Tuesday 2 September, 9:30AM

Ohaiyo gozaimasu!

It's a breezy morning here in sunny Seta, though it's also birthday dinner time for brother Bob. Happy 44th B-day, Boboli!! I hope this is a great year for you doing all that new dad stuff.

Thanks to Myrt and Bob for their emails. Sounds like a fun weekend in Portola Valley, except for that debacle called the 49ers-Tampa Bay game. We checked out some of the Internet coverage of the game and thought, "It's gonna be a looong year for the Niners." I hope Young and Rice end up healthy soon.

Here in Japan, as well as all over the world it seems, the big news is the car crash that killed Princess Diana. All the news shows feature it, and when I was out shopping yesterday a very sad shopkeeper asked me if I was English. "Iye, Igurisu-jin dewa arimasen. Amerika-jin desu." She had a little picture of Diana posted near the front of the store. It's really sad.

I figured out a way yesterday to avoid some of the eye-widening, gasp-inducing experiences in the grocery store: shopping at some of the tiny stores nearby rather than at the "suupa." I got a couple of small pieces of salmon for only 300 yen (about $2.75) rather than the 600 or 700 I've seen at other stores. I also found, to my delight, a huge bag of garlic for only 300 yen -- in another store, I saw *one head* of garlic for 300 yen, and was very upset to think I'd have to either cut down on my garlic intake or go broke financing my habit. There's a street that ... well, I started to say parallels the main shopping street, but nothing runs parallel around here, so I'll just say it's kinda near the main shopping street ... is full of tiny little stores, each featuring one particular sort of thing. There's a vegetable store, a fish store, a dried goods store, a beer store (yes!), and so on. The woman running the fish store (sakana-ya) is the one who had the picture of Princess Diana. Anyway, I was pleased to find vegetables at prices that could almost be considered reasonable. We still have no idea how far the cost of living allowance will stretch, but this will help.

Sunday we took our collective lives in our hands and drove from here to Marge and Chris' to pick Kate up. They have several parking spots near their house, so all we had to do was figure out how to get there. It takes one driver, one navigator (naviguesser?, two *quiet* children and a sleepy dog to figure this stuff out. The drive is about 20 minutes if there's not much traffic and you don't get hung up at the train crossing for too long. Kent drove over and I drove back, and we all survived the experience. Kate, Colleen and Kelly played together nicely for a while while the alleged grown-ups got a chance to sit around and talk. Kelly starts school today, which is a long wait since their arrival in late June when we met them at the Century Hyatt.

Yesterday morning I called Mom's and talked with the gang assembled there -- Bob, Lee, Dawn and (of course) Mom. It sounds as though Monica is getting the appropriate amount of ogling due a newborn baby. I can't wait for my turn to ogle her!

My Japanese teacher is due to show up in a little while, so I'd better do a little reviewing. I hope you all had a great holiday weekend!

Love,

-- T.

Fm: Theresa W. Carey 102404,1303

Saturday 6 September, 12:30AM

Konbanwa!

It's been a few days between updates because I'm fighting like crazy with the folks at CompuServe who sponsor my account. There's been quite a bit of turnover in the marketing department there, so the new people who have been put in charge of the sponsored accounts are just terminating all of them and seeing who screams. Those who scream get their accounts back. Unfortunately, a technical switch hasn't been set correctly on my account, so even though I've screamed, it keeps turning off. Very aggravating. They promised me that it was fixed this time ... let's all just hope for the best.

Let's see ... the kids have finished 8 school days. Colleen still spends way too much time bitching and complaining, but I think she's settling into it now that she started volleyball practice. She had a friend over this afternoon, Jessica, who is British. Her mom is Japanese and she's spent quite a bit of time in Japan, but she speaks lovely English with a lovely English accent. (She says "lovely" a lot, which I think is ... well, lovely.) The girls really fixed up their fort under the stairs, and they're sleeping there tonight. Hey, we have two extra bedrooms now! Come on over!

After dinner tonight, we walked over to a "Karaoke Box" place. They give you a room that's got a couple of couches and a table in it, as well as a major sound setup and a catalog of songs. There were a couple hundred songs in English in the catalog, and we had no trouble filling up our allotted hour with such gems as "Day-O," "Kiss the Girl," "Over the Rainbow," "Jailhouse Rock," "Twist and Shout," "Colors of the Wind," and "When You Wish Upon a Star." We also belted out, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" ... with feeling! One thing we did not figure out was how to correct a mistake if a wrong selection was keyed in... maybe next time. We got back home a little after 10 and the kids went to sleep in their fort.

I've gotten in touch with several editors this week, and am starting to put a few assignments together. I'll let you know more how they work out -- wish me luck.

It rained quite a bit on Thursday and when it rains here, it *really* comes down hard. We got soaked walking across the street from Seisen to the bus stop. Kate had her first ballet lesson yesterday, which was really very funny to watch. She's the only beginner in the class; most of the other girls have had 1 or 2 years of ballet already, but she's doing OK. I'm sure she'll do even better once she has a tutu and ballet slippers. Kate also sounds interested in taking aikido. What next??!

My big adventure today, besides getting Colleen to school at 7:15 for volleyball practice (which is too early to qualify as an adventure as far as I'm concerned) was getting Hershey officially registered. We got a form from the quarantine place that said he's healthy, but they messed up the date of his rabies vaccination. Fixing that -- the Palo Alto vet wrote 7/3, meaning July 3, but the quarantine vet transcribed it as March 7th -- took a few phone calls on the part of a clerk at the Kaminoge neighborhood station. I rode my bike there and was happy to have all 21 of the gears available since the building is a bit north of our house. Anything north of here, which essentially encompasses about 98% of Tokyo proper, is uphill since we're close to the river, so I had to do some major peddling. In a bit of serendipity, I discovered a wine and beer store with a good selection of French and Italian wines, all under 1000 yen/bottle. Great prices. I filled up the bicycle basket with beer, though, because we were running frightfully short. Next trip, I'll fill it up with wine. Our neighbors are going to start worrying.

Speaking of expenses, one very pleasant surprise was our "Call Home America" phone bill. It's really very reasonably priced, so don't hesitate to use it. (Let me know if you don't have batphone instructions yet.) Besides using it to call Japan, I used it while at the Lair to check voice mail, and the cost was *WAY* cheaper than using a calling card. Details on request.

We don't have any big weekend plans formulated just yet, but Kate is having at least one friend (Kelly) sleep over tomorrow night. She also invited Tessa, who hasn't yet responded because she's at another sleepover tonight. Coordinating Kate's social life will require two secretaries and a butler by the time she's in high school.

I'm not on Aunt Dorothy's mailing list yet and it sounds like she needs a "flash session" lesson ...

Have a great weekend and send me email telling all about it!

Love,

-- T.

Fm: Theresa W. Carey 102404,1303

9 September, 10 AM

Dawn (and Family Mailing List) --

We did indeed have an earthquake yesterday morning. So it was a 5.2, eh? They don't tell us these things; earthquakes are so common that they don't bother writing them up. My own internal Richter scale gave it an "over 5 but under 5.5" so it looks like it's still calibrated.

All four of us felt the quake; it hit around 9:30AM or so. I felt a little rolling and though, "Oh, a little earthquake." After about 10-15 seconds of rolling, we got hit with a jolt and some up and down shaking. At Seisen, the teachers got all the kids to dive under their desks; that jolt was rather convincing. I sat there at the dining room table (I'd been studying Japanese) trying to decide whether to save the wine glasses or scuttle under the table myself. Hershey barked and then whined, but didn't move.

Shortly after the 'quake, the clouds moved in and opened up and it started pouring. It rained until about 6PM or so, and the little canal down at the end of our street (Maruko River, according to the map) turned into a rushing stream. When Kate and I walked to the bus in the morning, the river was so low that the adolescent ducks who live under our bridge were walking on the bottom rather than paddling. When we walked home after school, it was a raging torrent and we were wondering where the ducks were hanging out ... they'd probably been washed down to Tokyo Bay with the way the water was moving.

Kent had a business dinner last night, and ate teppan yaki at a restaurant in the building next door to H-P. He said it was the Benihana style of food without all the yelling and knife flipping. The kids and I had a low key dinner after Kate and I took a nap -- I don't know why I was so wiped out yesterday afternoon! Unfortunately, I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep last night; my brain went back into "race mode," a familiar feeling that I experienced many times between March and August. I have a Japanese lesson with Ms. Maeguchi at 10:30 and I hope I don't fall asleep on the table. That would be very rude.

Another adventure yesterday was my attempt to move some money from our U.S. checking account into our Japan bank account. They are not used to dealing with personal checks here, so after about half an hour of very frustrating discussion, I gave up on trying to deposit this check. The bank people wouldn't let me write a check in Kent's name and deposit it into the account with his name; they said I'd have to open my own account and put the money there. Then they announced there would be a three to four week delay before the funds were available. We found out from Wells Fargo that they will wire money to our Fuji Bank account, which will be transformed into yen and available to us in 24-48 hours, so we sent Mom on a mission to get that going since she has signing authority on our checking account. Based on her phone call this morning, it sounds like it's going through -- with any luck, we won't have to do this more than once every couple of months, but it's hard to tell since we have no idea how much money we'll actually be spending here. We still have a few yen-sucking expenses to set up, such as Kate's orthodontist and the housekeeper. Anyway, it looks like it's a lot easier to make this currency move as a "push" exchange (with the transaction originating in the U.S. sending money to Japan) rather than a "pull" exchange (having the Japan bank request the money from the U.S. bank). High tech!

Dawn, thanks for your concern ... I'll have to go do an Internet search to find out what was said about yesterday's quake since nobody is talking about it here <grin>. We got Dawn's letter yesterday, complete with pictures of a VERY CUTE Monica -- Lee, you did good! I also enjoyed the photos from the Sayonara party; many of them now adorn the refrigerator, and a few others will go into frames. The mail also brought a postcard from Robin and Bill, who were celebrating Guillermo's 50th somewhere in Montana. Looks like it was a great party.

Talk to you soon ...

-- T.

Fm: Theresa W. Carey 102404,1303

10 September, 5:20PM

Aunt D. (and the rest of the family list) --

I got your note! You did the trick and fixed my address in your file. Hooray!

Colleen and Kate just bounced through the door in very good moods. They stopped off at a little store about 1/2 block away for some ice cream. Also Colleen made the "A" team in the jr. high volleyball program, so she's jazzed about that. I guess we won't have as much trouble getting her to practice now. Well, wish us luck on that one; getting anyone out the door at the unheard of hour of 6:40AM requires luck as far as I'm concerned.

I made a bit of a stir at the Seisen Mother's Association meeting this afternoon. After the official presentation had ended, the president asked if there were any questions. I stood up and made a short but sincere speech, asking the parents of Japanese-speaking students to please remind their children that there are kids here who have just arrived from other countries who would appreciate being included in their conversations. I told them that my 7th grader is having a lot of trouble adjusting to Seisen, and that the bulk of her trouble is that nobody talks to her outside of class -- they other girls are all speaking Japanese.

While I was standing, I suddenly noticed the way the room had arranged itself. As is my tendency when I'm in a room full of strangers -- you all must know that I'm ever so insecure and shy (really, I am) -- I took a seat at an empty table. My table filled up around me, mostly with women from the U.S. and western Europe. The two tables on my right were filled with Japanese women, while the three tables to my left were mostly ex-patriates. I thought it was interesting that the roomfull of women had essentially segregated themselves into Japanese/local and non-Japanese/gaijin. This segregation was so subtle that I hadn't noticed it while sitting and eating my lunch.

As soon as I finished my little spiel, Sister Asuncion, the headmistress (she's from Spain), ran up to the front of the room and grabbed the microphone away from the association president. She said, "I want to thank this mother for bringing up this important topic. And I want to remind all of you that no matter what language you speak at home, the official language of Seisen is English! If you want your kids to speak Japanese, send them to Japanese school! This freezing out of the non-Japanese speaking girls in the older grades is a real problem, and I want it to stop!" She was adamant and quite forceful.

The room erupted in talk when Sister Asuncion sat down, and the president had a hard time getting the meeting back to order. Sister Asuncion came up to me after the meeting and assured me that she would make a strong push to remind all the students to speak English. About ten moms came up to me -- some Japanese and some gaijin -- and said that they agreed with me, and that they would make sure their daughters talked to Colleen in the next day or so.

Colleen's misery was making me miserable, so I felt I was making that speech in self-defense. One mom said, "My daughters [she has twins in 8th grade] complained about the same thing, but I didn't know what to do about it. Your daughter is lucky to have a mom who will stand up for her." I said, "No, I'm just a loudmouth and I'm tired of living with such a grouch!" It was good to meet a bunch of other moms, including one woman who is on her 3rd ex-pat assignment, having moved from Hawaii to Connecticut to Australia to England to Japan. I asked her why, as a native of Hawaii, she didn't count Connecticut as an ex-patriate assignment -- having grown up in California, I think Connecticut is another country <g>. She laughed and agreed with me.

Talk to you soon ...

-- T.

Wednesday, 17 September, 10:45PM

Hello, far-flung family and friends! It's been a while since I provided the updates, having let Kent do the last couple. Writers block, ya know.

Today we managed to successfully complete quite a few errands demanded by the bureaucracy, and they involved finding places on our own that weren't that easy to locate. First we had to return to Setagaya City Hall to pick up our official alien residence cards. They're the size of a drivers license, banded in green, featuring our photos and fingerprints. It's a little strange to be a card-carrying alien. To get there, we took the usual subway line, Shin-Tamagawa, back towards the center of town, but got off at the Sangen-jaya station. A short walk brought us to the terminus of the Setagaya streetcar line, which carried us 4 stops to the Setagaya station. We wandered in the general direction of where we thought the city hall should be and eventually found it after only one wrong turn. In an astonishing display of bureaucratic efficiency, our cards were located and handed over to us within 5 minutes.

These cards are only good for 1 year from our entry date, so they'll have to be renewed before 8/20/98. That may pose some problems given our summer plans, which involve having the kids spend most of the muggy summer months in the U.S. hanging around with all of *you*, returning after 8/20, but I guess we'll drive off that bridge when we come to it.

Next stop was the Tokyo Immigration Office. We had to get special permits that allow us to leave Japan -- and return -- without giving up residence status. The rigamarole on this one required a stop at a post office to pick up four stamps, each worth 6000 yen (about $50 each), then a trip to the immigration office itself, which was several blocks away. One missed turn later, and a puzzled walk around the building in search of the door, and we were there. I'd been warned that this process could take 1-2 hours, but we got lucky and were out of there in 15 minutes. This is another joy that will have to be undertaken annually after renewing our resident visas. At least we'll know the drill, assuming the memories of the event stick.

Colleen brought home the number of the orchestra director at St. Mary's today, so I gave him a call. He was thrilled to know there was a viola player in the vicinity, and asked me to send her to orchestra rehearsal tonight from 5:30-7. Colleen bounced out of the house and zoomed up there in a great mood, but returned home kinda blue. She's the youngest player in the orchestra, and currently the *only* girl -- a social situation she has yet to figure out. They took a crack at the overture from "Showboat" which will be the school musical next spring. "Mom, it's REALLY REALLY HARD!" was her take on the situation, and she wasn't very happy about it. I don't know what the future of her participation in the orchestra might be, but I suspect it's a little over her head. That put her in a bad mood, unfortunately; she'd come home pretty happy today. Oh well. Just have to keep riding that roller coaster.

Yesterday, Colleen had an afternoon volleyball practice -- a pleasant change from the 7AM practices -- and I showed up at 4:30 to pick her up. They ended up going until almost 6PM, so I helped out a bit. I'm not terribly impressed with this coach; I think she positions the players wrong on serve receive, and she's just letting them flail away when they're serving rather than giving them individual pointers. I worked with a few of the girls who were trying to shot-put the serve over the net, showing them how hip rotation and point of contact generate a serve that's hard to return. The ones I worked with caught on really quickly; one of them, Lillian, was really pounding it and squealed with joy every time she smashed an ace. That's the fun of coaching for me -- seeing someone pick up a little pointer and make a major change. Now if only I could have that kind of effect on my own kids! <grin>

Following practice, we drove one of Colleen's teammates to the nearest subway stop, then headed in a direction that I thought would take us home. Oops. We ended up wandering, lost on a rainy night, around the western edges of Setagaya, wondering where the hell we were. By the time I finally saw a street sign I recognized, we were halfway to Seijo where Marge, Chris and Kelly live. Somehow I got totally turned around and my famous sense of direction completely abandoned me. An upsetting and scary experience.

Tomorrow the volleyball team has its first match of the season, and Kate and I will tag along to watch. We'll head into Hiroo to Nishimachi, which is the school Kate's pal Tessa attends. Should be fun! I hope Colleen lets herself have fun... she's gotten pretty good at making herself upset and blue. I've seen for myself how people are reaching out to her, but she pushes them away. At some point, they'll stop reaching. I don't know how to get it across to her that she's got to meet some of these folks halfway. She feels so slighted by some of her classmates that the ones who are trying to make friends with her are facing enormous barriers. It's a tough one. Wish us all luck!

-- T.

21 September, Sunday, 8:15PM

Hiya, folks!

We had an Adventure Outside Tokyo this weekend, and we all had a wonderful time. (Except Hershey, who was cared for by Colleen's pal Lauren, but he might have had a good time too. He's not talking though.)

The Oppermans, our pals from Palo Alto who have been here a year already, won a weekend at a bicycling lodge in Chiba at a school auction. They invited us to go along with them, and after much discussion and logistical consultation, we decided to go. Taifun #20 nearly ruined our plans, since it was supposed to hit on Friday morning and rage through Saturday, but luckily it passed somewhere besides the Tokyo/Chiba area. So we got extremely detailed driving directions, and packed our bags.

Saturday morning after aikido lessons, we piled in the car and headed towards Yokohama on the Daisen Keihan, which is a very nice highway. After travelling about 15 miles, we got hit up for 250 yen (~$2), then managed to locate the Yokohama Shindo ("New Yokohama Road") which is a short connector to a few other highways. It costs 200 yen for the privelege of using the Y-S for about 1.5 miles, but it connects to the Yokohama-Yokosuka Highway, which is another toll road. The "Y-Y" runs about 20 km and we took it all the way to the end. That cost 1200 yen -- ~$10 -- and we had traveled just a little farther than from Palo Alto to San Francisco by this time. Just think how often you'd go to S.F. if it cost you $15 in highway tolls!!

We found our way to the ferry landing, and after buying our round-trip ticket (about $85), drove onto a big boat the size of the ferries that run all over the Puget Sound. In 1/2 hour, we were on the end of the Chiba Peninsula -- only 20 miles or so from the heart of Tokyo as the crow flies, but about a century behind. We followed Route 127 next to the ocean, then managed to locate Tateyama and the lodge itself -- no mean feat. The lodge, Hakkakuso, is in the middle of some rice fields, and is about 5-6 minutes from the ocean by bicycle. It's a hexagonal shaped wooden building with two rooms full of bunk beds downstairs, a living/dining room and kitchen on the second floor, and the owner's quarters on the third floor. The Oppermans had arrived before us, not restrained by aikido lessons, and were already out for a bike ride. We managed to find bikes that approximately fit us (mine was *way* too small and the seat didn't have the requisite padding, so I'm a little sore now) and headed to the ocean. While pedaling on a bike path near the sea, we (nearly literally) ran into the Oppermans -- Mark, Ghislaine, Jonas, Tessa, and Mark's parents who are visiting from Illinois. We borrowed Tessa and went down by the ocean while the rest of their family kept on pedaling.

The girls promptly found things to use for "boat races" in the stream that ran down from the rice fields into the ocean, then played with the waves (and got soaking wet) before building sand castles. I watched the surfers and the kids, and did some wave-playing myself. The water was very warm, almost like Southern California temperatures, although the beach itself reminded me of Pescadero or Oregon. What really surprised me was all the garbage strewn about -- the area looks like it's used as an informal dump by the locals, and there are dozens of plastic bottles, discarded clothes, and other trash around. There are also beautiful seashells and incredible views, so it was a strange dichotomy.

We had dinner together back at the lodge, and used the "ofuro" (bathhouse) as well. Colleen, Kate and Tessa took a bath together, which is quite an experience when done Japanese style. The ofuro is a fairly large tiled room with a large tub in one corner, looking out onto a bamboo grove. On the other side of the room is a shower area and a drain. Before using the tub, you shower off completely -- washing, soaping, rinsing, etc. -- so that you're completely clean when you get into the tub. Colleen and Kate managed to make a rather loud and giggling production of all this, as you can imagine. The three girls soaked for quite a while. I took my bath after dinner, and Ghislaine followed me. Kent and Mark took baths in the morning, while the rest of us slowly dragged ourselves out of bed.

Today we pedaled about 12km to a lighthouse on the point of the Chiba peninsula. Along the way we found a wonderful tide pool area, and the kids had a great time there. Ghislaine and I relaxed and enjoyed the sunshine and the sound of the waves -- and the joy of getting out of the city. We had a light picnic lunch at the lighthouse and then came back to the lodge to clear out and head home.

The Oppermans had taken the train, so we hauled them to the Tateyama train station -- 10 of us loaded into our 8-person van. (Kate and Tessa found maternal laps to sit on.) Once the 6 Oppermans were sent on their way, we managed to find the ferry again ("Just keep the sea on our left and we ought to run into it, don't you think?") and rode over to Yokosuka. The worst part of the trip was the huge traffic jam on the Y-Y -- it took us almost 1.5 hours to travel about 5km. We passed the scene of what looked like a fairly recent accident -- surely it couldn't have been the one that hung us up all that time -- and then the rest of the trip was smooth sailing. The kids went to pick up Hershey while I scrounged dinner.

It was a great break from the hustle and bustle of city life. I wish I had an ofuro! Also that beautiful view and the breeze across the rice fields. Ah. I'm sure we'll drag a few of you off to Tateyama eventually. I may tie my own bike to the roof of the car though, just so I have one that's big enough for my long legs (not to mention one with a soft enough seat for my tender rear <grin>). Colleen has gone 5 days without begging to go home, so things are looking up.

When we got home, we had the fun of playing Robin and Dana's messages that they'd left on our answering machine. Sorry we weren't here to talk to you guys, but I'll try calling at midnight Tokyo time, which will be 8AM in Seattle. Hope you're all getting a good night's sleep.

Love,

-- T.

24 September, Wednesday 3:15PM

Dear Myrt and Bob (et. al. on the email list) --

Not much going on today -- just working on my Barron's column. I mailed a few piles of photos to Parental Units, which you will have to share with the rest of the family for now. I've got to get this Web page thing up and going, which means I've got to get a scanner and/or a digital camera.

It's been partly cloudy to all-the-way cloudy today, with a smattering of rain now and then. The temps have dropped from the drippy highs of late August (95+ with 95+% humidity) to more reasonable low-70s. It's officially autumn here, so the trees have all paid heed and started to turn colors. I've heard this is a great time of year to travel in the Sapporo area; maybe I'll manage to do that next year.

Kate has taken to wearing headbands to school, and after having lunch with her yesterday, I can see that she's following the Seisen Third Grade Fashion Police. Quite a few third graders are wearing headbands of various colors and textures; it's kinda cute to see Kate wanting to fit in with the group. That means she's starting to identify with being a part of the Seisen community, which is a Good Thing.

Both kids started piano lessons on Monday with an instructor who is considerably more strict than Lorie. Well, there aren't too many instructors who could be less strict, I suppose, but both girls commented on how demanding this teacher is. They don't seem to mind being pushed when it comes to something brand new like aikido, but they want piano taught the same way they've had it taught in the past. We'll have to ride this wave to the beach...

Talk to you soon ...

-- T.

Sept 26, 5PM

I've been digging around trying to find a flight leaving the U.S. on 1/4/98 so we can get back to Tokyo in time for the kids to start school. It's tough! Shoulda done this months ago, it looks like. Anyway, I found a web site with some great airfares -- Travelocity's Consolidator service. http://www.travelocity.com/promo/tiss. Check it out, and come on over and visit!! They had some RT airfares from Seattle/SFO to Narita for around $700. That's in a butt-pinching coach seat, but what the heck.

There's another way into this web site at www.tiss.com, but my browser kept hanging up at that address. Good luck!

-- T.

Sunday 9/28, 11PM

This weekend's Carey Family headlines:

Carey household gains another "family member"

Seisen "A" Middle School Volleyball Team faces huge challenge during Saturday tourney

Kiyomi-sensei visits, Good Time had by All

Cruising Harajuku with Thousands of Others

Giants win NL West! Yay!

OK, so that last headline didn't actually happen here, but we're sure happy about it anyway. Go Giants! And thanks, Dawn, for passing the news along; it was fun to get your voice mail and email messages with the results of the Saturday game.

This last week flew by in a blur. The weather is quickly changing; the cosmic clock has flipped to its Autumn setting, and it's noticeably cooler than it was even a week ago. The orderly progression of the seasons continues here ... none of this messy Indian Summer business in Japan. Though it's been rainy more often than not, when the sun makes an appearance, it's lighting up a pretty nice day. It's supposed to be a lot sunnier in October; I hope so!

We tried an experiment on Thursday afternoon -- having the kids come home from school by themselves without benefit of the school bus. Kate has ballet from 3:30 to 4:30 on Thursdays, so we told Colleen we'd give her a little bonus for getting the two of them to the public bus stop (a very short walk from school) and then home from the Futako-Tamagawaen bus terminal. The kids ended up fighting, so Kate stomped back to school and Colleen got on the bus! I got a weepy phone call from Kate about the time Colleen walked in the front door. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), I was furious. I had to drive back to Seisen to pick Kate up, and let her know in no uncertain terms that I would not rescue her again if she pulled this kind of garbage.

Grrr. Kate has after-school activities three days per week now, and I really don't want to have to run over to school to bring her home when the public bus is so convenient. But I don't think she's ready to do it herself just yet. So I try to enlist Colleen's aid; I was really disappointed when she didn't come through for me. She says she'll try again tomorrow. We're trying to prepare them for my absence in November (I'll be in the U.S. 11/9-11/24) and hope things are worked out by then. Wish us luck.

Thursday night, we had a visitor from the Bay Area -- Jim Harris, a Stanford professor who knows Myrt and Bob from church. We had a fun visit. Kent wrote this up in his last note, so I won't go into the details again.

I spent most of Friday working on my two articles due Monday. I have three articles to work on in the entire month of September (an all-time low) and two of them are due the same day. Funny how things work out, huh?

Saturday morning, Colleen and I headed over to Seisen bright and early (ugh!) for the 7AM departure of the volleyball team bus. I went with them over to the Christian Academy of Japan (CAJ), a private school that takes about 90 minutes travel time to reach. I wish I could say I had a clue where it was, but all I can say is I think we were heading vaguely north. (No compass on hand; sorry!) At 9AM, Seisen played CAJ, with the B team losing quickly in two games and the A team winning in two games. Colleen played in the second game of the A match, and did pretty well. Her main challenge is that she's the setter when she's in the front row, but some of her teammates have not yet had the "Setter takes the 2nd ball NO MATTER WHAT unless she calls for help" truism drilled into them yet. As a result, she's often fighting for the ball with other teammates who step into her way. This happens often enough to all the setters that I think there's been a coaching lapse.

The second match was a lot more work, though the B team won easily this time. The B team matches seem to be serving-oriented -- if you can get the ball over the net, most of the time the other team will mess up the return and your team gets a point. The A team matches are a little more complicated, though they're not yet running offensive spiking plays. The A team lost the first game against Japan International School (JIS) quickly, then got behind in the second game 11-2 before battling back to a 16-14 victory. That game was entirely too exciting! The third game got underway, but the clock became a factor. The clock? In volleyball? Well, in this league, you get exactly 60 minutes to play the entire match. The clock doesn't stop for anything -- shoe-tying, time-outs, breaks between games, people attacking the referee (OK, that didn't happen), nuttin'. Apparently neither coach was aware of this rule; the JIS coach called a time-out with only 20 seconds remaining on the clock, and was visibly upset when the ref said the match was over. Seisen was ahead, 5-2, so the third game and the match were given to us. So the "A" team is still undefeated, huzzah!

I helped with warmups and such, and did a couple of jumping demonstrations. The day of a match isn't a good time to convey all the information needed to put a good jump together though. Today I'm aware of all the muscles necessary to play volleyball ... ow!

Colleen and I got home around 4 PM, so these Saturday gigs are all-day affairs when you take travel time into consideration. Kiyomi Hutchings, one of Kent's first Japanese teachers at H-P, is in town giving seminars at HP-J in Hachioji as well as at HPL-J. She came over for dinner Saturday night, and it was great to see her. I could ask her all the dumb questions I'm too embarrassed to ask anyone else, and I know she'll answer them in her graceful way. It was great to see her. She's in Japan fairly often, so I bet we'll see her again.

Today we got a typically late start for a Sunday morning, and while we were trying to figure out what to do and where to go, the phone rang. It was Kelly and her mom Marge calling to invite us to meet them at Harajuku for a trip through the shops and the flea markets. We got there a little after 12:30 and had great fun wandering around. There's one area close to the train station where people dress up in wild punky costumes; you can have your picture taken with a bride, or an Elvira knock-off, or a lady with blue hair and blue lips, or someone who looks like a character in a super-hero comic book for a small donation. I was encouraging the kids to pick a character, but they wouldn't. Hmph. We wandered up Takeshita Street, which is very narrow and lined with used clothing shops, restaurants, jewelry stores (one is aptly named "Junk Jewel"), and crepe stands, and ended up at a Burger King for lunch. I would have preferred tempura, but got overruled.

After much meandering here and there, we ended up at the temple where the flea market is held. Unfortunately, the vendors were packing up by the time we arrived because it was starting to rain. Oh well. At least we know where it is now and can get back there without getting lost! I hope ....!

Colleen and Kate have been begging, pleading, groveling and generally making pests of themselves over the issue of getting a pet. Hershey is enough pet for me, but the kids want something little, like a hamster or some other rodent. Colleen found the name of a pet shop near the Harajuku area, so we headed up that way to look for it. Turns out the shop we visited, Mon Tou Tou (heh, great name ... and yes, they groom poodles there) was dog and cat oriented. No hamsters or other vermin, unless you count the Chihuahua puppy in that category. The clerk said that the Seibu department store back in Shibuya had small pets. Since we had to pass through Shibuya to get back to Seta anyway, we decided to stop there and look for the store.

After figuring out that the pet shop was on the roof of the "B" store of the Seibu complex (they have five stores within two blocks of the Shibuya station), we headed up there and found out how expensive tiny rodents can be. The ones the kids really wanted, which are called squirrels (even though they're hamsters) because of their markings, cost close to $45 each which was a little out of their budget. They found a cute little brown-and-white hamster for 1800 yen -- about $16 -- and split the cost of his cage with good ol' Mom and Dad. They've also worked out a complicated arrangement for "sharing" him, and agreed on a name -- Momotaro ("Peach Boy" from a famous Japanese folk tale).

So that's it for now. You made it to the end! Congrats!

How the heck are all of you?

-- T.