OC Connections & Japan Family Ties

TRICK-OR-TREAT.  HAPPY HALLOWEEN.  MISSING EVERYONE BACK HOME! Happy Halloween Eve!  It’s Sunday night, October 30 in Japan.  My kids are sincerely missing their American candy.  In fact, when asked by grandma what he wanted for his birthday, Halyard told her he wanted American candy.  Skittles and Mike-and-Ikes and Sweedish Fish… anything chewy that sticks in your teeth. The things at the forefront of my mind, and because it’s Halloween season I’m going to label them SPOOKY, are the constant Orange County references that I keep running into here in Japan.  I’m not talking about broad reminders, like someone knows someone whose cousin lives in Yorba Linda.  I’m talking about direct associations that have real relevance to me. This post is…

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Cat Cafe – for Cat Lovers

Today, Sunday, October 23, Avalon said her dream came true.  John and I took her and Kaiyo to find a Cat Cafe.  What is a Cat Cafe anyway?  It is a place where you can pay an outrageous amount of money by the hour just to sit in a place with a lot of cats wandering around and have a drink of coffee, tea, juice or cocoa.  You can’t even have a fun cocktail or champagne while you pet the furry felines crawling all around.  Actually at least half of them are sleeping soundly like lumps on logs.  I now want to open my own Cat Cafe in my house and charge by the hour and guests can come over…

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Undokai

Undokai is a nationwide Japanese school event that is also known as Sports Day or Sports Festival.   I would venture a guess to say that every school in Japan has an undokai.  And in fact, our Japanese school back home, Orange Coast Gakuen in Huntington Beach, had their own undokai too.  At OIS, undokai was originally slated for Saturday, October 8, but fears of rain postponed it to Monday, October 10.  This is noteworthy because October 10th is actually the national holiday known as Health and Sports Day.  This date in history commemorates the opening ceremony for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the first time that Japan ever hosted the Olympics.  Everyone has this day off!  Except us because we…

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Dumb Dental Disaster

Ugh.  I had a dental accident today, Tuesday, October 18.  I was walking upstairs swinging a little, white, empty, hard, plastic laundry basket and suddenly I tripped on one of the stairs.  I fell forward and the laundry basket flew upward forcefully (Issac Newton’s third law of motion?  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction?  That basket hit me hard.) and it hit me square in the front tooth.  Maybe I was huffing and puffing from the steep stairs, making me breathe with my mouth open.  Anyway, the laundry basket hit my mouth at just the right angle and it broke my tooth.  A whole corner of my front tooth just cracked right off.  I couldn’t see…

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Suikyu (Water Polo)

Well we found it.  This past weekend, Saturday, October 8, Avalon and Halyard went to their second weekend of water polo practice.  A lot of advance and follow up work got us to the point of locating the Toyonaka Water Polo Club.  Water polo is called Suikyu (Sue-ee-que) in Japan. As with many challenges here, there were several people who were involved in this success.  Our friend Art is the one who first found the website back when we were still in the States.  But we couldn’t read it until our friend Hiroko, here in Japan, helped to translate the website and also contacted the coaches on our behalf.  The club arranged for an English speaking parent to come meet…

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New Adventures Everyday

Today, Thursday October 6, John and I found a delicious organic vegetarian cafe.  We went to Shinsaibashi to run some errands and, as usual, John got hungry.  So he took out his Samsung Galaxy and asked Google Maps to find him a vegetarian restaurant.  I have to admit, John is very good with Google Maps.  He and Google can find anything! This place is called Organic and Vegetarian Cafe Atl and it is on the second floor of a very narrow building.  Underneath, on the ground floor, is a store called Camden’s Blue Star Donuts.  Apparently this is a gourmet donut store originating from Portland, Oregon (also home of Voodoo Doughnut.  They must love donuts in Portland).  For some reason Camden’s…

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Rice Everywhere!

Update:  the photo above shows a rice harvesting machine cutting down the rice plants.  Later a woman was stuffing the stalks into the machine and I think it was separating the grains from the stalk.  (October 14) I’ve been thinking about this rice post for a few weeks.  So I’m going to start it now, Tuesday, September 27, and see where it goes.  There are rice paddies all around us.  I thought that rice was grown in large, rural fields over acres with lots of water flooding the plain.  Stalks of rice plants for miles and miles.  Well, here in Minoh there are rice paddies tucked in between houses, in between stores, by the gas station, next to restaurants, just…

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Cafe and Bar 845

Tonight, Saturday, September 24, turns out to be British kids’ night.  Kaiyo is having his friend Euan (He’s half British) over for a sleepover and Avalon is having her friend Haruna (She’s from Britain) over for a sleepover.  Yay!  It’s a mini-Brexit-expat slumber party.  John graciously offered to stay at home with the craziness (and probably contribute to it himself) and let Halyard and I go out for a night on the town.  It’s actually John’s idea and I’m pretty excited to have a chance to hang out with Halyard.  He’s so busy staring at his iPhone he rarely has time to talk anymore.  And when he does have a spare moment it seems he can’t hear a word I’m…

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Special Guests Who Love Tigers

It is Friday, September 16 and we are getting the house ready for special guests coming tonight.  My second cousin Mayumi is arriving this evening with her family from Sapporo.  Mayumi is a big reason why we were able to come to Japan for a year.  Without her help it might not have happened.  She spent many hours talking to the people at the Sapporo Immigration Bureau on our behalf.  They are planning to spend the night with us and we are super excited to see them.  Sapporo is a 2 hour flight from Osaka.  It’s the main city on the northernmost island of Hokkaido and home of the Sapporo Brewery. John and I spent the whole morning cleaning the house….

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School Welcome Party and BTSN

BTSN for anyone without kids means: Back to School Night.  Most (American?) parents know this, I think.  Is there Back to School Night at Japanese public schools?  I’m not sure.  Thursday, September 15 is Back to School Night for the Middle and High School parents at Osaka International School.  The PTA decided that they would host a welcome party today for the families immediately after school and leading into the back to school night program.  It seems partly to be a ploy to boost parent participation at BTSN.  This is just the kind of tactic that goes on at our home schools so I thought that was pretty funny. I decided to help out at the PTA Welcome Party.  It…

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