Tama Zoo

We had a great trip to the Tama Zoo with some friends on the first day of J's school vacation!

Kimono

We had the opportunity to have J try on a kimono this week.  Some friends from school offered to let J borrow their kimono for a traditional picture that children have at his age.  As you can see it was quite a process getting him dressed.  Three different moms helped and they used instructions!

Cute family picture.

The true to life picture!

So it's been a while since my last post on account of hubby is pretty much flat on his back sick. Thus we don't have any cool pictures or accounts of fun events in the last few weeks.  I have however learned a lot of things this past week.  Number one of course has to be how much Hubby does that I don't realize, especially in Japan.  

2.  I CAN find my own headache medicine in the drug store if B tells me what to say to the pharmacist.

3.  I can return books to the library and ask for the ones that I have requested, again with B's help with the Japanese.

4.  Sick kids can be taken to the doctor by their non-Japanese speaking mother.

5.  General entertainment of the children...(Thanks to lots of nice people who try to understand what I'm saying in Japanese.)

You get the idea.  Here's hoping B gets better soon!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving.  We did, thanks KFC.

Shinjuku Gyoen

I've wanted to visit Shinjuku Gyoen for a couple of weeks now for one reason, Japanese Maples! I was supposed to go on Wed. with a group of friends from J's class, but just as S was getting over the stomach flu J caught some coughing thing.
So Saturday morning I dragged my now mostly healthy family to Shinjuku. We had a great time at the park and bought Krispy Kreme on the way home without having to wait an hour in the line. Yeah! Too bad I've eaten them all already.

It reminded me a bit of central park with nice open areas and the stark contrast of buildings against the park setting.

Origami is a wonderful thing!  J and his friends were seriously kept entertained for 20+ minutes with just a little stack of paper.  

Also I have learned that it's okay to eat potatoes and radishes (daikon) as long as you are at school and everyone else thinks they are fine to eat.  It's one of those don't try this at home gigs though, it can't be replicated at home.  

S has been throwing up and sick for a week.  One nice thing about moving to a foreign country where you don't speak the language, but hubby does, is that you aren't the one who has to take the sick child to the doctor.  I'll add it to the list.

Garbage

In his book Living in Japan, Andy D. Para writes, "Taking care of the garbage may be the least of your worries, but to your Japanese neighbors, it's a high priority. In fact, improper garbage disposal ranks high on the list of gripes Japanese have about their non-Japanese neighbors. So if you want to develop friendly relations with your neighbors, find out the local requisites for garbage disposal. Then do it right."

In this environmentally conscious age in which we live, you have no doubt heard of the three "R's:" Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.  Japan has informally created a fourth "R," Responsibility. Accordingly you must take full responsibility for your own garbage. Enforcement of this responsibility requires the cooperation of government agents, community volunteers,  merchants, and consumers.   If you don't do it right and refuse to cooperate with the system, that is when problems arise. The term public sanitation quickly morphs into an Orwellian example of double speak.

Here is what typically happens twice a week. Everyone puts their trash out in a big pile by the side of the road and covers it with a green net, to keep the ravenous  crows away.  Next the city trucks drive by , take off the net, and pick it up.

  But if the trash collectors (a.k.a. garbage police) see something in your trash that is not sorted correctly (i.e. a plastic sushi tray inside the bag for burnable garbage) then they don't pick it up. Instead they put a warning sticker on it and leave it uncovered on the side of the road. Then the crows come and tear the bag apart, spreading the garbage up and down the street. Now it is your RESPONSIBILITY to go down and pick up your garbage, correctly sort it and put it out again next time. But that seldom happens; people just pretend that it is not their bag of garbage that the crows are sprinkling up and down the block. 

Now it becomes everyones RESPONSIBILITY to curse at the crows and the city, ignore the trash spread everywhere, and track down the culprit and publicly shame them. (Sorry about the low quality image--I took a photo with my cellphone and then emailed it to myself. But you can still see trash by the lovely bushes.)

Although the garbage standards have actually just gotten easier, this little change has thrown the whole system into confusion and the crows are getting fat.
Needless to say we still recycle a lot. PET bottles, glass bottles, tin cans, milk cartons, Styrofoam trays, and separate burnables and non-burnables. It is not optional, they won't pick it up otherwise.
We now abide by this 7 page pdf memo for all of our garbage needs. http://www.city.setagaya.tokyo.jp/english/gomi/gomi.pdf

Here's what I (Be.) do with my milk cartons. First, I buy the milk; I try not to pay more than the equivalent of $2  per liter, but sometimes I do have to pay more. So I figure about $6-$8 a gallon. Next, I bring it home on my bike and we drink it-- My 1.5 year old needs 3 eight oz. glasses a day! That's a lot of milk to carry home, but don't worry, I have my bike with its built in basket.

After we're finished I rinse it.

Then open it and allow it to dry.

Then I cut it so that it lays flat like this. And we take it back to the grocery store so that they can recycle it. It's a full circle, only I don't get my 5 cent deposit back.

Then we take it back to the store for recycling. 

I think my friend Sam would be proud!