Scenes from the sanctum

Two months left until the Tokyo Olympics! Yet Yokohama, Tokyo, Osaka and seven other densely populated prefectures are still under the government’s coronavirus “state of emergency.” In effect, it means people refrain from pleasure travel, restaurants and bars are told to close by 8 pm and not serve alcohol or offer karaoke. The measures are intended to prevent a fourth wave of COVID-19 infections. I predict a fifth wave of aggravated boredom soon. (It’s the lack of karaoke that may kill me. Kidding.)

Like the rest of the world the Rising Family™ has adjusted. We’ve been doing what we can to get out, stay active, and have fun. So in this post I’ll share a few photos from the first half of the year that give you a taste.

January: stayed home over the Christmas and New Year holidays. We were reacquainted with the delights of downtown such as Yokohama Harbor at night.

Our Yokohama life (Phase 2) is flavored with discovering new things about the city. We went to hatsumode -- the first Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine visit of the Japanese New Year – at an ancient shrine not far from our neighborhood. It just felt right to kick off the year that way. There were fewer people there than we expected.

Lady E. celebrated her birthday at home with a homemade cake. She’s in a down-to-earth mood these days. “Just family, please!"

Warm winters mean you can trek or hike trails year round. Jumping bean Marina was so full of energy she bounced down the trail to the car.

Every month my bud James Shalikashvili and I take off for day hike somewhere in the Tokyo-Yokohama-Chiba area. Here we are at the Miura peninsula; Mt. Fuji is across the bay on the right.

When I’ve had enough and need to get away, I take off for a day drive on my trusty 125cc scooter which magically enables me to skirt traffic jams. I find serene spots for downtime. This is the view I get from one of my favorite escape destinations: staring at the cedar tree boughs, sea salt in the air....

Democracy rocks my world

In 2015, I lost the right to vote in federal elections because I had been living outside Canada for more than five years. This post is not a retroactive rant about the government’s decision to restrict the vote of more than one million non-resident Canadians like me. Rather, it’s a valentine to a system of government that can change.

Earlier this year I read the measures taken to restrict voting rights for Canadians abroad were being contested in the Supreme Court. The court's ruling led the current government to reverse course and restore the vote for expat Canucks. I soon applied online to be part of the new international register of electors. I received a notice in the mail confirming I would again be able to vote. Good stuff, right?

Canadian citizenship entails certain rights, freedoms, and responsibilities. Every citizen should have the right to vote regardless of where they live. It’s wonderful the law changed thanks to healthy civil discourse, political action, and the rule of law. That process rendered change without any violence. If that’s not another terrific example of democracy (and the Canadian social contract) in action, what is?

I need to get off the soapbox, I know. In a nutshell, I was gratified to have my right to vote returned to me. I can again be a part of the elections that steer the direction of my country. Once a Canadian, always a Canadian. And huzzah for democracy.

Courtesy of the Parliament of Canada

Rediscovering Yokohama, Part I

Courtesy of nerdnomads.com

When you’re away from Japan for an extended period and return only as a savvy tourist, the lingering image is always glossy, umblemished, as unreal as this photo. 

That’s a mental keepsake and nothing wrong with that. But your vision clears up when you come down out of the clouds above Mt. Fuji back to daily reality.

The Rising Family™ returned to Japan nine months ago during the pandemic’s apex in the U.S. Since then, we’ve been adapting again to local norms. So far, resuming day-to-day life in Yokohama has shored up my confidence in our family’s world citizenship and flexibility. It’s also triggered a fresh bout of wanderlust, tempered only by an appreciation for all the great things about living here.

These days my children’s questions about the world ebb and flow as they settle back into the rhythm and rules of Japanese society. Nonetheless, the travels of the last four years continue to yield gifts in their language ability, personal development, and processing of new experiences from an international standpoint. That’s some major value added for life, along with all the neat s**t they’ve seen firsthand. 

Living in different places and among different cultures taught us all places are quirky and special and unique in their own way. Every place takes some getting used to if you live there for an extended time. Returning by chance to rent the same house in Yokohama meant the same neighbors, the same schools, and the same office, all of which has been trippy. Like going in reverse before we can move forward again. At first, it felt like little had changed in our part of Yokohama. There were only superficial differences in how things looked from when we left four years ago. I knew it was arrogant to think that we had changed but nothing else here changed that much, especially with the temporary social measures taken to combat COVID. The so-called “new normal.” Scratch the surface and there’s plenty that is different—and good.

Case in point, a day trip in early autumn to La Soleuil, a French inspired amusement park and family-focused space on the seacoast near Yokohama. We often went there with the girls during our first round of living in Yokohama (I call it “phase one”). Naomi, M. and I returned to La Soleuil with hopes of recapturing a bit of the past. But it became a classic example of “you can never go back” in the philosophical sense. We walked around; it was a beautiful day, plenty of young families having fun. Yet after an hour of the petting zoo, something she adores, Marina looked slightly dejected. Why so? I asked. “I’m too old for most of this stuff, I’m over it.” Sobering, bittersweet reality. 

The workplace experience has been similar. I re-entered my old workspace, one that’s been altered by remote work, new faces, and a new corporate reality. Things had naturally evolved. The edge was taken off my return to this conventional Japanese workplace by fortunately joining a team that is captained by a former supervisor of mine who I knew and respected, and who knew what I could contribute. I was not a “fresh foreigner” and could get back on the horse comparatively quickly. 

Typical workplace no-nos

I also like to think I rode out the occasional work culture nuisance with only minor kvetching. I remain thankful to be employed and for the opportunities my employer has given us.

But I still detest the train commute. Social distancing, my ass. But again the flipside is Yokohamians are fastidious about wearing masks and hand washing. Somehow it works.

Let me close with this: At work and play --for the girls at school, Naomi working a new part-time job, me at mine – we are back in the groove.  I’m hitting in the sweet spot. In my next post I’ll describe another episode that prompted a slump, and how I climbed out of it.

Yokohama dazzles the eyes at night.
Courtesy of Yokohama Board of Tourism 

The gift of wanderlust has consequences. You will never feel completely at home again. Part of your heart will always be yearning for Elsewhere. That’s the price you pay for the richness of loving and appreciating more than one place. But there is also beauty in the here and now, and from appreciating the good things that make each place unique and livable.

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What we’re reading

I intend this post as a snapshot in time of the Rising Family’s current reading habits.

We’ve acclimated to our living space in Yokohama but it has affected our reading diet. To wit, Lady E. and M. have reintegrated with the Japanese school system and local media. For them, that means English is now more chore than a necessity or escape. Yours truly thus issued coercive parental diktats for the greater good of their bilingual future. And they’ve grudgingly accepted a light English reading regimen. Their mission is to read a reasonable amount of their chosen book every week, then offer up a short written summary. If they do the work, good things happen; if they skive, bad things happen. My carrot and stick approach links their monthly allowance and access to social media as the levers to comply with my demand for weekly language maintenance.

So far, so good—it’s paying off for them. My half of the bargain is that I, too, read their books, and we discuss the chapters they cover and their written recap. We’ve been following this menu for several months now. The daughters realize it isn’t a flavor-of-the-month parenting fad and I mean to see it through long term. There is the understanding this isn’t going away...

What are they reading, you ask?

Mandatory reading

Lady E. started reading Rob Aspinal’s “Truly Deadly”, about a supercharged teenage girl action hero. It was a legacy project from Elena’s pandemic stay-at-home reading list while in the States, but she lost interest. So we switched to J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” which has proved more easily digestible. The only problem we’ve had is pronouncing ‘Hermione’.

Marina quickly inhaled “The Wild Robot” by Peter Brown due to her growing interest in animals. The plot revolves around a robot named Roz and her adventures on an island filled only with animals. M. is currently reading the sequel, “The Wild Robot Escapes,” wherein we see Roz working on a family farm and plotting her return to the island to reunite with her adopted bird son, Brightbill. Both books have a heartwarming and thoughtful plot.

Voluntary reading

Elena is into Japanese manga comics, and has purchased the “Tokyo Ghoul” series of bound comic books by Sei Ishida. It’s all the rage in the under-15 set in Japan.

Marina is reading the Roald Dahl storybook set she received as a Christmas present last year.

As usual, Naomi prefers to leave as few digital crumbs as possible and wishes to keep her reading choices private.

And me? I’m navigating a minor case of homesickness. I quickly read “The Never-Ending Present” by Michael Barclay, an interesting history of Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip. I’ve since  shared it with other Canuck GenXers here in Nippon pining for lost youth. Then I moved on to “Music is the Drug,” a biography of the Cowboy Junkies, another Canadian band. (Nice Christmas gift Dad and Bro!)

To celebrate my stint in the U.S., I’m reading the New Yorker maven and baseball storyteller, Roger Angell, at the same time as snacking on gonzo journalism from Hunter S. Thompson. 

I can’t figure out why I’m doing this or what it signifies. I’m just following my urges, I suppose, or showing my own ambivalence about leaving the U.S. and returning to live in Japan. It’s been a greater subconscious challenge than I expected.

But it’s all damn good writing!

So long, Tennessee

2020 was a year that jumped the tracks in so many ways. An example of this was our inability to say a proper goodbye to our friends and acquaintances before we left Tennessee in early July. Almost eight months have passed since we returned to Japan. Time has granted some perspective. I am grateful for the time we spent in the Tri-Star state because we all had so many good experiences to take with us. Here are some thoughts and "nice memory" snapshots. 

What I learned? I had two and a half years to work and live in my native workplace culture and get reacquainted with North America. It was a reality check and a personal reboot. I was, in effect, no longer an expat in the social sense because I was re-immersed in the media, sports, food, entertainment and many cultural touchstones I grew up with. To be sure, Tennessee is geographically and psychologically far from my native soil in the Great White North. But I reveled in the civility and friendliness of the people I met. In the age of Trump, I avoided political discussions—that served me well. As a Canadian chameleon I could soak up most everything about the local culture, sample the Southern way of life, and enjoy many shared social touchstones. Yet I never hesitated to play the “I’m a foreigner” card to extricate myself when necessary. More than anything else, I found that I had much more in common with my American co-workers and friends than not. In many ways, I felt the closest to home than I have since I left Canada in 1996 to work overseas.

The Rising Family’s™ experience? I think Naomi enjoyed it. She had her own friends from the Japanese expatriate community as support, along with many local friends. Language was never an issue. Driving everywhere was new to her. She stared down the challenges that came. Strong lady!

The Rising Daughters™ blossomed. The language bedrock they established in India was strengthened and layered with social fertilizer from Tennessee. School was important, of course. Both daughters made good friends. They benefited way beyond English fluency in the Williamson County schools. They maintained mental ties to Japan through many Saturdays spent at the Japanese School of Middle Tennessee. That meant six days a week at school, but ultimately worth it, as we have found out since our return to Yokohama. Their time in Nolensville will benefit them for the rest of their lives.

The snapshots:

I saw for myself the South I had read about in Pat Conroy and John Berendt novels, but in a modern context.

Tennessee’s nickname is the Volunteer State. I always felt I’d contributed to the greater good after a few shifts at local food banks around Christmastime and following the tornado that hit in March 2020.

We rented a large, beautiful house. Depending on the season, our backyard was visited by deer, birds, occasional flocks of turkeys, random neighborhood dogs on a jailbreak, rabbits, and our foes, groundhogs.

I learned that southerners take their lawns and gardening seriously.

Our immediate neighborhood was in reality very diverse, with people coming from Tennessee, them Yankee states up north, Egypt, Ghana, India and -- hell yes -- Alabama!

And music. Oh the music! Sun Studios and Graceland in Memphis; the Johnny Cash museum; and constant local reminders that Nashville is The Music City. Along with live music enjoyed on Music Row downtown, I also went to concerts I will never forget (Weezer, The Pixies, Cowboy Junkies, and the blues at BB King’s Club).

Medical care. I saw world-class medical care in action thanks to the Vanderbilt University Medical center.

The food. Memphis wet BBQ versus Nashville dry rub? Biscuits at the Loveless Café? Tastebuds won, but the loser was my waistline, which grew to epic new proportions.

Iced tea is appropriate for all meals and you start drinking it immediately after you’re born. I’m partial to “half and half.”

Our favorite restaurant: Vinh-Long, a Vietnamese-Japanese restaurant in east Nashville that captured our hearts. Unassuming vibe, friendly and family-run, cash-only. Somehow this is the place that worked for us all, particularly on the way home from our frequent excursions to the Nashville Flea Market. Spring rolls and Vietnamese coffee, shrimp tempura and pho for the ladies.

I learned this at Publix and Kroger: it’s is not a shopping cart! It is a “buggy.”

Motorcycle trips on lonely back highways only 5 minutes from our house. The pinnacle of my motorcycle journeys was a Natchez Trace  return trip over one weekend. But seeing small towns in Tennessee and Mississippi was unforgettable.

Ya’ll is singular. All ya’ll is plural.

So long, Tennessee, and thank you.

End

COVID chronicle - Five

It’s the first month of the New Year. Still mid-winter. The tough times over the past 11 months anchor the shroud of pain and fear still hanging over many people. (My arbitrary “start” of the impact of COVID is March 2020.) Plenty of unknowns about the direction the COVID pandemic could take would normally trigger more gloom. What awful things will come next? But I, for one, am so tired of considering what ifs? that I’ve turned off the worry circuits in my brain and have just moved on.

So, after this post, no more coronavirus claptrap for a bit. But let’s encapsulate this moment in time, shall we?

Courtesy of National Geographic online

As of January 31, per National Geographic…
Worldwide: 103 million confirmed cases; 2.2 million reported deaths
U.S.: 26 million cases; 440,000 deaths
Canada: 779,000 cases; 20,000 deaths
Japan: 388,000 cases; 6,000 deaths

Those are the tragic figures, which I am certain will be reviewed and revised once the medical and social carnage finally ends. Even at this juncture, it's been thorny to keep track of all the disruptions caused by this human cost. It’s affected everyone where the virus has sunk its spikes into society. We’ve had nearly a year of adjusting to great unknowns and reacting to events with our socially distant thought processes fueled by social media. We all perceive that, like 9-11, our lives will be changed permanently by the experience.

Beyond the human suffering, there’s historic economic decay. And how will this lost year affect the development of following generations? Then, there’s the impact of the nailbiter U.S. presidential election that –let’s face it – affects the entire world. Also, factor in the death of George Floyd, which has sparked bitter racial debate in the U.S., raised voices of dissent, and energized grassroots movements seeking racial justice even beyond their shores. Society has changed.

People have changed how they interact with their families, their neighborhoods, at the (for the lucky, virtual) office, and in nearly every other facet of life. COVID has undoubtedly engineered drastic shifts that will have lasting consequences even after the pandemic ends. This is where I think we are now.

But, where are we going? Somehow 2021 feels like we are on firmer ground. I’m encouraged by the sprouts of determination to quell the virus by the new Democratic administration in Washington. Efforts in Canada and Japan to roll out vaccines continue. The constant barrage of crap has tranquilized us so long that anything resembling a way out of this is a mental life ring. Spring is nowhere near sprung yet there are conspicuous buds of hope!

I’ve got a couple of posts coming up in which I’ll offer a proper goodbye to Nashville and a zesty hello again to Yokohama (round two).

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Thankfully over. 2020 in rearview.

From March 2020 onward, so many awful things happened to so many and yielded so little to celebrate. The positive take is that things can only get better. 

I won’t add anything further to the billions of words dumping on last year.
Yet the show goes on. Here’s a few photos from us, the (gratefully) Treading Water Family™.

January 

Marina won third place in the county public speaking contest sponsored by the 4H Club. Proud!
I also saw my first Nashville Predators game (vs. Toronto Maple Leafs). Leafs won.

 

February

Dad was paddling in Kenepuru Sound, South Island, New Zealand. Jealous!

March 

My ladies lazily lolling in lassitude. Near Cancun. Wonderful! 

Yet…foreshadowing of the ordeal ahead. 

April
Already restless, our family hikes started in earnest. Still scared but bored!
Birthday in quarantine.


May
Hikes continue. Fall Creek Falls. Invigorating!
Motorcycles…social distancing on wheels. I escaped for day tours with likeminded work buddies.


June
Horseback riding locally. Countrified!
The Rising Daughters™ bid goodbye to their schools and their friends. Not the way we wanted to say goodbye. Sad but safe!


July
We packed up. Said so long to our neighbors and a fond farewell to Nashville. Reflective!


August
Moving (back) to our house. Assembling new furniture. “Helvete” means hell in Swedish. Vexing!


September
Hola! Hamster aboard: “Cotton” a.k.a “El Presidente” joins us. Cute!


October
Costco hot dogs…comfort food goes global. Viva U.S.A!


November
M.’s class doing a socially distanced “Happi” dance instead of Sports Day. Twistin’ yet distant!


December
We tried hard to be festive & merry. But we were satisfied with safe & healthy…