River

Went to the river.

The dog swam.

And made funny faces.

Eddy and Pumkins and Apples

Music stuffs.

I had no idea how it worked until today! As they say here, me kara uroko (目から鱗) or it's like having the scales fall from your eyes.

Okay, last week I got a mail on my cell phone that Iron Maiden was coming to Japan. It was set. I was like, cool. I checked their homepage. Nothing there for Japan. Hmm. Then in a flurry of mails back and forth I finally figured it out. Or more correctly, was told in a round about way.

The promoter has booked three dates: October 25th in Tokyo (Budokan), 26th in Hiroshima, and the 30th in Osaka. That's it, three dates in the middle of the friggin week! Oh, I bitched and I moaned but then my friend told me not to worry. What they do is see if these sell and how fast. If they can sell out a show in the middle of the week in Tokyo (where obviously people from far away can't easily come) then they KNOW they could also sell couple of weekend dates for all the distant folk like me. But we don't KNOW if they'll sell all those tickets or not. So either buy the Wednesday ticket and take a day off work or pray they announce more dates before long.
I'm thinking, it's Iron Maiden. It's Japan, full of Japanese who LOVE heavy metal right? They are most assuredly selling out those three dates. Well, I'm banking on it.

Also. Smashing Pumpkins is back together and recording!! (breathe..breathe...breathe...)

And finally this coming Tuesday is Coldplay. Yep, take the kid out of school early and head on up to Tokyo. My husband will already be there for a meeting earlier that day so if I don't get horribly lost then we'll meet up with him and get to see the show. I'm so excited. I'm sorry but much more excited than I was for Whitesnake last month. Sorry Tommy!

It's beginning to thunder and lightening...turning off the 'puter. No pics. Sniff.

A Shock and then a Shock

Yesterday was sankanbi at J's school, a kind of open house for the mothers. So I went and stood for an hour in the back of the class sweating like a half dozen pigs (yes, no airconditioners in Japanese schools). Japanese women do not sweat, btw. They don't. Oh, they complain of the heat but they look radiant! Me? The hair that is not glued to my forehead is stringy and frizzy from the humidity. My shirt is soaked through and all my friends are trying not to stand too close to me.

Yes, angles, and parallelagrams (which you notice I can't even spell in English) and oh look, J forgot his triangles (sigh). After the class us mothers have to go clean the toilets. Oh yea. The kids' toilets. Most of the mothers deftly duck out and attend to the window duty. Which is fine. I'm the PTA mom this year so I figure it is my cross to bear. I bear it well. Then we sit in the heat at our child's desk and listen to the teacher talk for another hour.

I couldn't help noticing all the papers hanging out of J's desk, funny...what is that bag tied to the side also stuffed with junk? Quietly, carefully I pick through it all while feigning interest in the teacher's lecture on summer vacation homework. I swear I am inches away from crying. I can't actually clean anything because lo and behold the drawers are actually stuck! Stuck from the crap he has crammed in there. Teacher finishes and says they have a video of camp and we'll view that down the hall. I quickly pry open the drawers and am in shock, oh those tears are close now. All the other mothers are nodding at me with big sad eyes...poor Terrie. I don't think I just begin pulling out everything that is not a school book and filling bags. The mothers discreetly start handing me bags. I fill three and my giant purse. I sniff as I shuffle off down the hall to watch the video.

When I get home I clean off the kitchen table and unload everything. Then I cry! There are notes from school, old tests, used milk cartons (for experiments I'm told later), pieces of metal and wood (for building things I hear), library books due last year, a gazillion erasers and pencils and ta dah! the triangles that he couldn't find for his lesson.

All in all I didn't blow up too bad. I think J was more frightened I would. Maybe he felt for my embarrassment. At least I hope so. Then...just when I'm convinced... my gosh this child is going to turn into one of those garbage people who can't throw anything away...what am I to do!? I come across a book he was given that day. It seems he won an award for a science project he did last summer. He was like one out of ten in the entire prefecture to get the award and his name on the back of these study books all the children get for summer.

The experiment awarded was an ant farm but raised in that blue gel stuff. It was interesting and fun and we made lots of neat observations like how they buried all their dead in one tunnel and how when things got really busy and nervous there were two big ants that would guard this little baby ant. In the end we committed what is in effect ant genocide. The gel began to break down and it just got too sticky. Then there was the outbreak of the pink mould. It was quite a horror show after we had really gotten to know and love the little guys. This year will not involve living things I'm sure. Here's the certificate.

So...yea, yesterday was quite a day.

Izakaya 居酒屋

One of my favorite institutions in Japan is the izakaya. It's kinda a bar, it's kinda a family restaraunt. Which means, it's a bar you can take your family too. You usually remove your shoes and sit on a tatami mat at a low table. The lighting is dark and the mood is lively.

For the past few months Saturday night has been our izakaya night. For awhile there we went to all the fancy ones. Yea, those were great and crowded and they served all sorts of virgin cocktails for the kids but now that I want to go back to the states this winter we are on a real budget (more or less...I mean it still would be cheaper to eat in. I consider our eat outs a morale booster, a sort of 'we made it through that week, let's celebrate!'



When the beer first came out it was entirely frosted over. Unfortunately, the first few pictures didn't come out so it just looks like a normal beer.

Cheese spring rolls and fried octopus in radish and ponzu sauce. Yum!

Here is Julyan holding a crab claw. He brought that thing home and left it on the kitchen table. The cats had themselves a little party last night. Pieces of crab claw...everywhere!