It's happening....

I remember when we first got a computer when I was in Year 8. We all sat there looking at it as my computer teacher set it up for us (now that I think about it that was a bit dodgy having computer sales as a side job but anyway...) and my brother and I got the hang of it quickly while mum and dad looked nervously at it like it might explode and at us as though we might cause it to explode...

I always felt sorry for them being technologically handicapped by age and era and thought it would never happen to me- I'm of the technological generation, I'll always be up to the minute and a step ahead of my kids.

Well, guess I was wrong.

And she's only six!!!

Recently when I charge and sync (that means update mum) my ipod there are pictures to be downloaded from it.

Pictures like this:

And I'm not even sure how you take a screen shot on my ipod as it doesn't even have a camera.....

Or maybe I'm just a techno-ludite and it does and I just haven't realised yet....

I do know how to save the pictures Amy makes on it though and they're cute:

I made it myself

Meg is on school holidays and is enjoying making hew own lunch each day.

This is one example:

Instant potato soup, rice with an egg she collected from the chooks herself, two slices of ham, three slices of Korean seaweed, pickled plum and accompanying shiso leaves, cheese and teriyaki chicken. She washed it down with green tea and finished with a mandarin. It's not just choosing the ingredients but the arranging and styling and re-styling that is part of the fun and she is most pleased with her creations:

class brain dump

I really love teaching my adult classes as the women are all so interesting and the range and scope of out¥r conversation over an hour is really incredible sometimes. I finish class, turn around to the board behind me that I have been scribbling down words on as we go and seeing the whole class in one whiteboard I have to think to remember how we got from life expectancy to lamp shade and from latin name to essential oil...

Happy White Day

White day is a scam. Japan has divided Valentine's Day into two- women give to men Feb 14 and men return the gift March 14. K never remembers it is white day. At his old company all the admin staff (young women) would give the men chocolates on V Day and then I would buy return gifts for White Day.

At this company they are so casual/ apathetic they don't even have the ubiquitous drinking parties so needless to say there is no VDay/ White Day going on.

The girls and I made chocolates for K on VDay (ok, we melted down chocolate bars and added sprinkles and remoulded them into hearts and anpanman shapes but still) so when it got to White Day they were all very excited to see what daddy would make in return. I tried to soften the blow by suggesting daddy probably wouldn't make anything as much as buy something but who knows right?

K got home (after the girls were asleep) with....

"eh? Today? Today is White Day? Eh??"

Poor K. The only shop open was 7-11 so off he went to get something and of course they were sold out (I am guessing the majority of men around here would be doing the emergency 7-11 dash for White Day!) and he came home with huge single serve grape jelly cups. I have know idea how his brain works that that was remotely close to either chocolate, cookies (traditional gifts) or something white but the girls were thrilled to eat them for brekky and raved at how amazing daddy was to remember and know exactly their favourite kind of jelly.

Amazing, huh?

Truly Amazing.

Me? I had my own treat. My friend S and I went out for lunch and she had won a voucher for a free dessert. Thinking it was a cheap chain family restaurant and on top of that a freebie I was imagining a spoonful size dessert but when it arrived we both took pictures:

And then she shared what was a delectable dessert.

Happy White Day indeed!

getting ready

We're getting ready for Amy to start school.

We've bought the bag.

The school lunch uniform.

The red and white hat.

We have to go back for the PE uniform as they didn't have her size at orientation day. Nothing like that to make a kid feel gigantuan, huh?

Today we walked to school for a practice run.

All four of us. I remember doing this with Meg and she was sooo thrilled she wore her school bag the whole way there and back. Amy? No way! How embarrassing and really she'd rather not go at all and especially not with mum and dad!

But K and I were both blessed with the worry gene so even though they have been practicing walking around town at kinder for months we wanted to see with our own eyes that she knows about intersections and cars and public vs private property and all that stuff so we all walked down there together.

Amy is a great walker. She's been intermittently walking 2k or so to kinder since she was three. What we hadn't noticed was that she is great at 'going for a walk' but not exactly 'walking somewhere'. She kept stopping to look at cats and snow and flowers and pretty curtains and and and... It took no time at all before Meg was threatening to leave her behind.... K's and my biggest fear- after the one where they have a fight half way to school and one gets injured/ pushed onto the road/ down a roadside ditch/ into a rice paddy.... Ok, I worry a lot!

But we made it there in 57 minutes which isn't too bad for a first attempt.... (yes, K timed us.)

Back to getting ready, she has a desk and chair and while it was a close call on whether to get the neighbour's back hoe in to clear said desk she managed to sort through a million pictures and letters and assorted 'treasures' (that word really is subjective when it comes to kids, hey?) and we now have a space to do homework.

All this preparation is coming from those around her.

What about Amy? What's she doing to get ready? Well she's been through her skirt draw twice looking at everything and deciding what is school-worthy. This is a big deal as kinder has a no skirts rule so our little fashionista is most looking forward to being free to wear frills again come April.

And while she has always spent hours doing drawings and stories and letters and such there is now a definite educational bent to her doodles.

This was today's effort:

Bad picture (again) as I left my camera at work and am using my phone but at the top it says "It's Maths!" And then "Name Amy". The flower swirl thing is known as a "hanamaru" and is the highest in primary school praise. A check is a cross, one circle is good, two circles is very good and the hanamaru (flower circle) is excellent. Glad she thinks her work is ok, huh?

The writing is hard to read a a number of letters are back to front and the exclamation has gone Spanish and upside down but it says 'It's fun and interesting. How are you!? Doing it.' Then it's sums on the left and she has written the numbers from 1-7 in Japanese followed by 'lunch time'.

The countdown is on till the end of kinder and the start of school!

going, going.... back again!

This was the story of the igloo disappearing. Meg and Amy made an igloo December 29th and it has been there for two months. I have bee following it's melting with much glee anticipating the end of winter and start of Spring. I was keeping a daily record of it's demise:

Tuesday...

Wednesday....

Thursday.... almost there... tomorrow will be the end and the final picture and I can blog about SPRING!

then.....

What the???????? Friday.

7:00am Saturday morning. Wahhhhhhh!

I know it's beautiful and all but pleeeeeease! I want some Spring. I need some Spring!

remembering another Friday

3/11 will be Sunday this year.

But that 3/11 was a Friday and so it is today that I had real 'one year on' pangs.

I remembered and re-read my blog from one week on from that 3/11.

And I looked around at the same faces as a year ago. The woman who brought the little boy who was crawling is still bringing him but he's walking now. The woman who brought the little girl who was pre-verbal is now bringing a chatterbox.

We sat through class and had a great laugh as the conversation somehow ended up in the women's health clinic area of chat and then jumped to the nebulous world of online profile pictures and who has the least realistic one.

Just another English conversation class then.

And Meg walked there from school and got saturated as she was walking along with her umbrella upside down using it to catch snow rather than repel it.

And I went and taught another class and we discussed our end of academic year plans as we do every March and have since I started teaching there with Amy in a baby carrier on my back and two year old Meg attempting to destroy the classroom or injure herself or both...

And then we picked up Amy and came home and I started going through all the notices from school and one was the announcement of next year's neighbourhood kid's club leaders.

And one of the names there made me tear up and all my resolve not to cry today deserted me.

The girl student leader this year (we are a very unenlightened area and have a male and female leader each year with gender specific roles) is my neighbour's niece.

The one who evacuated from Fukushima and has been living with them since soon after the earthquake and will be living with them at least for the next four years until she finishes JHS.

When she first arrived there were people worried that she would transition to a new living situation, new prefecture, new school and everything else to boot.

And a year on she's head girl in the neighbourhood.

And that makes me happy and gives me hope and makes me proud of my neighbourhood all at the same time.