Thanksoween

The Rising Family™ has been in holiday hoedown mode the last month or so. Canadian Thanksgiving on the second weekend of October was the spark. 

The traditional, and ideal, Thanksgiving meal

Our reality--and lucky to have it!

We adapted our festive feasting because we don't have an oven large enough to cook a turkey. Instead, the bird we devoured was a Costco roast chicken augmented by homemade mashed potatoes, fresh veggies, and apple pie and ice cream. Not 100% the “real thing” but tasty enough. What was the same was gratitude for our good fortune. Also unchanged was lambasting each other at the dinner table.

Now it’s Halloween. It’s another holiday that underlines Japan’s habit of absorbing and transforming cultural traditions from abroad and making them fun and unique to its own culture. All that without the drama of tradition or religious meaning. To be sure, Japan’s “Labor Thanksgiving Day”  in late November doesn’t jibe with the North American version of Thanksgiving. It’s a nondescript holiday where people say thanks to their parents for their work. Be that as it may, I’m waiting for some savvy local marketers to turn that holiday into something quirky that fits the local lifestyle. I’m sure there are many Japanese who’ve lived in the U.S. or Canada and would like to see a localized version of Thanksgiving. That would mesh well with the homespun varieties of Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day which are very popular.

I don’t recall large Halloween celebrations when I arrived in Japan over two decades ago, except for foreigners getting together to party. Then again, it’s increasingly welcomed as a good excuse to rev up the costumes and have fun in public, so why not? I suspect the geniuses at Tokyo Disneyland brought in the idea and local companies saw opportunity knocking. It probably caught on first in the Tokyo area, with its many foreign resident enclaves. The annual big cosplay/Halloween parade in Shibuya added spice to enable its further spread elsewhere.

I do recall seeing a Christmas tree festooned with pumpkins at a local mall around 2014. I duly called it the “Christmaween” period between Halloween and Christmas.

Credit/Courtesy of Eric Fell/Instagram

So why not keep that creative vibe going with a new "Thanksoween" hybrid holiday? Just merge them and keep the party going. Eat a huge feast in a costume. That could work!

The way I see it, Western culture and traditions are great and come to us naturally because we grew up with them. I try to husband them in our household so Lady E. and M. grasp the spirit, emotion and traditions of the western half of their makeup through holiday celebrations. That these holidays can sometimes veer in a kooky way when integrating with Japanese norms yields harmless and heartwarming results—for everyone. Traditions are great and it’s OK to do something different. Anything that brings people together and offers some joy is the whole point.

When I see a Japanese version of Kwanzaa or Hannukah, then I’ll know Japan has jumped the shark, holiday-wise. Wait for it! 😏

Happy Thanksoween!

Ed. notes: 

- Today is also the general election for the Japan’s House of Representatives. The vote will decide if the current LDP government will continue to lead with single-party majority, or not. Either way, democracy in action.

- It’s also the opening day of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. Let’s hope the Powers That Be continue efforts to improve our climate plans so the planet doesn’t become a horror show for future generations. Just marking the date for posterity.

 

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Rug-o-nomics and responsibility

Teaching Marina about money has been a long and winding road…with much laughter. We’ve been trying to do the right thing as parents. If we don’t teach the Rising Daughters™ how to manage money, then credit card, “E-Z Quick Loan" or "FastCashBack” companies will. That’s not a risk we want to take. Dollars and sense.

I say “we” when in reality it means “me.” Truth be told, I couldn’t find my own ass financially until my mid-twenties. The university loan repayments started to kick in and the party was over. My lovely wife, however, was born fiscally prudent and rational. I want our daughters to split the difference behaviorally between us parents. At face value, it seems Lady E. got Naomi’s “smart with money” DNA.  And -- I write this with love -- M. was left with my inital slapdash approach to managing money and saving for the future.

Library “Book-o-nomics” is the precursor to this post. It was the strategy I created to get Marina to understand that library books cost money and that lost library books will cost her money. While we were living in Tennessee, she lost a book. I made her go with me to the library to find out from the librarian what happens. We broke down the $20 book replacement cost into monthly payments subtracted from her allowance. Every month I’d remind her why she was $1.50 short of what she was supposed to receive.  I'd show the record of what she’d paid and what balance remained. She followed the plan and paid it back. Lesson learned, right?

Wrong.

More backstory. Slime is a viscous, gooey, multicolored glob that you can pound, pull apart, and do all kinds of creative kooky kid stuff. It’s also sticky and oozy as tree sap and IMPOSSIBLE to remove from carpets. For this reason, we repeatedly warned Marina not to use slime in her bedroom and, if she “forgot” and it got stuck on the carpet, she’d be responsible for fixing it.

You guess what happened next. The warnings were ignored. When moving out, even a professional carpet cleaner could not remove the hardened slime globs and stains. We had to replace the whole carpet in her room, costing north of $400.

It was time for Round 2 of taking responsibility-for-your-actions. “Rug-o-nomics” was born.

I did some math and at $2.50 per month—roughly 15% of her monthly allowance—it would take 13 years for her to pay it back. She’d be a college graduate by then. I increased the monthly payback to $7.50 per month to raise the financial pain threshold together with a new incentivized idea. I recalled Marina’s great public speaking effort back in January 2020 at the Williamson County 4H club.

Her topic: Being responsible for your actions. My idea was to get her to rehash her ideas in a long, two- or three-page formal essay about being responsible for one’s actions. Doing so would rehash the responsibility element and need some written work. Perfect combination, right?

Wrong.

She agreed to this new ploy six months ago. Yet no action. She’s still willing to take a 42% monthly drop in her allowance rather than do the essay.

To motivate her, we first showed her how much more money she’d get every month if she did the essay. Nothing happened.

Negative reinforcement though nagging and shaming didn’t work. We tried the positive route again with a tangible thing: how much candy she could buy with an extra 750 yen (about $7.50).

She's done neither research nor writing so far. What to do? We might have to go to DEFCON 1 and threaten complete allowance retraction. My preference remains the carrot over the stick, though.

I do believe that this story will end positively. Goodness knows if I could eventually get my financial act together, so can Rising Daughter #2.

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Knocked-out and Luckless

The Blue Jays took me on a roller-coaster ride of emotion while trying to secure a Wild Card spot in the American League postseason. What an exciting young team. I’ve was attentive to the AL East pennant race this year. During the Wild Card chase I peeked at game livestreams on my smartphone.  

It’s the first time I’ve written about the bluebirds in this blog since 2015. Plenty of convoluted tiebreaker scenarios kept the WC dream alive. Alas, the Red Sox knocked out the Jays despite a 91-71 record for 2021.

There’s always next year, right?

As a double-whammy, I am NOT going to space with Virgin Galactic after all. I was certain that one of my tickets would be chosen! It’s a cosmic letdown, to be sure. It seems Omaze and Branson have conspired against me…this time.

There’s always the next raffle, right?