A Snippy Dragon, a Semi-Braided Wreath, and a Melancholy Mother

We finished our kimekomi dragons yesterday. Fearless offered her house and I offered to help with the food. She was making her yummy curry soup and thought a Pampered Chef braid in the shape of a wreath or candy cane would make a nice entree. "Consider it done!" said I, failing to mention that I had never before attempted to braid refrigerated dinner rolls.

The finished product looked about as professional as the Blonde Wonder's hair the time she asked me to fashion it into a French braid. Few things are as simple as they look in books.

Peevish earns an A for effort and a D for execution

Matsuzaki-san emitted a little groan of pleasure as she swallowed her first bite and most of us went back for seconds. I'll give this recipe another try when I am feeling very patient.

We spent eight hours completing our dragons. I skipped off to the beauty parlor for two hours in mid-afternoon, hoping the teacher would present me with a finished dragon upon my return. That didn't happen but at least I got to use my little scissors to snip fabric this time around. That's why I'm calling my dragon Snippy. You probably thought it was for an entirely different reason.

My Japanese book club ladies are coming tomorrow to chat about a book set in World War II. Then the Ancient Mariner and I are going to fill three suitcases with Christmas and wedding presents and a fourth suitcase with clothes and toiletries. We are heading to Dallas bright and early Thursday morning to find a Mother of the Groom dress before we witness the union of James and Emily on Sunday evening.

This is an exciting, bittersweet time. The little desk I am sitting at as I write this is covered with initials carved by English school children fifty or so years ago. I bought this desk for James when he was ten years old. Down near my left knee, there's a more recent inscription: James wuz here.

Yes, he wuz. But not for nearly long enough.

You Can Take the Boy Out of Texas, But You Can't Take Texas Out of the Boy

My Sweet Baby James will marry the Amazing Emily the week before Christmas in Texas.

Yes, I'm thrilled. We all fell in love with Emily when she visited Japan with James last year. She brings out the best in my boy and what mother isn't secretly relieved when her son falls in love with a girl with her own looks (beautiful) and personality (witty, bright, and confident). But please don't point out the similarities to James until after the wedding lest he get cold feet . . .

All the bridesmaids hail from Texas. The groom's sister hasn't lived there since she was nine, however, so she's likely the only member of the wedding party who will be wearing her first pair of cowboy boots when she prances down the aisle. Fortunately she has a fashionable Texan friend to advise her on the subtle nuances of dressy v. casual rodeo footwear. (I used to know this stuff but it's been a few years since I two-stepped around the dance floor at Billy Bob's in Fort Worth.)

The ripple effects of Royal Weddings are fairly well known -- Diana's hairdo and Kate's hosiery, for instance -- but those occurred after the actual ceremonies. The stylish Emily and James are trend-setters of a higher order. Fashionable young girls are already sporting cowboy boots on the streets of Kamakura.

Now if only I could figure out what to wear.  

Fear and Trembling in Yokosuka, Part II: Emergency Contact System

After crawling out from under the table, I checked my watch and calculated six or seven hours would pass before my children would wake up on the other side of the world, learn of the earthquake, and suffer through simultaneous thoughts of "Is Mom okay?" and "Did she leave me anything?"  In six or seven hours I might be able to master a calm and soothing tone of voice and polish off that darn book.

Then I glanced at my computer.  Facebook was on the screen and my youngest child had just posted a message to his buddies.

College Boy: Man, that earthquake was crazy. Wish I was there to experience it.(Johnathon Bures and 3 others like this.)

"What is he doing up in the middle of a Virginia night?" I fumed just as the first aftershock sent me racing back to the table's shelter.  That aftershock was almost as interminable as the earthquake.  By the time the ground stopped shuddering, my thoughts had been transformed into "Thank God he inherited my Grandpa Sykes's nightowl gene.  There's an inexplicable comfort to be derived from sharing this experience with a loved one who is not at risk of suffering bodily injury from said experience."  I stumbled back to the computer.

Peevish: I am so glad you are NOT here because it is very, very scary. Much as I don't want to die alone, I would really prefer that you outlive me by at least 50 years. (no one liked this; I hate it when that happens.)

College Boy: Call me! (Johnathon Bures likes this.)

Summoning up the calmest and most soothing tone of voice available to me under the circumstances, I placed the call.  I wanted to make him laugh.  My memory is a bit muddled, but I believe I succeeded. 

As it turns out, he's on Spring Break from classes right now.  So it was okay he was up so late.  Not that he isn't up just as late when he's not on Spring Break.

Golden Girl and Texas Star subsequently informed me that College Boy took it upon himself to alert all six of his siblings, including the one he's met only twice in his 18 years on earth, that I had survived a natural disaster which none of them knew had occurred.

The Ancient Mariner and I derive great comfort from knowing there is a communication mechanism in place to spread the news when one of us eventually kicks the bucket.  We are quite shocked, however, to find that the child who didn't even know how to pick up a telephone until two years ago would actually know how to activate that system.  I certainly would not have known how to reach all seven kids as quickly as he did.

I decided to leave that book to my sister.

Virtue Is Its Own Reward But I'm Not Returning the Purse

Artistic and her family went to China a while back, November I think. Visiting China means jumping through enough bureaucratic hoops to boggle my mind (ie, more than one) but details don't faze people as artistic as Artistic. Or so I've noticed.

However.

They arrived at Haneda Airport at the crack of dawn and discovered they were lacking the proper passport for one of her 15-year old twins (so many of my friends here have twins that I'd look like quite the maternal weenie if I didn't have James's birth weight to bandy about).

My telephone rang at approximately two minutes after the crack of dawn. Incredibly, I actually (1) heard the telephone ring and (2) deigned to pick up the receiver. Relief washed over me when I realized the caller was not an emergency physician in Texas or Virginia. How relieved was I to know that one of my children had not been involved in a terrible car accident? Relieved enough to consent to carry a passport from Yokosuka to Haneda while wearing a fedora because there was no time to shower. Not relieved enough to face down Artistic's huge canine while retrieving the passport from her house. I immediately nominated Weather for that portion of the assignment. Pretty quick thinking for someone who had not yet sipped any caffeine, n'est-ce pas?

Tossing that passport to Artistic just as the plane was boarding made me feel warm and fuzzy, probably the way you feel when you volunteer at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. And just like you don't expect a reward for ladling out minestrone to the homeless, I was content to earn a few desperately-needed pennies in heaven for my good deed. And maybe a cell phone charm from China. But that didn't happen so I went back to savoring my little stack of celestial pennies.

A tatami mat with blue edging

A few weeks ago Artistic handed Weather and me gift bags. Inside were purses she had made for us out of the fabric used to edge Japanese tatami mats. That fabric bears a distinct resemblance to the webbing that left patterns on my chubby thighs when I sat in folding aluminum lawn chairs back in the 1960s and 1970s.

This purse is way cooler than a cell phone charm from China or anywhere else. I just hope my gleeful acceptance of this treasured gift won't require me to spend extra time in Purgatory.

My cool purse

Sameness, Sadness, and a "Celebrity Sighting"

We instituted Weekly Restaurant Night when the kids were young.  The plan called for rotating the responsibility for choosing a restaurant between the five of us, in order from youngest to oldest, but we pulled Matt out of the rotation five minutes into Week Six when he nominated the same restaurant he'd picked the first week:  McDonald's.  He was four at the time.  We assumed he'd develop more catholic tastes, at least in restaurants, as he grew older.
Silly us.

Fourteen years later, we asked Matt where he wanted to eat after his graduation ceremony.  He picked his favorite yakiniku (Korean BBQ) restaurant, Chaya, and we reserved a semi-private roomlet with two tables.

Fourteen years plus two days later, we asked Matt how he wished to celebrate his 18th birthday.  He wanted to invite his girlfriend to join us for dinner at -- sure enough -- his favorite yakiniku (Korean BBQ) restaurant, Chaya, and we got there early enough to snag that same semi-private roomlet.  Katie graduated to the grownup table to accommodate Jeanine.

Figuring they'd eaten enough Korean BBQ to last a decade, we took James and Emily to Sunday Brunch at the Officers' Club on base their last morning in Japan.  We dawdled to postpone the inevitable gut-wrenching departure.  Sunday Brunch is a great venue for dawdling but eventually we had to buckle ourselves into that rental van and wend our way to the airport. 

Emily's plane left first (long story) and we had a little time to take a few more pictures before James made his solitary trek through that family-severing metal detector.

We were feeling weepy.  Narita Airport knows all about weepy and has positioned smile-inducing signage throughout the departure area.

Unfortunately, you cannot read the sign behind them.  It says something about no samurai and no swords allowed on aircraft.  (I hid that shirt from Matt for six months.  Too bad I didn't hide it for seven . . .).

Why are we crying?  Matt and I will see James again in August.  We're going to spend a weekend in Dallas when I escort Matt to college in Virginia.  Still . . .

Mike will be deployed in August.  He does not know when he will next see James.

"Maybe a non-fat latte will help you feel better," I suggested, pushing him into the airport Starbucks. 

"Food is not a cure for melancholy," he lectured me as he waited morosely for his drink and I inhaled a box of mushroom-shaped cookies.

 Doesn't he look like Jack Benny when he is sad?  I think it's the thing he does with his arms.

Next:  Suzi and Kate in Tokyo 

Tokyo Tower

Overheard in Roppongi on June 9:

"Hey, Mom!  What's this orange metal thing that looks like the Eiffel Tower?"

"It's Tokyo Tower, a television antenna erected in 1958.  The tower is over 1,000 feet high and has two observation decks, the Grand Observation Platform at 492 feet and the Special Observation Platform at 820 feet."

"I think you memorized this brochure.  Can we go up?  Puh-lease?"

"Well, okay.  Get in line behind those three dozen Japanese schoolchildren and try to control your excitement.  You are an unofficial ambassador of the United States while you are in Japan.  One of those elevators over there will take us up to the first platform."

"The kids sure look cute in their school uniforms."

"Yes, they do, but those girls are not children.  They are elevator operators."

"And they do a great job.  That was one smooth ri--Wow!  Tokyo sure is big.  It stretches all the way to the horizon in every direction.  Emily and I want to check out the view from the Special Observation Platform."

"Go ahead.  Aunt Suzi and I will stay here and play with this map display.  It's fun to see how the city has grown and changed from the Edo Era to the Meiji Era to today."

*****

"Suzi!  Come over here and check out this floor window.  Don't stand too close!"

"Why not?  That big Sumo guy just walked right across the floor window over there."

"Eek!  He's doing it again just to scare us."

"What a joker.  Ha, ha.  I sure could use a beer to calm my heart rate back down."

"Me, too.  Let's tour a beer museum after I use the restroom."

"I'm not a rocket scientist, but I am going to assume one of these two buttons makes the toilet flush."

"Yes, but which one?  And what happens if you push the wrong button?  We are 492 feet in the air."

"Gee, you really did memorize that broch--Ha!  I think I might have figured out what happens if you push the wrong button.  The sign over the sink says "This isn't good to drink.'"

"Well, I'm pretty thirsty but I think I'll hold out for a beer."

Next:  Yebisu Beer Museum

Boy & Oh Boy

I haven't filled you in on my day in Kurihama with Reiko, or the Japanese and American Wives' Club Fiesta, or the recycled kimono sale, or my trip to China Pete's with Sue, or my latest driving adventures, or Katie's decision to intern at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or the banana au lait mushroom-shaped cookies Reiko found, or my recent conversations with Dr. T. But you will just have to stop back for all that (if you care) because today . . . drum roll . . . my James is celebrating his 24th birthday. That's him below with his girlfriend Emily. We are very excited that they'll be here in June for Matt's graduation.

The rest of today's post is for James' godmother, Aunt Cathy, who isn't on Facebook so hasn't seen the pictures from Matt's theatrical debut in "Back to the 80s". He plays Michael Feldman, a frightfully arrogant high school senior who eventually gets his comeuppance to the delight of the entire audience, including the actor's mother. It seems appropriate to be posting these pictures on James' birthday because Matt drew so many aspects of his character from his memories of James at 15 and 16.

He's the captain of the football team and gets himself elected class president by stealing the nice kid's campaign ideas which he presents to his classmates in the form of a rap song. (This is after he sings "Footloose" but all my pictures of that scene are blurry because it's a big production number with the entire cast dancing behind and around him.)

He and the nice kid (my friend Mimi's son Andrew) have a singing duel (above) over Tiffany. Matt wins. The song they sing is "I Would Walk 500 Miles." They are very funny in this scene.

This is another funny scene. Just as the nice kid is inviting the girl to go for a ride on his new bike, Matt comes on stage in a big cardboard car and sings "Get Into My Car." He is really hilarious. I spend a lot of time during intermission informing other audience members that the school provided all the costumes. Some people thought he borrowed the purple track suit from his dad's closet . . .

This is my favorite scene. The two girls are singing the Debbie Gibson song, "Lost in Your Eyes," while Matt changes his facial expression and strikes J. C. Penney catalogue poses in time with the music. You would recognize at least half of those facial expressions because he borrowed them from his brother, uncles, and cousins.

This is the prom scene, after the computer nerd beats him up. I don't have any good pictures of the Star Wars dream sequence when Andrew plays Luke Skywalker cavorting with Princess Leia and Matt shows up in a Darth Vader costume, wins a light saber battle, and skips off the stage arm-in-arm with the princess.

This is the end of the show. The girls are serenading him with "Hey, Mickey, You're So Fine" and then he sings a few bars of "Get Into My Car."

I'm fairly certain he tapped into his "What's for dinner? I'm starving" vein for this scene.

And this is when he's probably dredging up memories of the "I can't believe Santa didn't bring me a PlayStation2" Christmas.

So there you have it. We miss our family more than ever this week. After the final show tomorrow night, I'll get back on track and fill you in on all the things we love about living in Japan.

Sandy and James

Sandy is, indeed, my most organized sister-in-law but all of them share one or two glaring personality traits with my mother. Boys really do marry their mothers apparently.

It was James who forgot to take his coat on a seventh grade ski trip. He remembered his gloves all right, but gave them to a girl whose fingers were turning blue. To the best of my knowledge, James has not flirted with snow sports since that day but still enjoys rescuing the occasional damsel in distress. Or flirting with them.

So Deuce wins the Grand Prize which - soft touch that I am - will be whatever amount of Kirin Autumn brew (or nearest equivalent) I can cram legally into my suitcase next month.

A consolation prize has been created for the girl who nailed the aunt question but flunked the brother half of the test. And it's not like she was away at college when the incident took place, just totally wrapped up in tenth grade stuff, homework no doubt. We'll be giving her a roundtrip ticket to Japan so she can spend some quality time with her youngest brother, the one who spent his middle school years deploying computer soldiers over pixelated terrain that looked a lot like the Ardennes Forest. Too bad he wasn't into famous naval engagements like the Battle of the Coral Sea . . .