Simple Life

I'm sitting at the beach with the kids right now.  They are splashing and swimming in the water, despite it being "samui", or cold. They couldn't care less, they are happy.  Maybe a better word for their current state is carefree.  Despite my claims of being a writer I'm pretty sure there is no way I can describe the contentment this brings me at this moment.  Without sounding dramatic, I have been waging a bit of an internal war for the last month. Somedays it takes so much energy to send the kids off and got to work myself that I wonder if I am doing the right thing.  The kids need me. Here we are in this strange new world, a place that we are called aliens, and for good reason, and I am asking them to go out into the world and acclimate.  There are days that I feel I am barely treading water, how can I expect them to swim?  Of course, in some regards it is easier for them, being less constricted in their ways, but in other ways it is so much more difficul

I live in the land for technological greatness - pocket calculators, camcorders and DSLR cameras were invented here, not to mention robots, the Shinkansen (bullet train) and futuristic cars with all kinds of crazy technologies.  One would think that living here would mean that everything is up to date and completely tech driven.  Imagine my surprise when I went to the grocery store, only to discover it was a cash only business.  Thinking that this was an exception to the rule, I continued on, thinking..."gee, they need to catch up to the times!"  Wrong...almost everything here in my little pocket of Japan is cash only.  Crazy! "Jason, can you stop by the Post Office and the Circle K please?  I need to pay bills." The postal service, Japan Post, is also the bank, Japan Post Bank.  There are two counters in the building, one for postal services and one for banking.  They are open typical business hours - M-F about 9 to 5.  The cash machines that are outside are op

I've known since the kids started school in February that school lunch is quite different here - but I didn't know enough to write about it - until today.  I began a new assignment recently - I spend each Friday at a local elementary school where I teach 5-6 English classes throughout the day.  Part of my day there is spent eating lunch with the students.  Each Friday I eat with a different classroom, giving that room a little bouns English time. Here is what lunch looks like at a Japanese Elementary school: Every student in the school eats school lunch.  There are no choices - there is one meal.  The students eat in their classrooms.  At lunch time the students put on a white apron to protect their uniforms from spills.  Each student has a job to do - some serve lunch, some collect dishes, some clean up.  The school lunch and school dishes (yes, real dishes) are delivered to each hallway in the school and students from the nearby classrooms go to gather what is needed for

I am a list lover.  The feeling I get as I cross off completed items and tasks is so satisfying to me.  Admittedly, I will often put things on a list just so that I can do them and cross them off.  Make Dinner?  Done.   Make dinner . Dishes . Write a blog .  See, so nice.  On the same line I have this little fetish, a fetish of completion.  I thoroughly enjoy finishing things.  By things I mean actual, tangible things.  I like to use a pen until every last drop of ink is gone, or hair spray until it can spray no more.  Now, I do not derive the same satisfaction if others helped me in the consumption of my thing.  Say, a jar of jelly.  We all use that, the whole family, so I couldn't care less about finishing it. *As a little side note, this is all very amusing to me, as I have a wake of unfinished things and projects following me around.  How many walls have I begun to paint, only to stop half way through and leave it half done, for say, 3 years?  As much as I love to finish thin

I remember laundry day.  The kids, Jason, and I would pile our dirty clothes up all week long (in our oversized bathtub since 1- we are shower people & 2 - the tub is a perfect hamper of course)  and come Sunday I would start the process of sorting, hauling clothes downstairs, washing, drying, hauling upstairs, and repeat.  Only after endless loads of laundry would we attack the pile of clean clothes, sorting and putting away.  (Maybe we would skip the last few steps sometimes, wearing clean clothes out of the pile for a few days...).  Who knew how different such a normal thing could be in Japan? For starters, we cannot pile our dirty clothes in the tub here.  It has really put a cramp in our lifestyle. : )  Our tub and shower are attached so piling clothes there would lead to all kinds of wetness and who knows what else.  Also, the washing machine here is maybe 1/2 the size of our American one, leading to many more loads to accomplish the same task.  Another problem - maybe the