Trip to Otaru to see the sea

We had a great little trip on Monday about 30 minutes away to the "small seaside" town of Otaru on the Japan sea. It was less small town and more "good-sized city," but the waterfront was beautiful and we understood why all the guidebooks called it charming. We walked along a brick path that parallels the canal through town, and admired the old warehouses that have been converted into glass studios and restaurants.

The glass blowing is actually linked to the town's fishing industry, as apparently they used to make glass bouys there... and when the fishing industry declined, they decided to make art instead.

Jack took the pictures below of the(very expensive) glass at the train station (you can see the reflection of his blue coat in the one of the Christmas tree), and you can also see my new (men's?) shoes that felt great on the trip. What do you think? Don't they look like men's shoes (granted, VERY cool, hipster big-city men's shoes...).


At the very end, I have added some pictures of Katie and Livie dancing (Liv in green leotard).

We don't have much else planned this week besides school and work -- the kids are getting excited for the big show on Sunday. Our friend Shinya (the former UofL student who is from Sapporo and had dinner at our house soon after we arrived) will come down this weekend and see the show! Now that's a good friend...

At least it goes both ways...

We had Tomoko, Taiki (Jack's classmate), and Keita (Tomoko's 3yo son) for brunch today. Tomoko is the friend who worked in Banff and knows quite a bit of English. She also loves maple syrup (she said she arrived back from her year in Canada weighing quite a bit more than when she left because of maple syrup -- so much so that her mom didn't recognize her at the airport). So we had French toast, eggs and asparagus, bacon, and fruit salad. Tomoko loved it. Taiki liked the French toast. And Keita would not eat a bite.

Keita finally agreed to a persimmon (the one fruit I didn't put in the fruit salad) and I was more than happy to prepare something extra for him.

At least other kids don't like "new" food. Whew.

In other news -- I have been meaning to answer questions that friends of Jack, Kate and Livie have asked. I thought others (kids or adults) might be interested in the answers, too.

* How do you make friends when you don't speak the same language? Luckily, playing is a kind of universal language, and so almost all of it can be done without speaking. Whether it's throwing a ball around, building with Lego, running around outside, or coloring, it seems all three kids have been able to communicate without speaking much, and all three have made good friends.

We have made sure that Jack watches Pokemon each Thursday night at 7 p.m., as all of the kids in his class watch it and try to talk to him in English about it. All three also know enough words to be able to say thank you, sorry, hello, good morning, and goodbye (and a few others each weeks) in Japanese. But it's amazing to see how easily you can be friends without talking.

* Why is everyone wearing the same bathrobe in some of those pictures? What are traditional Japanese baths? You can read more about onsen (public bathing facilities and inns around hot springs) and yukata (casual kimono worn at the onsen) here and here. We went to onsen at Lake Toya and at Jozankei. These trips, and the baths and swimming pools, have been one of the things we have enjoyed most during our time in Japan.

After you arrive at these big hotels, you find in your room yukata and flip flops for you to wear to the baths. They even had little ones for the kids. If you are just going swimming (and to the waterslide), you wear a swimsuit under your yukata and in the pools. But if you are going to sit in the hot tubs and warm waters, you do not wear a suit at all. Men and older boys go to one side, and woman, older girls, and younger boys and girls go to another.

First you scrub clean, and then you sit in the tubs. Some of them are REALLY hot, some are REALLY cold, some have bamboo or rocks on the floor, some have waves or jets... it's pretty great. After the first few seconds, it doesn't seem odd to be naked at all. Everyone else is, and no else seems to notice, so quickly, we stopped caring, too (in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you Jack, Katie and Livie had NO issues walking around naked).

* Do they have Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas or New Year's? Japanese holidays are pretty different from the ones we celebrate in Canada and the U.S. The biggest holiday of the year is New Year's. People eat special food, send postcards, and give money to children. Many visit a Shinto shrine (like the one we went to for the 7-5-3 festival) after midnight on Jan. 1 or sometime during the day.

There have been a lot of fall holidays but not the ones we are used to celebrating. There has been "Respect for the Aged" day and Autumnal Equinox in September, Health and Sports Day in October, Culture Day and Labor Thanksgiving Day (an occasion for praising labor, celebrating production and giving one another thanks. Prior to the establishment of this holiday, November 23rd was celebrated as an imperial harvest festival called Niiname-sai) in November, and the Emperor's birthday on December 23 (the day we leave).

But because of so much interaction between Japan and the west, there were decorations for Halloween, and apparently there will be Christmas decorations as well.

That's it for now -- time to get these kids to bed. We are hoping to make a little day trip tomorrow to a fishing village. The weather is supposed to turn snowy later in the week, so it might be our last outdoor trip for a while.

Shichi-Go-San (7-5-3) festival

We had a great day with Yukie (the HGU prof who had us for sushi at her house and took us to Mt Moiwa soon after we arrived) today. It is Nov. 15 here, which is the day that Shichi-Go-San (7-5-3) festivals are held at Shinto shrines all around Japan.

According to this website, this is one of the most important festivals for Japanese children and one of three major celebrations in their life. Girls of age three and seven and boys of age five (though in some families three year old boys also) are celebrated on Shichi-go-san.

The website explains that on Shichi-go-san the children dress up in special clothes, including kimono for girls and the pants that samurais wear for boys. They often have professional photographs taken in the morning and then their families take them to a Shinto shrine to give thanks for their health and pray for their continued good health, growth and a happy future free of sickness and misfortune.

The Shinto priest at the shrine performs a purification ceremony and then children are given shitose-ame (thousand year candy) that is colored red and white (the colors of luck and celebration), in long bags decorated with turtles and cranes. These are all symbols of longevity in Japan.

Well, we had three year old girls (and a six year old boy who remembered being five). And while we didn't rent the elaborate kimono, we did decide to go to the biggest Shinto shrine in Hokkaido to watch other Japanese families take part in this ceremony.

So we arrived and purified our hands and mouth, and then went into the shrine. We gave thanks for our health and prayed for continued good health, growth and a happy future for our own little ones. We took pictures of kids in kimono (asking some for permission, and taking others from a respectful distance) and found our own kids the target of photographers again as well (it is starting to drive them crazy, truth be told). And we marvelled at the mild and long fall (unusual, Yukie said) and the vivid colors of the leaves and bushes.

Yukie bought the kids some thousand year candy, which they loved, and I got them some cotton candy as well (which they loved too) and little Chinese horoscope charms (Jack is a horse and Katie and Livie are roosters) as a memento of the day. We meandered back through the park, the kids eating peanut butter sandwiches and running, and Livie taking a hard fall that we didn't fully appreciate until the blood started seeping through her tights (oops! And I have to admit that we were both relieved it wasn't Katie...)



We ended up at a sushi shop, where we met Yukie's husband and ordered lunch to go. The shop and chef are quite famous and award-winning, we learned. Apparently there is the take-out section, where we were, the ordinary restaurant, where Yukie has been once, and the "fancy" restaurant, where sitting down costs you $200!

We then went back to the Ueno's home for lunch. The kids did a miserable job eating the delicious sushi (Yukie had gotten them a cooked, kid-friendly version with egg) and didn't even really try the soup Yukie made, which is always a little frustrating. But we felt less worried when later Kai, Yukie's now 18-year-old daughter, told us that when she and her mom spent a semester in Lethbridge (I think she was in 2nd or 3rd grade), she insisted on ONLY Japanese food the whole time she was there.

We were wiped out when we got home -- and very happy with the great day. We had tacos for dinner (probably NOT the traditional, post-Shichi-Go-San festival fare), but the kids devoured their dinner and now are happily watching new WordGirl episodes on Youtube. What a weird and wonderful life we are leading.

When the shoe doesn't fit...

One of the saddest, hardest, more difficult parts of being in Japan for me is being surrounded by THE most beautiful shoes I have ever seen and not being able to wear any of them. Size nines (25.5 in Japan) are almost non-existent. For a while, I thought you simply couldn't find them in the entire country (as I had dragged the kids through countless shoe sections looking but never asking, because, well, that would involve talking), but then John asked for me one day and it turns out in every department store, hidden off in a corner far away from the beautiful shoes, they have a section marked "L", for size 25 and 25.5.

These are utterly sensible shoes (a polite way of saying ugly shoes) and the selection is, to be blunt, pathetic. Every time I looked at the beautiful shoes on the feet of every woman on the subway, at the kids' school, at the grocery store, I felt more and more like Cinderella's ugly stepsisters trying to cram my feet into the petite glass slipper. The only fact that has kept me from becoming truly desperate is that all of these shoes (hideous or gorgeous) start at about $160. So even if I wore a more dainty 23, it's not like I would be buying many anyway.

But then... this week the kids had two extra costume-fitting, performance practice days for the big show on Nov. 23, and so in addition to FINALLY getting some work done, John and I had a chance to do some shopping. We went to a place called POLE TOWN (a Pole in Pole Town!) on the way to a store we had heard about that carries large sized shoes... and (of course), it has closed down. Disappointed but undaunted, we set off for Daimaru, the fancy department store where Jack had, um, left his mark, as we had read in an English language newsletter that they were having a huge sale on shoes and handbags.

We arrived to the 7th floor to find ALL of the beautiful shoes, the $160-$250 shoes, on sale for $31.50! Hundreds of shoes, probably last season's styles but who cares! There *had* to be a pair here, John and I agreed. Briefly distracted by the handbags (either $31.50 or $52.50!), John pulled me over to the "L" section. Well, that might be giving it too much credit... I should say the "L" shelves. Yes, of the hundreds (or thousands) of beautiful shoes, less than two dozen were size 25 or 25.5. And most were very, very ugly.

I tried some on. I felt sensible. These are not what Japanese shoes look like. Where is the interesting detail, the lovely flair and fine lines and funky heels? Apparently, those things stop at 24.5. But then from the bottom shelf, John pulled out a pair of slip on flats... kind of like loafers. They have great details, nice lacing/ties on the side, and they were comfortable, and they were on sale -- and upon examining them further when we brought them home, I am pretty sure they are men's shoes! But I got them anyway, and love my Japanese (men's) shoes, and not surprisingly, they look great with my Japanese boyfriend jeans!

And here are a few other random photos of the week.








Katie falling asleep after a bath while watching a soccer match with John.







The girls getting their costumes on. You can see in the top of the picture to tops for the princesses and some spacesuits. Katie has on her pink skirt, and Livie is getting dressed, still wearing her brown pants.










Liv washing her hands and spitting before starting the school day.












Two boys greeting Katie and walking with her to the bathroom.












All of us walking to school (John taking the photo on the go.)


















Out for Mexican food, which, of course, the kids love.

Jack&kate&livie and the chocolate factory

It started out as a grumpy day. John had a lot of work to do. It was cold and wet. We all had spent too much time in doors. So as soon as John got his lecture submitted, we headed off to the end of the line in search of the chocolate factory we had heard good things about (who doesn't hear good things about chocolate factories!).

We almost didn't make it. There were potty incidents (needing them when they weren't around) and crowded train incidents and trouble finding the right coat incidents. But we plodded on, and the experience served as proof that it is ALWAYS better to get out of the house, and sometimes downright wonderful.

The Ishiya Chocolate Factory is famous for its Shiroi Koibito or "White Beloved Ones", two crispy cookies and white chocolate in between. It comes from the founder's description of snowflakes as "our white beloved ones" and apparently, among Japanese, these little cookies are THE thing to bring back when you have visited Hokkaido.

But going there is a little bit like walking into a world where Willy Wonka met the Lilliputians from Gulliver's Travels and they all decided to buy a bunch of toys on ebay and make chocolate while they were at it.

Let me explain. As soon as we walked in, they gave us each a Shiroi Koibito and these cookies are, indeed, delicious. But the tour of the factory was more than seeing the assembly lines chugging out sweets, although we did get to watch that. We also got to see a history of chocolate where a hologram of two little Japanese kids walked along a miniature display explaining the evolution of chocolate (take that, CNN... this place had its holograms in place LONG before you even tried to beam anyone in.)

And we also were exposed to some of the most unusual collections (rooms full of toys from the 1950s to the 1990s; hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of tea cups and saucers; interesting chocolate packaging; an odd assortment of memorabelia from the U.S. including JFK pins and a blanket of the Beatles tour; a small museum dedicated to the country of Columbia -- we thought of you Andrea and Diana; and more) housed in wildly opinionated architecture (here's the Tudor section and right down the hall you can see the Italian renaissance!)

On the third floor, we stopped in the chocolate cafe for fondue, chocolate milk in beautiful little tea cups with lids, and (for me and John), a cup of hot chocolate with Bailey's.

While we were there, the clock struck three and we watched (in awe, I must admit), as the clock tower out the window came to life and music and figures circled round and round while bubbles filled the air.

Nearby was a room filled with tiny (and EXPENSIVE) sugar creations -- babies, brides, flowers of all shapes and kinds -- that were marvelous to look at but too expensive to indulge in. I have some of them (and lots from the visit) at our Shutterfly site: jackkateliv.shutterfly.com (password: kozleski).

From there, we finished our tour and ended up by visiting the gift shop (where we sat with American presidents and the Mona Lisa and stocked up on cookies to take home).



With our White Beloved Ones in hand, we headed out to a magical world where the kids could have stayed all day... the outdoor space was filled with tiny houses, completely furnished and accessible to anyone who could squeeze in them.

They had bungalows and a lean-to and a soddie with a thatched roof, castles and lofts and even three tree houses (that were sadly not open to kids).

Illustrating yet again the humor of whoever it is who built this place, a child Jack's size could pop his head through a roof only to have a giant-sized Wack-a-mole nearly "wack" the child's head with a mallet!

It's hard to say what the kids liked more -- the perfectly-sized houses or the delicious chocolate milk they had just finished. The combination left them in a bit of a daze... and they didn't want to go (understandably!).

But we herded them out when, for some reason, other visitors started taking pictures of OUR kids in the little houses. At first it was sweet, and then kind of creepy, so we said our goodbyes and promised the kids we'd come back again. It's an easy promise to make -- we had as much fun as they did.

And the moral of the story -- if you're wondering if it's worth getting out of your house, even on cold, wintry days, it is. You might not experience quite the extreme range of strange that we did, but the world outside is almost always more interesting.

Babies, bento and the end of the season

It's been a busy week, but happily routine. The kids have been in great moods since the Halloween party, even as all three fought a cold this week (with Jack's getting the most serious but thankfully getting better now). Katie -- our Katie -- went to school all by herself Thursday when Liv and Jack stayed home and was SO fine. Yay Katie! The school is very busy getting ready for the BIG performance on Nov. 23 -- the costumes are incredibly elaborate and requiring extra school days for the kids to be fitted and practice. So all three went on Friday, and I took food to Hiromi and baby Fuuka, who got home from the hospital Thursday night.

Fuuka is *so* tiny, the size of Livie after she was born, but as always I had forgotten how small a new baby is. I was amazed at how familiar the conversation was, though. I asked how Himori was and if she is feeling OK... she said she felt great "just two pushes and whoosh, baby!" She is worried about Ayumu, who likes to hold Fuuka but doesn't understand about the wobbly head, and she is tired as the baby has her days and nights mixed up. I have had the same conversation with friends in the U.S. and Canada over the years, all with the awe and excitement and fatigue that I heard in Himori's voice. Some things translate in any language.

Some things don't though. I had tried to make a carrot ginger soup and brought a bunch of cut up fresh fruit for the family, too, remembering how well we were treated after the births of our kids... but I didn't have all the spices I usually use for the soup, or the blender to make it smooth. So, when I gave it to Hiromi, I apologized that it was not as good as I would have liked it to be (closer to mashed up baby food than delicious, flavor-filled soup). But... as John explained earlier to me... when you give food to someone in Japan, you apologize for how terrible it is. When Hiromi brought us soup one of the first weeks here, she said she was a bad cook and was so sorry to be giving us this pathetic soup. It was, of course, delicious. So when I gave this to her, I felt like I had to say "really, really, this is BAD soup! I am giving you disgusting, boring, flavorless soup! It won't kill you, and I remember being so hungry after the birth of my kids so I figure it's better than nothing, but it is just really not very good." She didn't believe me, but I have to imagine them around the table that night, tasting the soup and thinking "wow, it really IS bad soup!"

Also on Friday, I had to make bento boxes for the kids to take to their costume fitting/practice at school (no hot lunch on Friday). I LOVE these little lunch boxes... they are usually filled with tiny bits of fish, rice balls, veggies, and fruit, and fit together so cleverly (you can see Jack's chopsticks in the lid of his black box).

Jack, Kate and Liv asked for macaroni and cheese in their bento boxes, though. I figured, why not? So you can see in these photos the mac-and-cheese (box number 10 -- we have 14 left for the last 6.5 weeks!), carrots, and the same fruit salad I took to Hiromi. The kids loved it, and loved being able to show their classmates the kind of lunch THEY love best.

One of the things I had wanted to put in the fruit salad but sadly couldn't was what we have been calling "apple-pears" or Asian pears. We have had them in the U.S. and Canada before and have always liked them -- the texture of an apple and the flavor of a pear. But none of the ones we had in North America tasted as delicious as the (bushels? dozens!) we have had here. But they must be coming to the end of the season... first, I noticed I couldn't buy them in a four-pack, then, I couldn't buy them in a two-pack, and now, I can't even buy them one at a time.

We have noticed that the stores seem to stick to seasons far more than stores in Canada and the U.S. do. So when a fruit is out of season, it's gone! The delicious little apples we had when we first got here gave way to a bigger, different kind of apple, and now we have moved onto a third kind as well. We can still get some kinds of pears and apples, persimmons, and satsumas... but no grapes or apple-pears, and of course, no strawberries or other berries. One of the books I brought with me and finished reading is called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, which is all about the food we eat and where it comes from and how we get it. It has made me appreciate the little apples and apple-pears even more, I think -- knowing we were eating them when they were in season, locally grown -- and although we miss them, we are discovering the deliciousness of persimmons (which must be a November fruit) and other foods whose time is now.

It figures

We went out to Sapporo Factory last night (a HUGE mall with a beautiful Christmas tree) in search of dinner out. We are always on the lookout for good Indian food for ourselves (eating it whenever we get to Calgary or getting excited at talk of a curry shop opening in Lethbridge) and heard there was an Indian restaurant at the mall. We figured the kids could eat rice or something back at home as we have largely given up on them embracing new foods (or, as Katie says, food that is "different and kind of strange"). Yup, a totally selfish dinner out for the grownups.

After finding and being warmly welcomed at Taj Mahal, we settled in. The kids loved the decor, especially our glass table with spice seeds below and the elephants and multi-armed gods and goddesses. We ordered and got "kids plates" for the kids and a variety of curries for ourselves. John's soup arrived... and Katie and Livie LOVED it. The meals arrived, and Katie and Livie LOVED it. Jack loved the nan bread! And tried the chicken curry! Without complaint! They were the happiest kids out at a restaurant we've seen since we got here!

So -- did we go to the wrong country?