April 21st
Say it with a picture...
I could try and explain the effort and energy Mari has put into looking after Kiyo and Aya over the last few months, but then I reckon if you look at this photo you can see all the love and tiredness for yourself. She still looks beautiful, though...
what else do you see in the photo, answers on a cyber-postcard to tim@papajap.com
April 16
Contributions
It was the Easter service this weekend and Mari, the kids and I went to church.
When it was time for the collection I asked how much Mari thought dying on the cross for our sins was worth. She looked at what she'd put in the envelope, felt a bit guilty and said she'd put some more in. It made us both laugh. I suppose the fact I made that joke shows the true depth, or should I say shallowness, of my Christianity.
I have a strange relationship with the church. Although I have an affinity with a lot of Christian sentiments, I don't believe in God. I suppose this makes me a hypocrit in going to church, but, that being a given, I do feel a deep sense of connection with some of the ideas expressed in church.
One of those concepts I feel an affinity with is a need for a non-erotic and altruistic love. This is expressed in the concept God's fatherly love. On one level it is protective and fills people with joy. On another level it requires people who experience it to be true to its call. This is the sense in which God's love could be said to be stern. It doesn't just provide a sense of protection, it issues a requirement to be true to its call.
Living a life in accordance to such a call is something I have always felt inside, however as I cannot give myself as a true Christian believer does, I often question what that sense of devotion, or the importance of living a good life amounts to. Christian ideology offers a path, but, if I am true to myself, it is not one I can follow. This makes life a lot more problematical, because there is this sense of being true to the requirements of love, but a lack of direction,lack of guidance of how best to follow that requirement. This sense of toil may very much be a condition of a proper response to these questions, a mark of the terrain - I just wish I didn't feel like such a guileless and gullible explorer.
Throughout most of my life I have never felt any sense of confidence or a centredness from which to explore these issues. Maybe this issued from a weakness of character, an inability to examine the spiritual meaning of what I did, opting for a slap-dash, 'as it suits my needs' appraisal of lifes challenges.
However having becoming a father myself, I feel as though I am starting to gain a foothold, to see the meaning of human life from a deeper perspective. I feel as though another window has been opened on the world. The love for my children and its requirements have started to illuminate a lot for me: understanding the uniqueness of a human life, wishing for fortune to bless another's life, coming to realise the seriousness of love's call. Although I often fail to meet the purity of the light that comes in from that window, it has illuminated a path that I know I must follow.
Another thing that has stemmed from becoming a father and also has resonance in the church is that of gratitude, seeing your life as a gift. I have always seen the sentiment behind saying grace before eating as natural. In Japan, there is a similar belief, that we must say thanks for all the life that has been forsaken to feed us - this sense of life from plants up having meaning is part of the shintoist and buddhist heritage of Japanese religious thought. Over here, we say 'Itadakimasu' (thank you for what we are about to receive) before a meal and 'gochisousamadeshita' (thanks for an eminent feast) after one. As Mari's family are Christian we often get a double dose of gratitude with a Christian prayer too. Seems to me you can't be thankful enough for the simple things in life.
Just the other day I was sitting in the garden in a rare five minutes without Aya or Kiyo and I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude that I may have witnessed this exact moment, with the dappled sunlight falling across the crimson vibrance of plum blossom and the musty smell of shoots breaking the skin of the earth in the shadows beneath the magnolia.
I felt a sense of honour and humility, an honour that I had been given this moment and a humility borne in recognising in that power of new growth lay a darker promise of decay and mortality. This was a poetic instance of feeling like that, but I often have those thoughts. I might be sitting on a commuter train all stuffy and cramped and still that sense of gratitude comes like a wave washing over me.
April 14
Aya goes to Nursery
Well, the fateful day finally arrived when Aya had to go to nursery school. Although we'd been trying to convince her that school was fun, she seems to have had a gut feeling that it might live up to the hype!
Her immediate reaction to anyone mentioning school has been, 'Ikitakunai!'(I don't want to go.) or 'Mou yadda, ikanai-yo!' (Leave it out! I'm not going and that's the end of it). Whenever Aya is angry or annoyed, she screws up her face and a little river of wrinkles bubbles up on her nose. This gives me a serious case of the giggles because it's so funny to see someone so angry and so cute at the same time. Understandibly, this irritates Aya even more.
Anyway, anyone who has lived in Japan will know that ceremonies are very important over here, so Aya's first day at nursery was to attend the 'nyu-gaku-shiki' entrance or opening ceremony.
The opening ceremony is a time to dress up smart and celebrate, as you can see from the photo of Mari, Aya and Kiyo.
Click on the photos if you want to enlarge them.
Kiyo couldn't attend the ceremony, so she can be excused for turning away from the camera. You can tell this is before the ceremony because both Aya and Mari are looking a little bit pensive. I was at work feeling pensive too.
Before they set off, Mari had a chance to take a couple more shots in the garden. Here's one of those disney princess inspired curtsies going on. Notice also, the slight pigeon-toed position of the feet. Aya isn't pigeon-toed at all, but in Japan being pigeon-toed, along with having 2 rows of canine teeth is traditionally seen as 'cute'. Not sure if this was just an accidental pigeon-toed moment or whether Aya was trying to be girly!
And here's a close up of that lovely nursery school hat. The name of her nursery is actually quite a mouthful. Here goes.,.deep breath everyone...Okayama-daigaku-kyouiku-gakubu-fuzoku-yochien (Nursery school affiliated with Okayama Univeristy Education Department). Which is shortened, thank god, to fuzoku-yochien (affiliated nursery). Those of you with keen kanji skills should be able to pick out the characters in gold on her hat. Notice also the pebble edged flowerbeds. Mari always says it makes her think we live in a house by the sea. One day we will Mari, I promise!
Getting back to the nursery...I must admit I was a bit irritated thinking that Aya would have to sit through an opening ceremony, which is quite a stuffy affair, on her first day there. In most of the opening ceremonies I've been to the children and the parents sit separately. I was thinking that if Aya would have to sit listening to someone go on about the meaning of nursery education while she sat in a group of children she didn't know from Adam, then it would hardly be an incentive to go back there. Luckily the children and parents sat together, so Aya didn't feel too stressed.
After the ceremony it was time to take the official photos. Mari and Aya had to stand in separate lines. Initially, Mari was 2 lines back, but the woman just behind Aya moved across so Mari could be right behind her. Mari said she touched Aya's shoulder to reassure her everything was OK, but that act of tenderness seemed to be a catalyst and Mari said tears started to stream down her face. It wasn't a big bawling affair, I think it was a relatively silent event - making it all the sadder!
After the official photos it was time for the unoffical ones outside, under the cherry blossom.
I like the idea that school starts in April. It seems such a natural time for new beginnings. Just as you are starting a new school or a new job, the world seems to be bursting into life, you can almost hear the new shoots breaking open the soil and new buds cracking through the bark on trees - the sounds of Spring reclaiming the world from the barren and twiggy austerity of winter. Oops I should have put a warning on the top of this page about random bouts of poetic nonsense billowing out...
As you can see from the photos, the cherry blossoms are there, but there's not much evidence of the sunlight!
All in all it seemed Aya had handled her first day at nursery pretty well. Although a lot of our friends tell us Aya is outgoing and talkative, we know how sensitive she is to things around her and how much her little mind buzzes and fusses over the smallest of details. Well, I say we know, we have an idea of what's going on there!
So we were really glad that despite her gut feeling that nursery school might be the beginning of the end of the world, she hadn't broken down in a heap and given in! I keep on thinking of the REM track here. You know, '...it's the end of the world as we know it...and I feel fine'. She looks a little bit unsure of herself in this shot. but there is something in her eyes saying, 'so, this is what the world looks like after your first day in nursery? it's a bit different, but i can handle it.
That being said there was still some time for a few more tears before they left the grounds of the nursery.