Walking Toby in the park this morning between 6:20 and 6:30, we met...
1) First, as we left the house, a shock for Toby! Our neighborhood cat, a white cat with a red collar, was hiding under our car. Toby recoiled in fear and disgust! Brother Jiji has named the cat "Somersault" for some reason, so we all call it that in our family. p.s. now he insists that the cat's name be spelled "Summersalt".
2) In the park, the unfriendly man with his amazing and cute frisbee-catching dogs! Two active border collies, both black with white paws and chests.
3) The friendly older lady gathering greens for her rabbit (I used to wonder if she was gathering greens for her own table...)
4) Another friendly old lady with her old dog, Choro. Choro is a raggedy-looking, fairly big, 15-year-old white dog, maybe an Ainu-ken (Hokkaido-ken)? Choro has a very large lump on one side of her neck. Kind of antisocial (Choro, I mean), but at least she is finally used to us now. The lady on the other hand is super friendly!
5) An old man, Choro's friend, who often walks past the park on the sidewalk along the road. This man always carries dog snacks (it would seem), so old Choro perked up when he passed by this morning, and trotted quickly across the park and out to the sidewalk to see her best friend. Her elderly owner followed slowly behind (Choro is usually off her leash).
6) The sporty-looking professor who lives across from the park, brushing his dog Bau. Bau is a Corgi and is an outside dog (lives in a doghouse) - he used to get alarmed when we walked by his house, and would bark at us. For a year or more he has not barked, and recently we met Bau up close for the first time. He seemed so happy to see us, and rolled onto his back! This morning we met him for the 4th or 5th time since then. Toby completely ignores Bau, and tries to stay away, because Toby is only interested in dogs he doesn't know well. Toby *loves* to meet dogs he doesn't know, but after 2-3 meetings he has no use for them...
7) A girl in Jiji's 5th grade class, getting ready to jog with her father. She is a tall girl, probably just 1-2 cm less than Jiji. Also her kindergarten-aged brother was hanging around with her. They also live across from the park.
All this was just during the 10 minutes we were out (before 6:30 a.m.), in a small park near us!
-- Not seen today, but often seen in this time bracket....
- Mei the police dog. Very big all-black German Shepherd (cross?), looks like a bear or a black wolf. Scary-looking, but very well-behaved, and has a cute name! She is often found training in the park. Toby used to be terrified of her, but has improved recently.
- Boys of various ages practicing basketball, jogging, or pretending to practice soccer. Usually in pairs or singly. The soccer boy is a grade-school kid who is often found at this time with a soccer ball and some mini-cone things, but he just seems to stand around...
Monday, June 14, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Interesting questions
Yesterday I spoke with some students in a special education class. I did my usual self-introduction spiel, with pictures of my family and hometown. Then the floor was opened for questions from the students. Usually when this happens in a regular class, there will be either silence, or attempts by friendly students to ask very standard questions, or a class clown or very good student asking a couple of standard or sometimes humorous questions - such as, "What music do you like?" etc..
The special education students were allowed to ask their questions in Japanese, and I was very surprised by the large number of students who immediately raised their hands. The questions were very different from those in a regular class, too... just off the top of my head, some of the questions I was asked were (here translated into English):
* "How did you feel when Michael Jackson died in America?"
* "Were any of your family members injured in the terrorist attack on America?"
* "Do you know the Gundam character named ---------?"
* "Did you hear about the murder of the ALT L------ H----- in Tokyo?"
* "Did you buy Michael Jackson's Thriller?"
* "Do you think President Obama is a good person?"
* "What was the first tourist area you visited in Japan?"
* "What place do you like most in your home state in America?"
* "Power Rangers are also popular in America. Did you like them when you lived in America?"
The special education students were allowed to ask their questions in Japanese, and I was very surprised by the large number of students who immediately raised their hands. The questions were very different from those in a regular class, too... just off the top of my head, some of the questions I was asked were (here translated into English):
* "How did you feel when Michael Jackson died in America?"
* "Were any of your family members injured in the terrorist attack on America?"
* "Do you know the Gundam character named ---------?"
* "Did you hear about the murder of the ALT L------ H----- in Tokyo?"
* "Did you buy Michael Jackson's Thriller?"
* "Do you think President Obama is a good person?"
* "What was the first tourist area you visited in Japan?"
* "What place do you like most in your home state in America?"
* "Power Rangers are also popular in America. Did you like them when you lived in America?"
Friday, March 26, 2010
Health Topic: Urticaria Pigmentosa
Don't know why, but I like health topics :)
I've been meaning to write about this one for a while. It may not really be of interest to any casual readers, but could be useful for anyone who visits when googling this term, etc.!
The words "urticaria pigmentosa" literally mean "pigmented hives". However, this skin condition is not hives, but one of the several forms that mastocytosis can take. Mastocytosis is the name for problems involving abnormal clumping of mast cells in the body -- they are the cells that produce histamine, a chemical that is produced by the body during an allergic reaction. As far as I know, though, mastocytosis does not cause allergies -- however if a child has both allergies and mastocytosis, then they will have extra problems. Also, mastocytosis can react to a wide variety of 
triggers, and can cause problems not normally associated with allergies.
triggers, and can cause problems not normally associated with allergies.
My younger son (now age 10) - here called "Jiji", has/had a mild case of this problem. It is pretty rare, enough that many doctors have not heard of it (except for dermatologists, of course). It may effect somewhere between 1 to 6 /10,000 people (according to the internet - a few sites estimate 1/10,000, and http://www.mastokids.org/ has a video which estimates there are less than 200,000 people with it in the U.S., which would be less than 6.7 people/10,000).
Urticaria Pigmentosa (I'll abbreviate it as UP) is the form of mastocytosis where the mast cells form little clumps here and there in the skin, and for some reason these clumps draw in melanin, leading to the formation of brown spots which are semi-permanent (they take several years to fade, after the problem has subsided). UP is often found in children, and has a good chance of going away by adolescence.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Love, love HONDA!
Our (beloved) Honda Odyssey had an oil leak, and with new winter tires needed and "shaken" (expensive car check) coming up soon, we decided to find a new car...
My husband looked on Yahoo and found a used car at an official Honda Used Car Dealer, very close to us. We went in and decided on it immediately (that was in late Nov.).
This past Saturday, we went in to pick it up, and say goodbye to our old one. :(
The new one is 10 years old and has about 83,000 km on it, but that is a lot fewer km than our other one had when we bought it. And the dealership fixed it up - it's SO clean and beautiful inside, and they did various work on it, that they say is worth up to about $2,000. We spent less than $4,000 on it anyway, so we thought this was pretty nice of them! It won't need a "shaken" until March of 2011, and it came with winter tires that are still useable for one winter.
Also, they quickly and easily arranged a car loan for us, which is a much better deal than our credit card, and when our insurance decided to get a bit difficult about the age of the car, they easily arranged insurance for us, too! This was all done so naturally and nicely, without any ho-humming or even the slightest weirdness about us being an all-gaijin (foreigner) family.
We came away feeling like we are really valued customers, even though we are just these random people that walked in and took a cheap older car with an accident history off their hands. They have already sent us a postcard with a photo of the whole dealership staff smiling and making peace signs, and also an elegant thank you card with a hand-written letter of thanks. And the car comes with a one-year warranty!
The only slight problem in all of this is that it will be very difficult now to avoid letting them do our "shaken" in Mar. 2011, even though it will probably be about $500 more than our local Idemitsu gas station, with whom we have built up a nice relationship over the last 1.5 years.
Anyway, we really liked doing business with Honda and I am so impressed with how seriously their company takes things like customer service & the reputation of their products. And they have a great attitude towards international communication, too (fitting for a huge international corporation). Yay HONDA!! (p.s. I come from a family of Honda-lovers -- my dad & his brother, both in the U.S., have been driving Hondas exclusively for more than 20 years!)
My husband looked on Yahoo and found a used car at an official Honda Used Car Dealer, very close to us. We went in and decided on it immediately (that was in late Nov.).
This past Saturday, we went in to pick it up, and say goodbye to our old one. :(
The new one is 10 years old and has about 83,000 km on it, but that is a lot fewer km than our other one had when we bought it. And the dealership fixed it up - it's SO clean and beautiful inside, and they did various work on it, that they say is worth up to about $2,000. We spent less than $4,000 on it anyway, so we thought this was pretty nice of them! It won't need a "shaken" until March of 2011, and it came with winter tires that are still useable for one winter.
Also, they quickly and easily arranged a car loan for us, which is a much better deal than our credit card, and when our insurance decided to get a bit difficult about the age of the car, they easily arranged insurance for us, too! This was all done so naturally and nicely, without any ho-humming or even the slightest weirdness about us being an all-gaijin (foreigner) family.
We came away feeling like we are really valued customers, even though we are just these random people that walked in and took a cheap older car with an accident history off their hands. They have already sent us a postcard with a photo of the whole dealership staff smiling and making peace signs, and also an elegant thank you card with a hand-written letter of thanks. And the car comes with a one-year warranty!
The only slight problem in all of this is that it will be very difficult now to avoid letting them do our "shaken" in Mar. 2011, even though it will probably be about $500 more than our local Idemitsu gas station, with whom we have built up a nice relationship over the last 1.5 years.
Anyway, we really liked doing business with Honda and I am so impressed with how seriously their company takes things like customer service & the reputation of their products. And they have a great attitude towards international communication, too (fitting for a huge international corporation). Yay HONDA!! (p.s. I come from a family of Honda-lovers -- my dad & his brother, both in the U.S., have been driving Hondas exclusively for more than 20 years!)
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Health Topic: H1N1 (Swine) flu
I think our city was one of the first ones in Japan to have a proper outbreak of swine flu. The school had to be closed for 3 days in mid-September, but the teachers still went to work as normal. It was also one of the first schools in the city to be hit. We had a kind of seige atmosphere, with just teachers working in the teachers' room, all of us wondering if we had already contracted swine flu. In the end, only one teacher caught it. The kids returned in due time, in good health and spirits.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Drawings
Okay, here are a couple more of the things from Jiji's jiyuuchou:
I couldn't scan Acorn Master in the end, but here are 3 more that did come out. This one is Ten-face.
Autumn Master.
Part of a random color drawing with various characters like SpeedDragon, DrD and UltraDragon.
More Jiji quotes
We have had a nice summer - with some new "pets", as always seems to happen. We kept a stag beetle for a couple of months, and just released it yesterday. The main reason I wanted to release it is that we have about 30 marine hermit crabs (from the size of a walnut to the size of a small pea), that Jiji and Dio gathered on our camping trip to the Shakotan Peninsula a week ago. They are a lot of work, as I have been trying to make a nice, clean environment for them. So King, the beetle, has been released back into the wild.
Jiji continues to give big brother Dio a run for his money, in the memory department. The other day, cool big brother (now a full-fledged teenager with long, straight-permed hair!) was asked to write "cereal" on the shopping list. He wrote - "cerial - the Greek name for the goddess Demeter" (something they are learning at school). Dad saw the misspelling and called to him to fix it. He erased "cerial", forgot what he had written the first time, got mixed up, and wrote "cerial" again. Dad called Jiji - "Jiji, spell cereal!". "C-E-R-E-A-L - what, Dio, you can't spell cereal?? What is this you wrote here, the Greek word for Demeter?" Dio - "Oh, so I couldn't spell cereal. I can spell lots of words!! How about this - can you spell Aphrodite?????" Jiji - "A...P..H..R..O..D.." (Dio is looking really worried now, and Mom and Dad are looking back and forth laughingly) "Y..T..E?" (Dio looks so relieved, and Mom and Dad are saying, "Ouch, he almost showed you!! Don't underestimate him next time!!" ) Jiji - "Well, I'm only 10 and I go to Japanese school, and I'm not even learning about that in school. Shkamo [and besides], what you wrote [about Demeter] was jiman [bragging] and a waste of space." I had to laugh at that... "jiman and a waste of space." :)
Another funny one recently -
Jiji - "Can I go on the com?" (computer)
Dad - "Kiss my ass!"
Jiji - "... I'll take that as a yes!"
Jiji's summer project (jiyuukenkyu) was a super easy project - his uncle (my husband's big brother) who visited us for 2 weeks had found a piece of driftwood shaped like the head and neck of a swan, so all Jiji did was paint it in white, black and yellow. The kids in his class liked it and started saying, "Aflack!" (with a quacking voice).
But Dio has had a really nice summer as far as projects. His school has no jiyuukenkyu, but he and a neighbor boy/classmate have been visiting our 81-year-old next-door neighbor every Weds. all summer, and are still continuing it now that school has started. He is teaching them how to play "Go", and they really like it!! He has also started trying to teach them various things about life and his own life, etc. (which includes almost having to fight in WWII, but the war ended when he was about 17 and just about to join) . He is a really nice man, and they enjoy their Go lessons. Then another neighbor, a lady about 50 years old who is into weaving, had us in her house briefly and Dio was looking with interest at her loom. So she invited just him over one morning for more than 2 hrs., and he wove a wall-hanging for our house! When I came home it was hanging on the wall in the genkan. She said his "souzou" was "juunan" (I think that was it - anyway his imagination is flexible) and he had a lot of ideas so it was fun teaching him. So, he has been having a lot of valuable experiences with our neighbors!
One more thing (since I know I will not be bothered to post for another month or more) - I want to test out my new scanner, to bring you the Acorn Master - a weird drawing by Jiji in his jiyuu-chou. The indispensible "free-drawing notebook", that they are allowed to have in school (for rainy days, I guess), and that he cannot do without. Just a minute while I attempt to work my new scanner...
Hmmm - this is taking way longer than I'd hoped, and I have to go and do some dishes etc. So instead of the Acorn Master, here are two little characters - a fruit guy and a guy with weird eyes.
Hope this is not all too much "jiman and a waste of space"!!!
Jiji continues to give big brother Dio a run for his money, in the memory department. The other day, cool big brother (now a full-fledged teenager with long, straight-permed hair!) was asked to write "cereal" on the shopping list. He wrote - "cerial - the Greek name for the goddess Demeter" (something they are learning at school). Dad saw the misspelling and called to him to fix it. He erased "cerial", forgot what he had written the first time, got mixed up, and wrote "cerial" again. Dad called Jiji - "Jiji, spell cereal!". "C-E-R-E-A-L - what, Dio, you can't spell cereal?? What is this you wrote here, the Greek word for Demeter?" Dio - "Oh, so I couldn't spell cereal. I can spell lots of words!! How about this - can you spell Aphrodite?????" Jiji - "A...P..H..R..O..D.." (Dio is looking really worried now, and Mom and Dad are looking back and forth laughingly) "Y..T..E?" (Dio looks so relieved, and Mom and Dad are saying, "Ouch, he almost showed you!! Don't underestimate him next time!!" ) Jiji - "Well, I'm only 10 and I go to Japanese school, and I'm not even learning about that in school. Shkamo [and besides], what you wrote [about Demeter] was jiman [bragging] and a waste of space." I had to laugh at that... "jiman and a waste of space." :)
Another funny one recently -
Jiji - "Can I go on the com?" (computer)
Dad - "Kiss my ass!"
Jiji - "... I'll take that as a yes!"
Jiji's summer project (jiyuukenkyu) was a super easy project - his uncle (my husband's big brother) who visited us for 2 weeks had found a piece of driftwood shaped like the head and neck of a swan, so all Jiji did was paint it in white, black and yellow. The kids in his class liked it and started saying, "Aflack!" (with a quacking voice).
But Dio has had a really nice summer as far as projects. His school has no jiyuukenkyu, but he and a neighbor boy/classmate have been visiting our 81-year-old next-door neighbor every Weds. all summer, and are still continuing it now that school has started. He is teaching them how to play "Go", and they really like it!! He has also started trying to teach them various things about life and his own life, etc. (which includes almost having to fight in WWII, but the war ended when he was about 17 and just about to join) . He is a really nice man, and they enjoy their Go lessons. Then another neighbor, a lady about 50 years old who is into weaving, had us in her house briefly and Dio was looking with interest at her loom. So she invited just him over one morning for more than 2 hrs., and he wove a wall-hanging for our house! When I came home it was hanging on the wall in the genkan. She said his "souzou" was "juunan" (I think that was it - anyway his imagination is flexible) and he had a lot of ideas so it was fun teaching him. So, he has been having a lot of valuable experiences with our neighbors!
One more thing (since I know I will not be bothered to post for another month or more) - I want to test out my new scanner, to bring you the Acorn Master - a weird drawing by Jiji in his jiyuu-chou. The indispensible "free-drawing notebook", that they are allowed to have in school (for rainy days, I guess), and that he cannot do without. Just a minute while I attempt to work my new scanner...
Hmmm - this is taking way longer than I'd hoped, and I have to go and do some dishes etc. So instead of the Acorn Master, here are two little characters - a fruit guy and a guy with weird eyes.
Hope this is not all too much "jiman and a waste of space"!!!
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