Breaking up is hard to do...

I'm sorry it has to end this way. You've been extremely faithful, generous, and catered to most of my whims. You've introduced me to new people, and given me something to look forward to on a daily basis. I'll never forget the time that you took 4 hours to upload a video - I think, however, that was the beginning of the end. At first, you seemed flexible and creative. But, the more and more I got to know you, I started to become frustrated with your one dimensional and difficult to relate to personality. You made me start having to Edit HTML. I'm so sorry, but I just don't have time for that kind of hard work. I admit that I've been looking around, and have found someone new. Easier uploads, customizable templates, and captions on pictures. Yes, it will take some time to work out the kinks, anything worthwhile always does, but we're already years ahead of where you and I could ever be. If you ever change your ways go ahead and drop me a line... I can now be reached at:

leospurr.wordpress.com

Adieu, sayonara, anyonghikaseyo, see ya!

Comprehension is headed south

Ok, today's topics were The Cold War and Nuclear Weapons, and Modern Japan and Japanese Defense Policy...Painful for me in English, much less in Japanese. There was one class where I actually only understood 10% of the lecture. I'm so tempted to take a video of our lectures, just to share the pain with you all, but am afraid I would be sent to jail for violating rule #5612, no filming boring lecturers. To be fair, we wouldn't allow that in a U.S. military school either, since I would most certainly be using it for ill. I'll do my best to explain, then, my life for the next 10 months.

David wakes me up at 0530 - for you non-military types, that's STINKIN' early! I get the boys to their bus by 0810. Today's last image of David was of him upside down, legs askew, in the entwined arms of two of the bus aides, with his hair standing straight on end (because he was upside down and gravity was making it stand straight - hang in there with me) - with a howl and the worst grimace on his face that I've ever seen. Let's just say he doesn't like getting on the bus for some reason. He's fine when he gets to school and has been having great days - so we're all working together to figure it out. Anyway, I'm pretty sweaty after this evolution, and catch my bus to school.

Our first lecture is at 0930 - and the next 1.5 to 2 hours is spent trying to keep up with the Olympic speed talker that is sitting (yes sitting) at the front of the lecture hall and talking without breathing from a 3 page single spaced handout that we all have in front of us. The other students are madly taking notes, nodding their heads, and generally tracking with all of this. Meanwhile, I can hang in there for about the first 30mins, and am diligently looking up kanji in my electronic dictionary and trying to listen and understand what is being said. After that, my mind wanders to what I'm going to eat for lunch, what groceries I need to get, when I can fit in a run, and how am I going to meet anyone "interesting" if EVERYONE (except for the other woman) in my class is married? The school is officially called the "National Institute for Defense Studies" (NIDS) - I was secretly hoping it would become the "Nummy International Dating Service." I'll probably have to strike that comment if I find that any of my classmates are reading this blog!



The afternoon only gets worse. Lunch is from noon to one. Beware two hour lectures by sitting-speed-talking professors after a full tummy of yummy ramen. Fortunately, I'm not the only student struggling to stay awake. Frankly, that's the only thing that sometimes keeps me awake in the afternoon is watching the awake-sleep techniques of the other students - there's the head bob, the sleep in the open, the pretend to be writing, the pretend to be thinking (I like this one the best - you can actually "rest" your head on your fingertips as if you are deep in thought), the rub your head and eyes as if you have a headache, the list goes on. I actually dropped my stylus (the thing I use to write kanji into my electronic dictionary) on the floor today - thank goodness - that's the only thing that woke me up!

I get home between 6-6:30 and make dinner, get the kids bathed and to bed, then do some reading/skimming for the next day. Add to that ironing of clothes, because I actually have to wear real clothes during class. No uniforms. Sadly most of my "nice" clothes are still from the late 80s - if only I could come here in another 5-10 years, they would be back in style. I have now begun to truly live for the weekends!

Ja Mata...

Cooling off from the summer heat....

I really love all of the opportunities for cultural observation and participation here in our little city of Meguro! Today was an autumn festival where a mikoshi - a portable Shinto shrine - is carried around neighborhood streets, and the townspeople gladly and genrously throw water on the carriers of the shrine to help cool them off from the summer heat. The boys had a blast, and Christopher jumped right in there to help carry the kids' shrine. Both boys took full advantage of being splashed and doing the splashing of water. When the shrine carriers rested along their route, shopkeepers would come out to offer imbibement of all forms. I had a vodka tonic and a tomato sandwich. It was a lot of fun.

Afterwards, we visited our local shrine to see the festival continuing in the way of chow and games! Apparently my area has a famous octopus ball shop. I bought some since I thought David was starting to like octopus. While that may be correct in normal situations, octopus smothered in a not fully cooked gooey thick batter is not very appetizing. We just pulled out the octopus and left the batter to smother in its own juices.

On another note - I'm thinking of getting a family pet. Some of you may remember my most loved dog - Chaebi - the mame shiba I got for about 10 bucks in Korea. I have mourned him ever since we had to give him away soon after David was born. Anyway, I'm in the land where the shiba inus were created! Pet stores charge upwards of $1000 for the sweet pets (cats even cost about that much). There is an animal rescue shelter in Tokyo, however, so I'm going to try and go that route. The landlord has approved the new addition, so hopefully within the next few weeks I'll have pictures of a new member of our family.

I feel the need for speed...

For those of you waiting with baited breath about Joseph's speed dating experience, here it is...it was a bust. There were only two guys (including Joe) and 4 girls. Of the girls - not to be mean at all, just reporting Joe's observations, and he didn't want to be mean, either. But let's just say none of them were really his type. There was chubby girl, cross-eyed girl, and frigid girl. Now, he got along with an "older woman" - (he's 24 and she's 31), and they've got plans to do yoga next week :-) I'm glad he went instead of me - it would have been 5 girls and 1 guy - and I would have probably cried.

School was a mixed bag of emotions today. We had our opening ceremony - VERY rigid - complete with 15 mins of rehearsal on standing at attention, bowing on command, and sitting (feet at 45 deg angle, hands resting on each thigh) on command- we probably practiced this about 15 times before the ceremony, and then did it 5 times during the ceremony. I had to say that I did get goose bumps when the entire hall began singing the Japanese Anthem.



It translates to this: May the reign of the Emperor continue for a thousand, nay, eight thousand generations and for the eternity that it takes for small pebbles to grow into a great rock and become covered with moss.

I was getting a bit depressed at how much I wasn't understanding today - got about 50% of everything - the serious stuff, the jokes, etc. And to top it off, I kind of bumbled about during my "jikoshokai" - self-introduction. I was the last student of 47 to give my 1 min schpeel on me. I tried to crack a few jokes, but they went over like farts in church. I'm not any good at jokes in English, not sure why I thought I would be any better in a foreign language. Plus, the Japanese just aren't very funny in those situations. Good news is that later at our "welcoming" party, I met the head of the school and he said, "I like how you tried to make a joke". Ok, now that made me laugh.

Tennis lessons and a festival are in store for today. Tune in tomorrow for pictures of water being thrown at passers by to get rid of evil spirits. At least I think that's what's happening.

Ja Mata!

Odds and Ends

Not much time tonight, so just a few thoughts from the day - school was less painful only in that I am pretty much familiar with the subject - Japanese Self Defense Forces - so I'm not sure how much I actually understood, or just knew already.

I was stopped at our local "conbini" by an old Japanese lady as I was depositing my bag full of "pet" bottles (water bottles mostly) in the recycle bins out front - per the very detailed instructions offered by my city. In a very friendly manner she explained to me that if everyone brought bags of PET bottles like I did, the bins would overfill too quickly - this makes logical sense to me, but, but, I was just following the rules. Seems there's some room for common sense. Anyway, PET bottles will now be accepted on the "non-burnable" days. If you were paying attention to previous blogs, you would know that those days are on Tuesdays. Ok, got it. But like any good Ginsu commercial, there's more. While I can recycle the bottles themselves (stripped of the label of course) from home, if I would be so kind as to bring just the bottle caps to the conbinis and place those in a special bin, she would be very grateful. She gave me a 5 minute explanation about why, and this is what I got out of it - if they process the bottle caps with the non-burnable materials, the carbon dioxide that is emitted from the process (just of the caps, mind you) will get into the bloodstream of our children, and the next generation of children will be sterile or have some other horrible disease. Ok, ok - don't put me on a guilt trip about kids. So now, we've added another bin to our ever growing population of trash containers - one just for lids to plastic bottles.

On one of our tours yesterday, we visited the Ichigaya Memorial Hall (see pic) that is part of the Japanese Defense Agency (equivalent to our Pentagon). The hall has a long history, and has even physically been dismantled and moved across town - but the Grand Hall is most well known as being the site in May 1946 as the Court of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. It's amazing in the interior for all of the optical illusions embedded to ensure that the Emperor appeared larger and higher than any of the subjects that may be in the hall. We got to sit where the wartime Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo and other leaders were sentenced to hang for war crimes. It was a bit eerie, but very interesting.


The Prime Minister quit two days ago. Have you heard? Doesn't seem to be making much of a stir here. You'd think that in a classroom with a bunch of Japanese parliament and business people, there'd be some talk about it. Not really - no water cooler talk of it at all. I had lunch with the lady that I mentioned yesterday, and she works in the parliament, and had very little to say. I've found that in the two times I've asked Japanese women their opinion on something, they are VERY reluctant to share their thoughts. I'll have to explore this some more.

Joe just got back from speed dating - need to go get the scoop!

Ja Mata!

Can I borrow your dictionary?!

Today was my first full day of school - lions and tigers and bears, oh my! This is technically the foreign officer orientation week, so us ferners (4 of us) were introduced to each other yesterday afternoon, and this morning we met up with the other civilians in the class (6 people). We made a visit to the Ministry of Defense, received some briefings, had lunch with our Japanese sponsors and took a tour of the Ministry in the afternoon. My brain hurts already. See the scanned first page that I was hit with during the first briefing - There were 30 more progressively more complex and crowded slides to follow. The instructor essentially read the entire package, with LOTS of requisite molar sucking - that was just the first briefing. The next briefing was better only in that the instructor read faster than the first, and the briefing was over in 40 minutes instead of 60. The PAIN, oh the PAIN.

Good news is that there is one other woman in the class of 47! We spoke briefly today and she's very nice. She is a staffer for the Japanese Parliament. My sponsor is a Japanese Air Force Colonel - excellent English, so he'll be a great resource. He attended the U.S. Air War College a few years ago. The other foreign officers are from France and India. There's one other U.S. Army officer and his Japanese is fantastic - been here for about 12 years off and on. There are supposed to be two other foreign officers coming to join us later - one from Thailand and one from China. It promises to be an interesting and challenging year. Fortunately, the U.S. military has this right - we get excellent language training prior to attending this course - the Indian had 4 months of daily language training, and the French officer had 3 hours a week for the past year - really not enough to even begin to get comfortable with this language.

My head and feet hurt (lots of walking today in pointy and medium heeled shoes), and I need to go do some translating for tomorrow's classes. Wish me luck!

If there are any DLI instructors reading - thank you again for getting us as well prepared as we are. I complain, but I actually understand about 60% of what's going on - the military vocabulary is indispensible.

If there are any DLI pre-NIDS students reading - Cram as much military terminology kanji into your head as possible, and then ask for more!

Ja Mata!

2IC in beehive and go-go boots!

I wasn't quite old enough to vote when I attended a 1984 Geraldine Ferraro rally in Portland, OR. I remember looking at her and thinking, "hmm, President Ferraro, not quite buying it." Of course I was only 17, but she just seemed very unispiring to me, much like her ticket mate. Fast forward (and I mean FAAAAST) oh, 24 years (really??) and now I get to think about President Palin. Bee-hive-stylin'-schoolmarm-glass-wearin'-caribou-shootin'-beauty queen for President?? Add to that someone who stands up against corruption, takes on the old fogey establishment (and wins), and stands by her values. I am truly amazed at what she has accomplished in her mere 44 years. And, ok, what a hunk and dear of a husband. 5 kids and supportive of his wife - where in the world do they grow those kind of men? If you tell me they're all in Alaska, I'm getting out my Russian fur hat and taking the Bering Straits route.

The obvious bad news is....drumroll for the buzzword of this campaign....no experience. Obama has marginally "more" experience than Palin - but at least Palin is in the number 2 spot. We just have to hope that McCain doesn't choke on a pretzel or cheeto while laying down on the couch, with only his dog to save him (do the McCain's have a dog?) What VP candidate has had all the blocks checked? Dan Quayle, Al Gore?? Nope. And all things considered, I like Biden as well - an obvious contrast to Obama as Palin is in contrast to McCain. So, frankly all is canceled out and we're back to looking at the two candidates for President - that's what this is, right - a Presidential election year?

And to those critics who say that McCain is using Palin as his "hail Mary" - what else was he supposed to do? This is a contest to run our country, and he could have made a worse choice for different reasons by choosing Romney. I giggle at the sight of McCain just waiting for Obama to finish his moving speech in accepting the Dem nomination. And then, annoucing Sarah as his running mate - to the surprise and shock of everyone - especially the Obama campaign (didn't have any commercials ready for that one). Totally took the wind out of any dem sails, and I can imagine McCain with his strained grin, cackling, rolling back heels up in the air in obvious glee at his genius - and the ability of his campaign to keep their mouths shut to enhance the element of suprise. Pure political brilliance, I say! THAT's the John McCain I've been waiting to hear from again.

I say, "Go Sarah" - Juggle this all while you still can - you're about to become a grandma. Thank God you've got McDreamy husband to help. And please, oh please, keep wearing the go-go boots, all of those old fogeys need something to kick start their engines every once in awhile.

I just filled out my absentee voting request, so couldn't help but feel a bit politically inclined this morning.

Ja Mata!