "cool animal experience" than Steve and I.  

I think worse still, the girls were now focused on "next time". Probably wanting to replace the sad memory with a better one. "Next time, let's just go to a cat cafe" they would say, "because cats are usually inside house pets." The idea of there even being a "next time" was unsettling, but I could understand their desire to have some positive memories. 

So I researched. We were certainly done with exotic animals and would just be sticking with cats. I serendipitously stumbled across an area of Tokyo, right near Nippori, that was actually nicknamed cat town. There were options there and most of the reviews were very positive. Places that wouldn't let kids in under 12 because they were too enthusiastic for the animals. Places that were not open every single day for hours and hours. Places that made you read the rules, sign compliance agreements and sanitise every part of you before you were allowed to enter. Things were looking much more promising for a positive experience here. 

The place we went to was a rescue centre for cats that also adopted them out. It was expensive to be there for a half hour, but we got a drink each, and I was much happier about handing over the money when I saw the care and environment the cats were in. 

The girls enjoyed their time, respectfully leaving cats that were sleeping alone and taking photos instead. They got to play with a couple of more frisky cats and it was overall a nice little half hour. 

I still don't know what to do about the whole animal cafe experience though. It shows a disappointing lack of care for animals that is really prevalent in Japan. Even thinking about the axolotl at the girls school (who regularly eat each others limbs because they are under-stimulated/fed) is depressing. Can we just turn up with supplies for their aquariums? Do I write to the girls teachers? Would that even be noticed, or are they just another cog in the machine? 

This has been the saddest thing we've experienced here. It's not all beautiful flowers, kind people and cool things.

The Red Yukata

As hopefully most people know, I regularly wear (and make) kimono. Usually I use my job as an excuse (Japanese teacher!), but I often just wear them because they are beautiful. At the end of the day, they are just clothes like any other and there is no real reason not to wear them. Spoiler warning - this post is going to get into sewing in a bit of detail. 

Anyway, I didn't bring any to Japan with me (which honestly made me a little sad), but I knew I'd likely pick up at least a couple, and I was intending to get some fabric to sew them as well. I have bought more than I thought I would, and also somehow been gifted an enormous amount of them too. I'll have to take some photos of the "haul", but I may as well wait until the end of our time... just in case I accidentally get another. In all honesty, that seems unlikely, but you never know. 

My friend David who I went through uni with back in the day was in Japan for a month, and since he also sews kimono, we decided to meet up in Nippori (fabric town) and do some shopping. David also introduced me to a wholesale kimono shop owner in the back streets, that I'd never been to before. 

It was the most Japanese shopping experience since we came in, shoes off and sitting on the tatami among the fabrics. We were given cold tea to drink (it was a hot day) and there was lots of chatting before the shopping actually began. The very lovely Murata-san (Mr Murata) gave me a full run down of the fabric and how you know it's authentic etc. I did already know this, but it was beautiful to hear him talk about his craft. 

I was honestly so tempted by the designer fabrics but they were really too far out of my price range, even wholesale. Knowing I have a ton of blue yukata at home, and that I'd just bought some green ones, I was really intentional about looking for designs or colours that I didn't have, wanting to make a meaningful purchase. After much deliberation, I ended up buying two bolts of yukata cloth (yukata is summer kimono - light cotton fabric).

Then home with my prizes I went. There was no real rush to sew these, but Sophie was keen on one to match a cat obi that I had bought her. My plan is for the girls and I to wear yukata to the summer festivals (lost of people do). Given that summer was at least six weeks away, there wasn't a hugely pressing deadline, so I dallied with my cross stitch some more before I began. 

Here is the cat obi with the matching yukata fabric. Red is actually a very non-traditional yukata fabric colour. People usually wear cool colours through out summer, trying to suggest that even though it's humid and hot, they aren't uncomfortably so. This is probably why I have so many blue yukata on hand. I loved the maple leaves on this one, in their pools of water, telling the world that even though it's red, we are still going to be cool. 

I've made a stack of yukata/kimono now (I think the count is up to 8?), but I still need notes to help me remember the measurements. Alas - I had not thought to bring them to Japan with me and they were trapped in Australia! Luckily I did remember most things, one of the yukata that I'd bought was also handsewn, so I could measure parts of that for reference, and there is a somewhat helpful YouTube video by Billy Matsunaga that was also good. 

Honestly, I feel the kimono is one of the oldest forms of Zero Waste sewing that we have. The cloth is woven on a bolt that is exactly the right width and you adjust for size by having bigger or smaller seams. The fabric is cut into rectangles and there are distinct places (in the main body and sleeves) that you can hide extra fabric that could be let out later for growth or taken in. It's like magic. 

Since I didn't have my full notes on hand, I did struggle with the cutting a little, and was a little unsatisfied with the outcome. Even though I spent at least two full days mulling over, measuring, re-measuring, writing notes, drawing diagrams and measuring again! That said, the end product has nothing wrong with it; it's all that it needs to be. I did have a square and a half of fabric left, but in hindsight, I think what threw me was that the more modern bolts are made wider (35cm instead of 30) and longer to accomodate people getting taller. 

Mostly done, just the sleeves and collar to go!

Anyway, I triple checked all my pattern placement so there would be good visuals when it was done and got to sewing. Hand sewing that is. The whole thing. Don't think it took longer than a week, and I did stacks of the hemming and tacking down seam allowance while we watched the Eurovision semis and finals on YouTube. 

First fitting, wearing the obi that was closest rather than going upstairs to get the cat one.

Sophie actually loves it, so that is great. After the first fitting (pictured above) I realised I sewed the sleeves on too short to start with, so I took them off and put them on again. One of them I put on inside out, so I had to take that off and put it back on again a third time. Goodness was that a frustrating (albeit short) delay. Then I borrowed an iron from a friend to give everything a final press. 

Sophie humoured me a second time to put it on for "good" photos in the outside natural light, and Rachel decided to get in on the fun too. Can't wait to be wearing mine too as we eat kakigori (shaved ice) and watch fireworks in summer! 

Japanese School Part 3: Sports Day

To say Sports Day at the girls' Japanese school was an event would be a pretty gross understatement. I think they started practicing for it in April. And by practicing for it, I don't mean training for events. In the week lead up, the girls usually had at least one session each day (approx. 1hr) preparing with their class or grade, and sometimes more as they prepared with the school as a whole. 

Sports day was scheduled for Saturday, but in the information they sent home, there was a contingency plan for if Saturday was rainy. Then spots day would be postponed to Sunday and the students would still have school on Saturday (with the Monday timetable). If it was also raining on Sunday, sports day would be moved to Tuesday (for some unknown reason, Monday would always be a day off). They even planned for a back up plan for that, because if it was raining on the Tuesday, sports day would be Wednesday. After that, it was tough luck and no sports day. 

As it happened, Saturday was rainy, so the girls went off to school for five hours and came home at 2. Sunday was a mix of cloudy and sunny, but a very humid 30 degree heat. With lots of warning about making sure everyone had enough water to stay hydrated and encouragement to parents to bring fans and cooling devices (but no recommendations for sunscreen), sports day was a go. 

The girls were at school at 8 and parents arrived after 8:10 to be ready for the 8:35 start. The band (including Sophie on saxophone) played the fanfare to start. They sounded great. Probably because they have been practicing every single morning before school from 7:30. Sophie herself told me that the band sounded fantastic compared to her Australian band, and did make the connection that practicing every day had something to do with it. 

All the grades lined up in their two teams (white and red), and marched forward across the oval. There were speeches from the Principal, a vow of trying their best from the sports captains and a group of grade 1 students had a cute moment talking about their first sports day and how excited they were. Then they did cheers. It was like a war cry competition in Australia, but not only did they cheer for their own team, but they took turns encouraging the opposing team as well. 

The students then did a warm up, based on the national radio-taiso exercises and at last the competition began! Each grade had a presentation of some kind that somehow contributed to the points. Some were easier to understand the points system than others. The year 3&4 students, for example, had a tug of war. Easy to see the winning team who got 20 points. The year 5 students (Rachel's grade) did the soran bushi, which is a traditional fisherman dance and I have no idea how that was scored. 

The thing that was most fun to watch was the year 5&6 students do a team relay activity. There were a stack of four cardboard boxes for each team with "red/white team winners!" written on in kanji. Three students from each team had to run up to the opposing teams boxes and throw them all over the place. They would then run back to the start, and the next group of three students would go to their own boxes (now scattered all around by the other team) and they would re-stack them in order (so they read the right message) as quickly as possible. Then they would run back and then next group of three would start the process all over again. It was so fun to watch and we were really cheering for the white team (for the girls) to win. I will definitely be including it as an activity in a school event in the future. 

The year 6s had the last item of the day, which was a very long (12 minutes!) piece where they did a combination of dances and stretches/yoga moves. On the gravel/dirt/crusher dust oval. Barefoot. Suddenly Sophie complaining about doing a bridge and then a candlestick made sense. 

The only actual "sports day" type event that every student did was a running race. Year 5&6 did 80m, which was two thirds of the way around the oval, because it's so small. No other races, or field events. Honestly, there really wasn't any space anyway. And because the oval is dirt, the lines marking the track kept having to get redrawn after almost every grade. I was so impressed at how quickly the teachers could redraw the circles in the middle for the various events (like that tama-ire (literally ball-in, where the year 1's threw bean bags at a basket on a pole)). 

When it was all done, the students lined up again, marched across the oval and waited for the scores to be revealed. The score board was hung off the balcony of one of the buildings (you can see it in the photo above). They had been updating through the day, but they took down the numbers just before the end and some year 1 students got to race up and put the numbers up for the final score. It was pretty fun, even though the white team lost. 

Photos were super hard to get, because it was standing room only for parents, and the kids were under marquees across the oval (on their chairs that they carried out of their classrooms), but hope this gives a little snap into sports day. It finished just after 12:30, but the kids had to pack up and have lunch before coming home. They were pretty wrecked when they did come home, because they had just had seven days straight of school, including the intense sports day prep lessons. Luckily, Monday was a day off and Tuesday was too (because of reasons... Sunday sports day reasons I guess?), so they had a weekend and a short week of school to finish it off. 

Filling My Days

It's hard to believe we've been here in Japan for nearly two months now. That's a third of our time! 

Life here is a bit divided up into "Tokyo time": the first four months, when the girls are in school. "Travel time": roughly a month, when Steve is taking leave and we are on the move. This is followed by "Hiroshima time": four-ish weeks when Steve starts working again and I spend the last chunk of time home schooling the girls. 

Tokyo time being half over... so surreal! When we chunk up our time like that - no wonder it is flying buy. You might be wondering what I've been doing. Sometimes I wonder too, so here goes!

The first two weeks, we were settling in, doing running around and surviving a cold snap. The girls weren't at school yet, but Steve started working from home by Thursday of the first week, so I was doing a fair bit of engaging them as we started our lives here and figured out how to live in this tiny (by Australian standards) and not at all sound proof house together. Then the girls started school and there were two to three weeks of helping them cope and going through all the paperwork. 

Honestly, we think it's bad in Australia, but Japanese school is next level. There were so many paper notes home in the first two weeks it was honestly a full time job just keeping up with them all. On top of that, I was still getting into the groove of shopping small and working out what we could cook in our tiny, tiny kitchen. It was great to have the head space to do all of that stuff without trying to put work in too. 

Then the girls had a bunch of days off for Japanese public holidays, so I was doing things with them. Things were starting to settle down though, and the school paperwork began to be less demanding, so I was filling my time with sewing things. Sophie bought a zippered pouch/purse when we were up at Tsukuba to use for her money and train card, but I wanted it to have a strap. A quick trip to the 100Yen store and some easy sewing later, and we were sorted. 

Both girls have started Guides (or Girl Scouts, as they are called in Japan), and they needed sitapons before their first event day, so I did another quick bit of sewing with some very Australian fabric that my Godmother had given us before we left. 

I try to go for a walk around the neighbourhood every day, and do some stretching/strength building for my (suddenly aging) knees. I've done some day trips out by myself, various kimono shops, fabric town in Nippori, art exhibits and met up with a some friends from Australia who are currently here at the moment. Possibly more on that in another post. 

The other thing I was keeping myself busy with was doing some cross stitch. I'm not usually a cross stitch person, but a friend gave me this fancy one after Sophie was born. I had started it but never really got into it. In the lead up to Japan when I was considering what to bring sewing wise to keep me busy, I figured it was now or never. Nothing else I had would give me a greater size-in-the-luggage to hours-sewing ratio. 

I've actually only got one more week of this freedom though, because I was lucky enough to be accepted into a Japan Foundation Language Program for Japanese Teachers. The course runs for six weeks on the north side of Tokyo, so I'll be taking the train out on Sunday nights and living away from the family for the week before I get to come home Friday night for the weekend. It's going to be interesting, and I'm sure Steve will set a lot of alarms to remind him and the girls of all the things, but I'm sure it will be fine. 

And that's that. Of course, there has been more, but you've already read most of it, right? ;) Only four months to go! 

Being Tourists

Even though we feel a certain amount of mild distain towards the over tourism situation and thus tourists in general, we sometimes intentionally fall into that category. In between school, work and life, it happens sometimes. Last week, we intentionally booked a very touristy thing in Asakusa - a ninja experience and guided tour at the Samurai and Ninja Museum. It was actually nice to tell the girls that we were intentionally going to be tourists, and Asakusa is only one 20min train ride away, so just the closeness of the destination made it relaxed and fun. 

The experience itself did feel a bit slap dash, "for the tourists", but the guided tour was full of interesting information and cool things to look at. We did get to dress up as samurai and ninja, which the girls loved, and also practice our "ninja skills". 

Throwing the shuriken (throwing stars) was fun - Steve was the most successful of us, but the real highlight was trying the blowing darts. We even tried lying down and shooting. So cool! I was pretty excited to get a bullseye on my first shot, even if I didn't maintain my accuracy going on. 

At the start of May, we also went to a local festival thing at a sports centre near us. This felt much less touristy, way more local, but still lots of fun. There were sumo athletes there, traditional music performance, mochi (rice cakes) making and a stack of other stuff. 

It was cool to see the quintessential Japanese things being embraced by just every day people, not just put on for the tourists. Rachel and I had a go at pounding the rice into mochi, just like the sumo in the picture did. So much fun! 

Home Ec Sewing

The girls are both supposed to take some kind of sewing classes in Home Ec at their Japanese school this year. I don't know for sure if it will happen in term one when we are here, though Sophie's class seemed to indicate that, but if so, I wanted them to have what they needed. 

It was pretty basic stuff, but I didn't have anything to put it in, so rather than taking apart what I had in my housewife, I just picked up a small sewing kit and thread from the 100Yen store near us. After doing that though, I realised it would be good to have something to keep the thread and sewing supplies together, so I ended up making a thing anyway. 

I used some of the leftovers from the girls bags. Not wanting either girl to feel I was favouring them, and also not wanting to make two of the same thing, I just made one reversible thing. 

Everything fits nicely. I don't know how or why that white ribbon ended up coming to Japan with us, but it was rather perfect for this little project. 

And then you flip it out, and suddenly, it's a whole new pouch. Is this Housewife 3.0? Don't think I'd go that far, but it does the job and I can't complain about another little sewing project to keep my hands busy while I practice listening to Japanese.