Hospitality

The best part of living abroad is that you get visitors. The best part of living 6,000 miles away is that the visitors stay for a good chunk of time. In this time they get to discover Tokyo, Chloe and Tessa get to discover them, and we get to discover this truly immense seemingly unknowable city through diverse perspectives, and sometimes we get to discover dancing till 4am in Tokyo while they babysit our sleeping beauties. We may be old but we can still rock the dance floor :) Well, at least we think we are rocking.

Most cities make you work to find all the little gems they possess, let alone to merely experience the city in its true urban form. Tokyo takes this cardiovascular aspect to the sightseeing up a notch -- or twenty. The city is dotted with taxis but they are expensive and usually take twice as long to reach a destination than public transport and good old-fashioned walking. Like millions of others (no joke, Tokyo has a population of 12 million and greater Tokyo, 35 million), we therefore find ourselves taking trains everywhere we want to go, which sounds straightforward enough. The tiring part is that the trains are crowded (read: no seats!), you usually have to transfer (read: tons of stairs!), you usually have to walk to wherever you're going once exiting the labyrinthine train stations (read: more effing stairs!), you usually get lost and you are usually carrying a baby or two. Oh wait, maybe that's just us. No wonder the Japanese are so slim (or "smartu" as they say here). And, since everyone from the six-year old girl traveling home from school alone to the elderly guy with a cane to the women wearing high heels (women do not do the sneakers until they reach the office thing here) and everyone in between is climbing the damned stairs, well you can't complain. Or maybe you can complain but just not to a Japanese person. Nick's dad now refers to chez nous as "the clinic" as you're sure to get your exercise and hopefully a little motivation while you're at it.

The first time you try to locate an address in Tokyo you feel as though you just slid down the bunny hole. Numbers do not follow a consecutive order, streets don't have names, and you can often be standing 100 meters (yes, meters) away from the place you are looking for and even the nice Japanese person with the misfortune of being asked to help won't know how to find it. God bless Google Maps. God bless the Japanese also for being so gracious about giving directions. Here's an example. After studying the map provided by the restaurant's website before leaving the house, google-mapping it at home, google-mapping it again on my phone, google-mapping it a third time on Nick's phone and still getting lost (wtf?) I ask a woman for help. She proceeds to study the map then asks my permission (seriously) to call the restaurant. She spends five minutes discussing the restaurant's location with the restaurant, thanks the restaurant about ten times before hanging up then tells us it is down the road on the right. Unbelievable. Another person who inadvertently became our temporary tour guide looked up the address on his own phone then proceeded to walk us all the way to the store. Talk about hospitality. In exchange I let him take my picture. He asked. He also took Nick's dad's picture. Strange indeed. I've never experienced a culture where people were so hospitable about helping out complete strangers. I guess the Japanese like to have visitors too.

Click here to see pics. Click here to see more.

Point A to Point B

We've come to experience some semblance of a routine despite Nick's frequent business trips and me continuing to be completely stumped by little things like calling the post office to request redelivery of a package. The simple things require great effort but also offer great reward. I'm also still occasionally stumped by the buttons in the house but I am learning, albeit sometimes the hard way. For example, the very morning that Nick left for a ten-day trip to Romania, the mailman rang the bell from the outside gate and in my haste to hit the correct button to grant entry to the courtyard I hit the button that apparently says "emergency" in Japanese and makes a disturbingly loud alarm ring repeatedly and incessantly to the utter dismay of the babies and to my shock and confusion. Proceeding to blindly hit every button (again, Chloe-style) did not make the alarm cease ringing so I did what any self-respecting ex-pat would do in such a situation -- ran to the neighbor's house to ask for help. My embarrassment deepened upon realizing that the alarm was sounding outside in the courtyard as well as inside the house. Fortunately, I have a very nice neighbor who happened to be home. I won't be pressing that button again.

Before discussing our daily routine, the phenomenon of bikes in this city warrants another mention, especially since our bike, or "mamachari" as it is known here, is an integral part of our day. Raising children in Tokyo is apparently so difficult and cost-prohibitive that there is a population crisis as fewer and fewer people are having children and the generation of Japanese above 60 greatly outnumbers the younger generation. One example of the challenges parents face is day care. The city offers public day care, which is quite inexpensive once your child has a spot, but the supply is sadly disproportionate to the apparent demand. Another example -- and here's where the bike comes in -- is that it is apparently illegal to drop your kid off at school via privately-owned car. Unfortunately, it is also impossible to bring your child on public transportation during rush hour due to overcrowding (whatever you may have heard about the crowded Japanese trains and the "pushers" who stand on the platforms and literally push people into the packed cars like sardines in a can, is absolutely true). Hence, the bike. Moms all over Tokyo drop their kids off and pick their kids up from school, day care and the like, rain or shine, via bike. The mamachari (momma bike) is the city's station wagon. I have seen moms with three kids on one bike.

Our routine involves Chloe attending Japanese nursery school in Sangenjaya and me taking her there by bike with Tessa in the baby carrier along for the ride. Weeeeee!! So far they seem to love it. I love it sometimes. Sometimes it feels a little too much like a live-action video game. Avoid the bikers coming at you every which way, use the mirrors at the corners to turn without hitting people, avoid the elderly hobbling down the street, avoid woman zig-zagging due to texting while biking (TWB?), avoid the children running across the street, the skateboarder, the car, the scooters. Believe it or not, our route consists entirely of back streets, which are generally quiet, serpentine and, for the most part, free of cars, compared to the "busy" streets.

My own routine now involves practicing yoga at a studio called mysore tokyo in what is sometimes referred to as the busiest place on earth - Shibuya crossing. It is an oasis of calm in a jungle of people, electronics, cars and utter commotion. I practice there three days a week from 6:30am to 8:00am then rush home to get Chloe ready for school and relieve Nick so that he can get squished onto his morning commute to the office. Nick's routine consists of Métro-boulot-dodo (commute, work, sleep), as the French say. His commute involves being packed onto trains and occasional (so far, monthly) 20 hour flights to Cluj, Romania. Tessa's routine now consists of commuting too -- crawling from one room to the other trying to keep up with Chloe. So we are all learning how to get from point A to point B in our own ways.

has it been a month?

I'm not going to say that things are necessarily easy here, especially with two babies under age two (although this, by its very nature, cannot be easy anywhere) but time does seem to be flying by. This makes me nervous for the following reason: we will no longer be able to use the excuse that we just got here! I use this excuse for everything ranging from not having pictures hung yet in the house to not knowing how to say check please in Japanese. Yikes. To make matters worse, last week's Japanese lesson was canceled due to an accident on the train that made it impossible for our teacher to get to the house. She apologized so many times I thought she'd never forgive herself. The Japanese are so punctual, efficient and disciplined that when there is a delay to the train schedule the police (or men in imposing-looking uniforms anyway) stand at the train stations handing out slips that commuters may turn in to their employers explaining the delay. Sort of like a doctor's note. I'd like to see the MTA do that when the F train is tardy. Oh right, but NY does not publish a train schedule now does it.

When living abroad, you find yourself doing things you have never ever done before. I'm not sure I have ever gone to a sports bar with Nick to watch a college football game yet last Sunday I somehow found myself boarding a train at 8 in the morning then walking through a seedy part of Roppongi (or maybe it was just the hour) reminiscent of the Times Square of old (pre-Guiliani) to watch a Ducks vs. Trojans game at a bar called Legends. My first glimpse of Tokyo Tower was therefore with beer in hand, baby in the other, eating nachos early Sunday morning with a bunch of screaming ex-pats in the background. Bizarre indeed. Go Ducks. We also managed to find probably the only other guy in Tokyo who watches hockey religiously and we had a hockey night right here at the house Friday night. I even managed to buy six packs of non malt liquor beer and bbq potato chips. Go Sharks.

Apart from the above mentioned American cultural activities we also managed to have a night out last week sans babies. We went to a wonderful little, subterranean sushi joint where we shared a big table with another party, took our shoes off and sat on pillows. Nick managed to make the waiter laugh by ordering a bottle of sake (um, the bottles are quite large) and managed to force me to eat shrimp tempura (um, it was a miniature shrimp completely intact, eyes and all, with no fried breading disguising its pre-existence -- where's the tempura part??) It tasted like a french fry. I particularly liked the way the waiter poured the sake until it completely overflowed into its coaster and then said oops every time. Oops.

Here are some pics. I almost forgot to mention our neighborhood Halloween party. Food, kids, champagne, costumes, Halloween cookies shaped like pirates, (thanks Nick!), sushi shaped like pumpkins and monsters and trick or treating (or, like Chloe likes to say: "treat!") One of our neighbors, Ito #13, rang our bell around 8pm to hand us a special bag of treats they put together just for Tessa (baby treats!) because Chloe was too slow to make it all the way around to their house to retrieve it. Pretty impressive. And we thought our cookies were good.

week # san

In Japan, there is a process for everything and which everyone, without fail and seemingly without complaint, follows -- examples of such types of processes range from the manner in which everyone wraps up his or her umbrella before entering a store to taking out one's garbage where literally every other day of the week is designated for a different type of trash although the first and third Friday of the month is different from the second and fourth Friday. Seriously.

Today I experienced the process for buying a new cell phone. Contrary to popular belief, "cash is king" is not a respected and established philosophy in all parts of the world. In Japan for example, in order to sign up for a cell phone plan one must present a variety of documents and cards that together add up to be deemed sufficient by the powers that be, sort of like getting points for different forms of ID when first applying for a drivers license. Today, despite credit card in hand, I was sent away cell phone-less for lack of sufficient documents with a slap on the wrist of capitalism. In my case, in order to purchase said product and sign up for said service, I was required to complete the following process: step one - obtain visa from Japanese consulate in San Francisco; step two - register as an "alien" in the local city hall; step three - wait two weeks and pick up alien card; step four - bring alien card and credit card to cell phone provider and attempt to explain to non-English speaking representatives that I would please please please like to purchase an iphone; step five - pay. At least, I am hoping that this will be the last step!

Another process involves enrolling one's child in nursery school but I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say, it is no small task although we are happy to report that Chloe-chan did attend her first ever all-Japanese day care session yesterday. Yay Chloe!

We had the pleasure of witnessing a local festival (or matsuri) last weekend first from our own kitchen window as the procession passed by and then at the local shrine accompanied by many of our neighbors. As a ritual from Japan's shinto religion, the local shrine's deity is carried through the town accompanied by drum music and then returned to the shrine. Our neighbor Kyoshi explained that sometimes two different processions carrying different deities will cross paths and stage a battle. He said quite often the battles, although staged, are also real. Things are not what they seem, er actually maybe they are. The scene at the shrine was reminiscent of a fair with cotton candy and toys and games, although Japanese style of course so Nick enjoyed the yakitori (grilled meat on skewers) and takoyaki (octopus dumplngs) while I stuck with soba noodles and Chloe enjoyed an old-fashioned chocolate covered banana.

Finally, I've learned that beer promising to be "brewed for good times" and "a cheerful mind" may actually be malt liquor in disquise and will create a not so cheerful morning hangover.

Some pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/jessie.mussallem/TokyoWeekSan#slideshow/5395279389189104882

week ni

Week two in Tokyo has not disappointed. Among the highlights was our first ramen noodle shop experience. This type of dining is perfect for newly expatriated Americans who do not speak a lick of Japanese as it allows you to match pictures of the dish you want with a number, insert some yen into a machine outside and then take your ticket inside without ever having to even say konnichiwa. It's a bit like drive-thru except of course, you walk. Once inside, you sit around the kitchen bar room-style, and watch your food being prepared right in front of you. There's music pumping in the joint and a large TV in the corner playing various sorts of anime and music videos and the cooks in the center cook to the beats and collectively yell out (in rhythm) hello or goodbye (or maybe both, not entirely sure) as people come and go. It was definitely cool although I'm sure we broke more than one customary rule while enjoying our meal, such as feeding each other, sharing our beers and allowing Chloe to pick up her noodles with her fingers.

Prompted initially by a desire for strong coffee, we ventured out a couple of times on the trains with the babies (albeit sans American-sized stroller) to Shibuya and to Ginza. Shibuya is famous for its crowds, its stores and its intersections, which include about six different directions of pedestrian crossing. It puts Times Square to shame. The first time there, Chloe spent most of the day sitting on Nick’s shoulders, grasping onto his hair as tightly as she could. By the second time though, our little ham was dancing in the streets to the music pouring out of the stores, entertaining the Japanese passersby. Ginza is the high fashion shopping area and they have every high end store imaginable. Dangerous. On the weekends they close the streets there to traffic so it is pleasant to walk around. We went sake tasting with the babies in tow. Chloe ate a dried squid bon bon. Then she ate another one. Not satisfied with the seafood-jerky I decided to try out the "food court" of one of the huge department stores. After realizing we weren't in the perfume department and that the food was just that nicely packaged, we bought a couple of sticky rice-filled seaweed snacks and a couple of unidentified fritters. Chloe enjoyed eating the rice while sitting on Nick's shoulders. Nick did not really enjoy getting a rice shower. The food court, however, does not have a seating area. Also suspiciously absent are garbage cans. The entire city seems devoid of such useful devices. I'm beginning to think this is how the Japanese stay so slim. Who wants to grab a bite to eat if you have to put the trash into your back pocket? Another explanation might be that the Japanese abhor eating on the go. They also disapprove of drinking on the go, which means the to-go Starbucks cup is strikingly absent, as is the darling of Nick's heart, the "roadie", which usually contains something a bit stronger than coffee. At the food court, which was so jam-packed you could barely navigate your way through it even if you do not stand out as a big group of Americans with babies strapped to your backs, I noticed a lot of women touching the babies’ feet as they passed; I decided it must be a good luck thing. Finally, on our way out I saw three teenage girls dressed entirely like Little Bo Peep. All that was missing was the sheep.

So far things are going great. We're of course, still figuring stuff out, including all the buttons in the house, although a friendly neighbor provided us with a couple of manuals in English. Nick managed to go out to Ikea, buy a bunch of stuff from the house and schedule a delivery within 48 hours. I managed to set up an Amazon account here in Japan and order some Halloween costumes for the girls, and Nick managed to purchase a wireless router and install it despite it being entirely in Japanese. Everything only took us about six times longer than it normally would have with a couple of snags (next I have to figure out how to return something to Amazon. ugh.)

http://picasaweb.google.com/jessie.mussallem/TokyoWeekNITwo#slideshow/5392237915667190354

For now, sayounara!

New Home In A Far Away Land

Dear friends and family,

We arrived in Tokyo on Tuesday September 29th 2009 after a crazy summer that included me working full-time in Manhattan and Nick working full-time in Tokyo (with a brief stint in Cluj Romania). We're looking forward to establishing some semblance of a normal family life and routine even if our surroundings are anything but "normal" for an American family of four.

We decided to create this blog as a vehicle to stay in touch with all of you despite the time difference and the distance. We'll try to keep it updated with posts and with links to photos.

So far we are doing quite well. We love our house — everything is electronic so you can prepare a hot bath upstairs from a panel in the kitchen downstairs (which I did by accident yesterday) and I’m sure Chloe will just love getting potty trained on a toilet that has a gazillion buttons. We also love the neighborhood. There is a big park nearby complete with a bike path, a skate park, an outdoor pool, soccer and baseball fields, and a children’s playground, among other things.


There is also a university nearby so there are tons of young people, tons of families, take-out joints, bars, and people biking everywhere. I love that people bike holding umbrellas in the rain, people bike with a baby in the front and a toddler in the back, people bike to the grocery store, to work, to bars, to restaurants, their kids to school and, best of all, no one locks up their bikes. I have not seen one lock anywhere.

We’ve started our Japanese lessons, which I am quickly realizing may be crucial as we have been blindly guessing about everything from the control panels in our own house (the toilet flush is not the button that power washes your bum) to items at the grocery store (bean paste did not go over well with Chloe as peanut butter). We’re also eagerly awaiting for our furniture to arrive (last night Nick discovered that one cannot open a bottle of wine with a wooden chopstick).

All in all, we are doing great. We miss all of you and we’d just love for everyone to come visit. We have a guest bedroom and lots of space. In the meantime, please call or write. We’re 16 hours ahead of Cali, 14 ahead of Illinois and 13 ahead of New York. That’s right, we’re in the future :)

Here is a link to some pictures http://picasaweb.google.com/jessie.mussallem/FromBklynToTokyoViaCali#slideshow/5389686005153998674

Lots of love,
Jessie, Nick, Chloe & Tessa

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