Operation Nose Suction

Situation: Toddler streaming thick green mucus from nostrils for several days in a row. Ability to function as normal toddler compromised. Parental units concerned about near-future viability for outdoor operations. Action required to rectify the snot attack.

Mission: Clear clogged nasal passages of greenish slime and restore sniffle-free breathing.

Tactics:
1. Distract: Employ colorful Elmo sticker while Dad unit does dumb entertaining things to distract attention of targeted child.
2. Disarm: Dad holds child unit’s head and lovingly clasps little arms to suppress arm defenses.
3. Clean: Mom unit inserts suction thingy into child’s nostril, and inhales air through the other tube to suction out yucky green shit. Execute same op on other nostril with surgical precision and speed to take advantage of surprise and prevent effective resistance.
4. Extract: Pull equipment out, leaving no traces for a future enemy force regeneration.

Results: screaming bloody murder during operation, followed by an appreciative sigh of relief as normal breathing through nasal passages is restored. Mission accomplished.

From the parental perspective

From the kid perspective

These Shoes Were Made for Walking

The Good: Elena is really keen on walking unassisted these days. Most weekends we try to go to large, indoor spaces that are kid friendly so she can ramble about. There are quite a few malls and large department stores that offer free access to padded kids’ play areas stuffed with complimentary toys; we hit these places with glee, but we’re still lousy customers. (Is there a “moochers” sub-demographic in marketing?) Elena gets to run amok and teeter-totter around, bug-eyed with amazement that she is standing and moving forward. We get to watch, laugh, and get out of our cramped apartment for a change of scenery.
None of this is news to many of you out there with your own sprogs that are upright and ambling around, but as first time parents, well, the sight of Lady E. striking off with her own agenda inspires delight in us. And a judicious element of wariness, too—she rarely looks back. We may need to implant a GPS chip in her as she gains speed.

The Bad / Who Moved My Hiroshima Cheese?: Shoes are a nice metaphor for what’s going on for us socially. Not so much ‘bad,’ but a sign of the times…quite a few friends of mine have been leaving town for new places over the course of the past year. Life circumstances and job changes are creating change within my diminishing circle of friends in Hiroshima. It’s almost inevitable. I read somewhere that 80 percent of foreign people living in Japan leave within three years. The rest tend stay put for longer periods (myself included). But even the long-timers eventually pick up stakes. No doubt the same is true in North America and elsewhere, but the impact of this is more perceptible as an expat. Change, however, is a beautiful thing. Sad to see you go, amigos, but I am very happy for your forward movement as you depart for new and more pleasing stations in life.

The Ugly: T.S. Eliot was wrong: the cruelest month is February. The weather has been nasty this year, even in Hiroshima. I try to minimize my bitching about the cold because one of the reasons I like being here is that the weather is relatively (Ontario-versus-southern Japan) great. Particularly, the mild winters. Compared to my Canuck and northern US-based comrades, the amount of snowfall we get is laughable. Hiroshima typically has about three or four days a year when the snow actually accumulates rather than melts on impact. This year, these snow days have all been in February and it has been a bit colder than average. When it falls, snow causes traffic to grind to a halt, keeping our family’s movement to a minimum. Coming home from work one night, I had to abandon my beloved motorcycle to the elements and walk home because the roads were a mess and salting them here is truly a foreign concept. (Yep, I ride 365 days a year if possible.) Salting roads and central heating are probably common in northern Japan, but not here. In short, the weather sucks in February.

The onset of pro baseball’s spring training offers a glimpse of warmth and a smidgen of soul food, but it still seems distant. The Clemens HGH debacle has also thrashed another tenuous link I had to non-cynicism about life. Boo-hoo. Maybe I’ll be in a better mental place by next post! Buh-bye.

Eatin’ Out, Elena-Style

When she eats at home, Lady E. flings food around our eating space with gusto. This usually results in a Rorschach blot of residual clumps of rice, half-chewed carrot strips and whatnot on our floor. Naomi and I frequently derive objective meaning from the imagery that results, but we emphatically do not enjoy the endless cleanup (especially Naomi, since she does most of the work). Feeding our beloved little one can be a chore.

To take a break from the chaotic transition-to-solid-food routine, we head out once a week to a new local family restaurant chain. It is called CoCos; kind of a faux Western roadhouse eating experience.

I am giving it a plug here because Elena regularly wreaks havoc in our booth—smearing stuff on the table and glass divider, dumping food all over the floor and gleefully overturning dishes. We feel guilty about leaving the mess. But the truth is we only go there because it is a baby-friendly environment, plus the fact that we don’t have to tidy up makes OUR food taste that much better. The wait staff is friendly, although I think I have seen them discreetly flipping a coin while we wait to be seated. The loser of the coin toss seats us in his or her section. We also change restaurant locations every week in hopes that they’ll forget our faces…

CoCos restaurants offer a number of attractions that keep us coming back: toddler seats with safety belts, lots o’ plastic cups begging to be banged on the table, semi-edible crayons, coloring paper and a huge Doraeman menu, all of which keeps the little one busy for about 2 minutes. (Doraeman is Japan’s most popular animation character for the under-10 set.) Surprisingly, the restaurant offers bibs, special baby meals and utensils as well. These chain eateries won’t be featured in the Michelin guide. But for us exhausted parental units, every meal there is a feast because the food dances on the tongue when we know we aren’t on the hook for the post-feed cleanup.

The cat with the blue hair is Doraeman

We also find that our usually finicky daughter eats more when we’re all sitting together. Work prevents me from being home in time to eat as a family unit most of the time, so these weekly outings are also special in that regard. Naomi and I use a tag-team approach to the delivery of the day’s rations. It seems to work most times, but occasionally we need to patrol the aisles of the restaurant, with Elena eyeing the other toddlers and mercilessly working the other diners for attention. She’s not very shy (see below) and makes friends easily, it seems.

"Excuse me, would you happen to have any Grey Poupon?"

Year One: A Look Back

First year in the life.

Nothing original in this post, just a few extra poses for the millions of fans clamoring for more...More...MORE photos of the delightful Lady E.

January: ejected into the world..Tiny little nose; Dad with huge head.

February: sleeping the afternoons away. Bliss for all.

March: Starting to feel the existential sting of life?

April: ooohhh yeah. Must...sleep...after....feeding.

May: another harebrained photo op gone awry.

June: just plain cute.

July: showing that innate media savvy. "And you are...?"

August: escaping the heat in a local electronics mega store. (Note bare feet.)

September: nightly calisthenics prior to hittin' the futon and callin' it a day.

October: my personal favorite for the year.

November: "Hey! You looking at me? I said, You...lookin'...at...me?!"

December: Two babes surrounded by autumn colors.

Oji-chan & Oba-chan help celebrate Elena's 1st birthday with us.

- Fin -

Twofer: Tentative First Steps & A Merry First Christmas

“One Small Step for Lady E, One Giant Leap for Babykind?”
This is my usual overzealous way of letting you all know our baby has taken her first tentative steps. As parents, it is a developmental milestone that absolutely must be celebrated and lauded in the Rising Daughter blog because our Lady E. -- almost one year old -- has really started her journey to toddlerhood.

Walking…OK, careening and stumbling…is just one part of the funny array of things she is doing these days. For a few weeks now, Elena has been crawling around the apartment with increasing velocity and sense of purpose. Like her Mom and Dad, she gets frustrated when she can’t do something NOW, RIGHT NOW…patience is not something we seem to have in abundance. We could tell she was eager to get upright as soon as possible. She quickly progressed from hyper-crawling to rocketing around the apartment with her Miffy walker, with its telltale ‘dingely-dongely’ milk truck sound. It was literally music to my ears.

Naomi informs me she really took her first step in the late afternoon of December 24th. So there you have it: Walking Woman on Christmas Eve!

Christmas 2007
The next day, we were lucky to have some friends over for Christmas dinner. Celebrating Christmas in Japan is both wonderful and somewhat hollow at the same time. Christmas decorations go up in stores nationwide in late November and everyone looks forward to it for the usual reasons. When Japanese society embraces something foreign, they do it with great panache and attention is paid to the smallest of details to make sure it is near perfect. So, the holiday season comes with beautiful packaging, but there is still something intangible that is missing. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein describing Oakland, “there is no there there.” Not being a Christian country, this atmosphere is completely understandable. You just have to make your own soul food for Christmas.

Which is what we did: we had our friends over for a traditional Christmas dinner. We invited longtime friends James, Yuko (and their boys) and Mike and his wife over for a feast, good cheer, plenty of booze, even a few presents. We also arranged for a visit from Santa’s Helper to drop off a few presents for the kids. Naomi and I had a great time in the company of friends. We plan to have others over soon, when they aren’t working…hinto..SDM-san.
Given this festive occasion and the number of gifts and blessings we’ve received in 2007, it seems we were all good boys and girls this year. Christmas was fantastic. While I miss all of you out there reading this, particularly this time of year, we were very fortunate to share this important day with people who are important to us. And we skyped the ones who couldn’t be here in person!

From Lady E. and us, to all of you, happy New Year. May 2008 bring you continued health, hilarity and happiness.

Since it is New Year’s Eve, I’ll close with a quote from P. J. O'Rourke, one of my favorite writers: It is better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money.

Changing of the Appliances

It is mid-December here in Hiroshima, when autumn leaves have left the tree branches, baseball season is decidedly over and the sting of oncoming winter is acute at night and early morning. It's basically pretty damn bleak, and without the brief uplift in one's spirits that accompanies the first snowfall.

The annual Changing of the Appliances tradition also marks this time of year. It's an ancient Japanese custom that stretches back to the Gasheeter Era of Emperor Needmorecloze. Since I have been resident in Hiroshima for over a decade now, I have acclimated to local conditions and customs in order to fit in…well, as much as I can. The electric and kerosene heaters are now out, cleaned and made ready for action.

Za Electric Heater a.k.a. "Yen Eater"

Please bear in mind that most houses in Japan do not have central heating. Instead, gas, oil and electric heaters and air conditioners are used to heat single rooms. This makes it a little more challenging to keep a consistent room temperature throughout our apartment. It also adds a challenging element to make the whole place safe from Lady E.

Za Kerosene Heater --"Mr. Stinky"

I also got a nasty surprise the other day…we got a visit from a nice lady from the power company, who inquired as to why our electricity use seemed high. I’ve been using the electric heater more than usual this year because it has less residual smell than the kerosene one. But, we got a 20,000 yen (about $200) bill for one month of electricity use—about four times the usual.
...We are using the kerosene heater more now.

Weekend Morning Strolls

For a few months now, I have been escorting Lady E. on early morning strolls on Saturdays and Sundays. So, yeah, I just push her around with the baby stroller. At first, we started this to escape the heat during summer and give Naomi a break in the morning on weekends. But fall is almost over now, so we bundle up and I bring a mug of coffee to fuel the adventure. It’s actually quite nice to explore the neighborhood where I have been living for 10 years in greater detail; I am still discovering small, narrow roads and pathways between houses in the older sections of the area. The small hills that frame this part of town also keep through-traffic to manageable level, so we can roam around safely. Elena seems to like the thrumming vibrations of the stroller's wheels -- maybe, to her, a sound not unlike that of traveling by car – and looking around. She’s a fine spelunking companion and I also relish the time spent together.
The other thing I like about these walks is that local people, upon seeing a cute little baby, seem to lose their general inhibitions about speaking with me. Is it a male thing or being a foreigner….I don’t know, but I can say with confidence that having a small baby with me seems like a license to speak with random people who would normally never think of engaging me in conversation. And that’s nice. Am I a more sensitive, honest and responsible gaijin now that I have Lady E. in hand? Nah—same old prick as always. Yet normally shy and reticent people now open up, giggle and goo-goo with abandon. Being a Dad confers sudden sainthood?