Marina & candy

The M.'s b-day is soon. This being the internet, I won’t say what day in March or April or May. Suffice it to say it is soon. 

For this post I decided to keep with the musical analogy of the last post that was focused on Lady E. The first thought that comes to mind when you concentrate is oftentimes the most apropos. When I was meditating on M.’s gregarious personality the song “I Want Candy” by the 80s group Bow Wow Wow hurtled into my consciousness. Why?

It's because she’s vivacious, kind-hearted, impulsive and enthusiastic. Every day it is all about playing with other people and having fun. School work…not so much ;)

I mean, that’s in many ways the spirit of rock ‘n roll—wanting to stay a kid, shirk responsibility, and just have fun. Sweet and guitar-heavy pop music like Bow Wow Wow has its place--even if it's a remake of a 60s hit by The Strangeloves. A good song is timeless as recognized by the ear of the listener, no?

Keeping with this musical theme, consider these select lyrics from the aforementioned “I Want Candy”

 I know a guy who's tough but sweet

 He's so fine, he can't be beat

 He's got everything that I desire

 He sets the summer sun on fire

 I want candy…

For me, that captures one aspect of Marina’s personality: she is tough but sweet. The toughness I see during her battles with her sister. There is no détente there. What’s more is her dedication to her basketball club and improving her skills. On top of that, her tenacious and calculated negotiations with her mom and me when she really wants something is a riptide of persuasion. Yet the foundation of her personality is kindness toward others, which is the quality that attracts the coterie of friends that we see her hang out with or besiege her phone with messages.

 And, of course, metaphors aside, she really does like eating sweets and candy.

As my youngest Rising Daughter adds another year of growth and development to her life, I am filled with wonder and delight. May she continue onward following this happiness track in the years to come. More mischief and endless enthusiasm ahoy!

Setting forth on her high school journey

Credit: Wikipedia

It feels like people around the world are crawling out of their caves in earnest for the first time in two years. That’s a welcome fork in the road for society. The Rising Family™ is pushing onward in new directions, too. For example, Lady E. started her high school journey.

Ah, high school. Has it ever been easy to be teenager? I have many memories of high school, mostly good, but I cannot imagine what it’s like to be a teenage girl of today. In the years to come, I reckon Lady E. will have to contend with the perennial issues. Worrying about her appearance. How to deal with parents. Finding and making new friends. Academic performance and social status. General fretting about the future. I won’t get into the murky realm of personal relationships with the opposite sex because it’s still a question mark. I refuse to become the stereotypical overprotective-of-his-daughter dad. We have spent years giving her the tools she needs to make her own way, on her own terms. Fingers crossed that we’ve given her the best possible operating system of experiences, morals and mild philosophy. The coming years, and her own life adventures, will add the unique upgrades necessary for her independent life as an adult.

The inevitable comparison photo at a similar age.

While I was mulling how to mark Elena’s entry into secondary school, for whatever reason my mind turned to the 70s punk rock gods the Ramones. Seems I cannot forget the band's appearance in the Roger Corman classic “Rock n' Roll High School.” That movie debuted even before I went to high school, long before music videos and MTV / MuchMusic.

Its themes of jubilant youth and happy rebellion capture the spirit of how I wish Elena’s time in high school will be:
Being true to herself amid relentless peer and other social pressures.
Becoming daring yet kind.
Being unafraid to try new (non-intoxicating) things.
Enjoying the privileges of youth.

Ultimately, she will choose her own heading. But we’ll add course corrections along the way.
And clearly I cannot forget the Ramones:
  Well I don't care about history.
  Rock, rock, rock'n'roll high school
  'Cause that's not where I want to be.
  Rock, rock, rock'n'roll high school
  I just want to have some kicks….
  Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock'n'roll high school

Bon voyage, Lady E., as you embark on a new stage of your life. 

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Farewell to Exam Hell - Pt. 2

What's the easiest way to describe what “juken” means in English?

It means to study for the entrance exam that, if you pass, you’re admitted to the high school or university you want to go to. They also have tests as well for kids to enter elementary school, but usually those are private schools.

When you were living outside Japan what was your image of entrance exams? What did people tell you about it?
That it was hard. I thought it was just gonna be like a little bit of studying for a big test but it wasn't.

In the end, how long did you study for your high school entrance exams?
I don't know, a lot. Maybe 5 months plus cram school classes.

Tell me in your own words about the application process. For example, for the three high schools that you applied to? When did you start studying? How did you decide what schools to apply to?
You can only apply to a limited number of public schools. Usually, people apply to about three schools. My first exam was in early December. I started studying for that first and I did a lot of essays. Then practice interviews for the first school, then after that I started focusing on math. In the winter break I studied for like 10 hours a day. And then when I had regular school days I studied an extra three hours at home, every day.

Did you go to cram school to help you study? How many how many nights a week did you go?
I went about once a week for three or four months starting in the fall. Then almost every day for two weeks before the exam. It helps you focus on what they will test you on.

How did your school teachers help?
My homeroom teacher helped. But teachers in Japan are always super busy. Teachers at my school helped us with some advice and a few study tips. But they focused on their school tests and that kind of stuff. Not so much for the juken exams.

I think your mom helped you, right?
She helped my studying and then she practiced interviews with me. And then she did all the forms. She was a coach and did all the paperwork. She really helped a lot.

Did you ever fight because of the pressure or study workload?
Yes, sometimes. A few bad ones.

Was juken exam hell worth it?
Yeah.

Tell me how you felt before you wrote your first exam.
I remember feeling a bit afraid. I don't really remember details, though, because I was too busy. I had to start preparing for the second exam right after the first. I also recall that the post-exam interview for the first school was really hard and I was nervous.

Was the second exam easier because you could at least understand what you needed to know?
Not really. Each school has its own, different, exam system. The private schools and the public schools have very different systems.

Do you think you will keep in touch with your middle school friends after you go to high school? You will all go to different schools, right?
I hope so, because I want to still get together with my close friends. But I don’t know.

Anything else that comes to mind about your experience? How about repeating the exams in the future as you think about what comes after high school?
I will try to get good grades in high school so I can go to a good uni. And, no, I am not looking forward to studying like this all over again. It will be harder and more stress.

How did you feel when you when you were informed you passed the exam for the school you wanted to get into?
Well, there were 20 people they were going to accept and most were going to get in because of fewer competing applications. I knew my chances were good, so it wasn't super surprising. Still, I worked hard for it and I was VERY happy when I got the notice I was accepted. We watched the announcement online. Plus, I already knew I was accepted by the third school, so I had already had a secure spot. That helped.

Now that you've just finished junior high school, and soon heading into high school, how do you feel?
I'm excited, but not crazy-excited because I'm sad that I must leave junior high school and it was so fun and I loved it so much. So, I'm kind of sad yet excited.

What is one thing about that you know about your high school that is different from junior high?
You get to pick another language to study that's not English or Japanese.

Do you have to wear a school uniform at your high school?
You can wear a uniform if you want to, but you don't have to. You can pierce your ears and color your hair, too. There’s more freedom to choose how you look. In most of the other high schools out there you must wear a uniform.

Congratulations—we are very happy for you and proud of you.
Thanks!

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Farewell to Exam Hell - Pt. 1

Credit: icla.ygu.edu.ac.jp

Imagine you take one test that determines your life’s direction. Starting with the high school you go to, the subjects you study, whether you go to university or not, and if so, where. A handful of academic exams near the end of middle school start this process for ninth graders like Lady E. (Ed. notes: In Japan, middle school is from grades 7-9, high school is from 10-12th grade. Even some elementary schoolkids take exams for admission to good middle schools.) Zoinks!

Based on their exam results, students are either accepted or rejected from their choice of high school(s), the academic level of which is defined in Japan and establishes if you go to a "good" post-secondary school (or not). Now, imagine taking those incredibly stressful exams – at the age of 14 or 15 – after several months of relentless study and social pressure. Daunting, isn't it? That’s why Japanese adults call it “juken” (school entrance exams) while the students often dub it “exam hell.”

Could you, even unwittingly, decide your life path at 14? At that age, I couldn’t choose whether to eat my carrots or peas first. Or focus long enough to watch an entire episode of the A-Team on TV. Having experienced how grueling exam hell is for them and their families, I empathize with these kids.

That said, this post is not an appraisal of Japanese testing methods nor a comparison with other countries’ approaches. Education systems reflect local cultures and long-established social norms. Exam hell is part of growing up in Japan and unavoidable unless you can pay for international schools. Plus, there are numerous benefits to a Japanese-style education. So, my view has always been (paraphrasing Dale Carnegie) to accept the things you cannot change and cooperate with the inevitable.

Elena took on the high school juken exams and we are proud to say she succeeded. She studied hard, was thwarted by one exam, yet ultimately was accepted into the school she wanted. It took hundreds of hours of study, plenty of anguish, and her going to cram school. More than 70% of Japanese kids go for private tutoring at for-profit cram schools called "juku” during some point of their school life. Often, normal school education is perceived as insufficient for success, especially before the big entrance exams. Parents thus dispatch their kids to a juku after school and on weekends. All this amounts to a significant load of psychological pressure. It’s also a frequent topic among parents fretting about their kid’s future and bitching about the cost. In short, juken often trumps family interaction and social life for months.

Yet Lady E. achieved her goal. I wanted to mark the milestone with this backgrounder on examination hell. The next post will be a Q&A about her thoughts about it all.

To be continued.

Just...February

Credit: James C. Struck

February ALWAYS sucks. This year, however, it has been particularly abhorrent. To the point where I am lobbying for a new type of mental disorder to be recognized. It’s called Seasonal Crankiness Disorder variant 22 (SCDv22). You read it here first.

The American Psychiatric Association has a handbook used to diagnose clinical illnesses. It's called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). SCDv22 belongs in the next edition. 

February is already a viable host. It doubled down and spawned a shitburger in 2022.Why pick on February in general? 
- It varies in length: 28 days, 29 days? Make up your mind.

- In the northern hemisphere, the cold prevents any semblance of joy. Even with blue skies during daylight. Then comes the long dark nights and another round of cold-ass days. Yeesh.

- Valentine’s Day is OK, I’ll admit. But I think Warm Whiskey Wednesdays should be held every week in February to take a bite of the mental shellacking it delivers every year without fail.

- Credit card bills from Christmas come due. Christmas joy is long diminished, then stomped by financial reality.

- Type “I hate February” into any search engine. You get an uncountable number of hits. Then the cookies exact their revenge by selling “I hate February” T-shirts. You’ll see YouTube videos with B-list comedians talking about why February sucks so badly. And then the contrarian ads come, like graphics with “Hey, can’t beat it, so be happy” messaging. So you throw your monitor out the window. It gets expensive.

- It fosters an irrational hatred of sweaters, indicated by turning up the electric space heater and only wearing T-shirts in defiance. (Maybe that's only my thing?)

But standard February disdain mutated into SCDv22, the most virulent version of SCD to date. Why?

Photo credit: Associated Press, Ng Han Guan 

- The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing: what’s with those tall chimney stacks and cooling towers at the ski jumping venue? Reminds me of Three Mile Island. Grayish hellscape.

- Scientists declared a new variant of the COVID virus, following Delta and Omicron. It’s called the OhAreYouF*@#!KiddingMeAnotherOne. Short form: V22.2.02

- My hometown made the news for all the wrong reasons. Free-dumb anti-vax trucker convoy in Ottawa did create a more colorful Wellington St., though. I went to high school with the guy in this photo.

- Putin aggression against Ukraine.

There is no cure for SCDv22. My medical advice is to hunker down and find a good shrink.

One step forward, one step back

My parenting is often like crab walking, achieving progress by scuttling sideways back and forth to move forward. This foreshadows the M. story that follows. Be forewarned, there is no heartwarming ending.

You’ll recall "Rug-o-nomics”, my way of imparting some financial discipline in my kids and their taking responsibility for their actions. Continuing that activity, during the Christmas holidays I finally ran out of patience waiting for Marina's promised speech and issued an ultimatum. She had to finalize her Responsibility speech text, practice it, and deliver it by the restart of school in January. If not, she'd lose the chance to recoup her old monthly allowance level. 

The days ticked by with fun and merriment aplenty. I reminded Marina about the speech deadline and she’d giggle or grimace and say, “I’m working on it, Dad.” We both knew she wasn’t. I wanted her to succeed so we spent a couple of nights working together on the text, structuring her persuasive essay and morphing into a speech text.  

But it was hard going and I had to press her to do the work and take it seriously. In the end, we pulled together a text that was 90 percent her words. She learned about structuring her thoughts and writing for her audience. A small victory and one step forward.

Finally, it came down to the last weekend of the holidays. We told her if she didn’t practice and give some effort we’d flunk her and that would be it. Upon hearing those words, she nodded as she headed out the door to play with her friends all day. Uh-oh. Marina did deliver the speech before the deadline that night. Naomi and I sat down and listened intently. It was a rote performance. We agreed it wasn’t good enough. Yet, against our better judgment, we decided to give her one more opportunity to get it right on her own. Her reprieve was five more days to practice; one last chance.

Five days later, it was Speech Day. I knew she’d read the speech aloud a few times that morning based on my suggestion. Come the evening, it was painfully clear M. hadn’t truly believed we were serious that she had to focus, practice, and convince us she had learned something about responsibility. “It’s obvious Marina didn’t do much even though we gave her an extension,” said Naomi. As she neared the end of the second attempt of her speech, Marina knew it wasn’t going to be successful. To her credit, though, M. persisted through her emotions to the end and accepted the thumbs-down outcome.

With a heavy heart but clear head, I told Marina our judgement that she hadn’t exerted herself and we wouldn’t accept this half-baked last attempt. Naomi and I promised we wouldn’t nag her again, but she had failed. I felt gloomy the rest of the evening, with a dull hurt when I saw the defeat in her reddened eyes, puffy cheeks, and hints of tears. We left her in peace and said nothing further. What’s done is done. One slip-up due to laziness--one step back.

We would not be doing Marina any favors by letting her off the hook and being overly nice or ignoring the reality that she’d been lazy.

We are not SuperParents. We do our best, and sometimes we fail. We aim to set an example how to treat others; establish boundaries; preach delayed gratification etc. And to try to turn a stumble into a lesson learned for our kid…

I am working on the next step forward.

2021 in review: Mending our Nets

When fishermen cannot go to sea, they mend their nets is an old proverb I read recently that struck a chord. I was driven to delve deeper into its meaning. Truth is I’ve been seeking a way to succinctly condense the significance of 2021’s events for the Rising Family™. The gist of this saying reminds us things happen in our lives that are far beyond our control such that we cannot live the way we have always lived, or do things we want to do. It doesn’t have to mean we're powerless, just tamed by circumstance. In this sense, this family did our best to take the power back by fighting malaise as best we could this year. Small victories, people!

Nevertheless, the COVID hangover from 2020 still required aspirin throughout 2021. We got through it.

The Big Picture is the pandemic continued to kick the ass of many people. The prospect of normalcy was repeatedly dashed against the hard facts of the Delta and Omicron variants with no endgame yet in sight. The Rising Family navigated these difficulties with resigned sangfroid, keeping in mind that so many others have lost loved ones and have been affected far more than us. 2021 remained a time of uncertainty and challenge, but we managed to scrape out a few fine memories. Here are a few images that represent the year.

January 

Optimistic beginning to 2021 with a New Year visit to a popular Shinto shrine in Yokohama. 

Photo credit KDKA TV Pittsburgh

February

Seems I never have decent photos from February. So here’s the dumpster fire amid a flood. Because it symbolizes my feelings for February in general, but especially in 2021!

March 

Sign of the times: masks and house keys together in the landing next to our front door.

April

I snuck out to a social occasion and returned home aboard a nearly deserted train at 2100. Government measures to prevent the spread of COVID were tough, so most social gatherings were prohibited. Most people supported that and followed the rules.

May

Marina started enjoying hoops—this game center fun foreshadowed her joining the basketball team.

June

This is an energetic Marina jumping down the Mt. Ogusu trail in the Miura peninsula (in January). This is a continuation of our family hikes started in Tennessee state parks.

July

The warm weather ushered in lower infection rates and open-air attractions started to open up again. Here’s M. about to be drenched by a splash boat hitting the skunky water at the FujiQ Highland Amusement Park. A bit of summer heat and children’s delighted squeals helped us forget the pandemic for a few hours.

August

Lady E. and The M. setting off Obon fireworks with their ji-chan (grandad) and baa-chan (granny) during their first get-together in two-and-a-half years.

September

The ladies at the Fushimi Inari shinto shrine in Kyoto (in August) on the way back from our summer trip to Hiroshima.

October

This was our first family movie together at a cinema since we returned to Yokohama. We saw M. Night Shyamalan’s “Old.” We were the first in the theater room; a few more people came in a bit later. It was a freaky feeling to see Elsa from Disney’s “Frozen” symbolizing “no sit” seats to keep social distancing rules.

November

I rented a motorcycle and took a day fandango tour to the Izu Skyline. It’s a famous toll highway and a fun drive that runs south of Mt Fuji. I am pointing to where Mt. Fuji is…behind the clouds that magically appeared when we wanted to snap this picture.

December

A “COVID Christmas” Zoom call with my family back home. I was full of Christmas cheer despite the time zone difference. Great to see and talk with everyone.

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