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.