Jealousy

Shitto

Thirty six hours later

Sanjuu roku jikan go

My body hates me.

The hatred is especially strong from the glutes and quads.

Little and cute

Chiisakute kawaii

I am typing this waiting for my 100 yen shop nail polish to dry. I don't wear nail polish very often, so I usually end up with a clumpy bottle before I finish. Cheap (but reasonably good) nail polishes are a must.

So. The other day, I was watching TV and 19 year-old Sara Takanashi was on a talk show.

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OMG she's so tiny and cute! And she's the Women's Ski Jumping World Cup Champion! And she's so tiny and cute! I want to hold her and cuddle her tell her how awesome she is and put her in my tote bag and carry her around and feed her chocolate brownies and wear matching bracelets with her and the Pumpkin Princess and...and...

I looked her up on Wikipedia and I realized that she was exactly as tall as me. And her official website lists her as being 1 cm taller.

So, I guess putting her in my tote bag and carrying her around isn't an option. But if she wants brownies and matching bracelets, I'm in if she's in...

Ran about 8k this morning, which I haven't done in about five months. It was o.k....I think...get back to me in a couple of days, and I'll let you know how badly my body hates me. The Pumpkin Prince ran about a kilometer on Friday and said he would run every morning, but he hasn't run at all since then, which is probably what one should expect from an almost 2nd year elementary school student (sho-ni). We should probably run up and down slopes a bit before the actual 2k, since the race is notorious for its hilly terrain.

In anticipation of our family 2k this summer (and the preceding training), we went to the sporting goods store and bought running gear for the Pumpkin Prince and Princess. The Pumpkin Prince's stuff can double as tennis gear. Without coordinating anything, they both chose Adidas stuff. Then the Pumpkin Daddy decided he wanted stuff to match the Pumpkin Prince, so he got some new Adidas stuff. I didn't want to be left out, so I checked out the Adidas stuff for women, and it was pastel...which is nice, but didn't match with the rest of the family.

My friends in the US are feeling the effects of Daylight Savings Time. Japan used to have it too. It was during the post WWII American occupation. It ended when the occupation did. Every so often, there's discussion of bringing it back, but after its ending in 1952, it has yet to return.

Unexpected

Yosougai

Year of Requirement Part 2

We moved into that house two days before my first day of school. My grandmother had taken me to the department store near her house the week before to buy a navy blue skirt and white blouse to wear to school, but we managed to make it to the store in Pumpkin City that sold the school uniform the day before I started school and got the full uniform.

The uniform consisted of a navy blue blazer, vest, and skirt with white blouse, white socks, and low-cut white sneakers. The blazer, vest, and skirt were, I found out later, not machine washable, and were sent to the dry cleaners only once a trimester. The white blouse was a cotton-poly no-iron blend with a plain round white collar that was hot and sticky in summer and cold in winter. The socks had to be white, without any stripes or polo players or alligators, and the shoes were white too. They could be any brand, as long as they were all white. Most people wore Nikes or Mizunos. You were allowed to wear a white, gray or black sweater or hoodless sweatshirt over the blouse and under the jacket in winter, and there was also a regulation windbreaker, which was just that, an unlined nylon windbreaker that stopped wicking water at around the third washing. If you wanted to wear tights, they were supposed to be flesh-toned. I was thinking whiskey, tango, foxtrot because what self-respecting woman younger than 70 wears flesh-toned tights? I missed my Lee jeans.

I also had the regulation school bag, which was a sturdy nylon bag that could be converted to a crossbody or a backpack. I later found out about an unwritten rule that said only 3^rd year (most senior) students could wear the bag as a crossbody. Offenders would be shamed emotionally or physically by senior students. Like I said, whiskey, tang, foxtrot.

I’d left the Chicago suburbs halfway through the second (spring) semester in my freshman year of high school. I arrived on the second day of the last year of junior high school. So what did I do my first day of school? This was nearly 30 years ago, but if my memory serves me correctly, I took a standardized test. I was shocked at how poorly I did. In the science exam, I answered half the questions with any confidence. I'd taken a biology class in my suburban high school, so I didn't have a clue about electrical circuits or winter constellations. In social studies, the proportion was more like a third, since I did not know which prefecture was the biggest producer of rice and who was the seventh shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate. I figured out the language arts exam as best I could. I did the math OK. Of course, I finished the English exam about five minutes after we started (and spent the rest of the time staring out the window wondering what kind of evil I’d done in a previous life to deserve this happening to me).

I found out later that the teachers freaked out at how WELL I’d done on that test (other than English. They’d kind of expected that one.). They’d braced themselves for someone functionally illiterate, and here I was reading Japanese at a reasonable level of comprehension and doing well above average in math, and and writing legible answers in the rest of the subjects (even though many of the answers were wrong).

I wasn’t quite what my fellow students expected either. I got a lot of “you don’t look like you’re from America.” Um, what is a Japanese person from America supposed to look like? Based on what television and manga told them, apparently, I was supposed to be tall and slender and pretty and athletic and have long hair and an attitude.

Short, check. Dumpy, check. Plain, with acne and coke bottle glasses, check. Can't play ball sports to save her life, check. Short hair, check.

What an utter disappointment I must have been to them.

Well, except for the attitude part.

Let's wear the scarf together

Issho ni sukaafu wo makou









(Hats and scarf designed and crocheted by Pumpkinmommy)

Last week, it got up to 20 degrees (celsius, of course!). Sunday, it only got up to about 6. I was going to send my coat to the cleaners, but I've decided to hold off for a while...

I told you so

Dakara itta desho

When I started running, I said I did not plan to race. I was told that I would want to race once I got into running. I'm still not sure how "into" running I am. To me, it falls under the same category as brushing my teeth and getting a mammogram. (I think I feel more smug about it than I do about brushing my teeth, though, because, well, more people brush their teeth than run.)

I've signed up (or rather, the Pumpkin Daddy signed me up) for my first race. Before anyone tells me "I told you so," I should clarify that this is a parent-child pair 2k. I'm supposed to run with the Pumpkin Prince, so I'll have to get him to run a couple times a week so he can handle the distance.

Taxes are due on Tuesday...not done yet. Can't find my life insurance receipt. I'm thinking of cutting my losses and filing without it.

March 11 came and went. It's...sobering, watching the TV footage of cars being washed away on that day five years ago. And it's stressful, because it's part of the past, and you can't do anything about it. Maybe it's my civic duty to be stressed and upset once a year.

We're moving.

Hikkoshimasu.

Year of Requirement Part 1

My father’s work took the family from Japan to the United States in the mid ‘70s. I was three and a half when we moved to the United States and I was fourteen when we moved back. For as long as I could remember, my parents were always reminding me and my brother and sister that we’d move back to Japan someday and that we’d have to assimilate back in. The three of us went to Japanese Saturday School every Saturday. The school was in Skokie when I started going there and then it moved to Arlington Heights. They always gave us a lot of homework.

Keeping up with the Japanese Saturday School homework got really rough in the upper grades, and I stopped turning in my homework and I hid it under my bed (keep in mind I’m doing regular public school stuff five days a week). Then I got found out, and my dad hit me in the face for it. I can see that you can’t let your kid get away with lying, but I still wonder what would have happened if I’d told one of my public school teachers that my dad had hit me in the face for not doing homework for a school that technically has no legal basis and falls under the same category as gymnastics class or piano lessons. This was in 1982 or thereabouts, so it may or may not have generated the anaphylactic reaction of child protection it would now. And, it may or may not have led to having a more functional relationship with my parents now. But that’s another can of worms for another day.

My point is, the Japanese School was hard work and it was taken very seriously, even though in retrospect it should have been more important to do the American public school stuff. We were always reminded that we were going back to Japan and that Japanese schoolwork was HARD and we’d never be able to keep up unless we did that Japanese Saturday School homework, and maybe not even then. It was kind of like bracing for Armageddon for most of your childhood.

Unlike Armageddon, it eventually happened, albeit several years later than my parents thought it should. It was still too soon for us kids, though. We’d been hoping it would happen much later. As in, never. By the time I started high school, I’d begun to wonder if there was any way I could just stay in the US, like go to a boarding school or something (one of my dad’s co-workers sent their son to one of those East Coast prep schools where everyone was, well, preppy), but apparently that wasn’t a part of my parents’ plans. Or their bank accounts.

So, one fine spring day in the mid ‘80s, Armageddon Lite happened. Or rather, we boarded a plane and landed in Tokyo International Airport. We stayed at my grandparents’ place until my parents found a house for us to live. The yen had suddenly risen in value (it was the peak of the bubble economy) and I think they didn’t have enough money to put a bid on a house or something, because I know they ended up borrowing money from relatives to make a down payment on the small, run-down house they bought (and still live in today. The house is semi-run-down now, but it was pretty nice for a while. This situation warrants a whole section in this narrative). Due to the inactivity and stress eating, I think I gained a kilo or two during those couple of weeks, and got stretch marks on my thighs. That weight gain may or may not have sealed my fate for a year of intense misery.