Sniffing Glue with the Shonan Ladies

The Shonan Ladies recycled cardboard into little trays today at a community center behind the JR train station. Now I know what to do with that ton of washi paper I've been carting around for the past couple years. Now pay attention:





1. Our Japanese hosts cut circles and rectangles from cardboard boxes.










2. We used two kinds of glue, white to fasten bamboo edges and handles to the cardboard and clear to cover the trays with washi paper.

3. Rubber bands kept the bamboo edges in place until the glue dried.

4. We glued Japanese tissue paper to the bottom of our trays to create a smooth surface.










5. We covered the trays with washi paper.









Most of us accomplished this project with minimal assistance from our hosts but one of us just selected washi paper and then sat back and watched two nice Japanese ladies do all the work. Mimi is my hero.

I Like Ike-bana

So it turns out Anita Pratap, the featured speaker at today's Ikebana program, is not only the wife of the Norway Ambassador to Japan but also a native of India and a former war correspondent with strong opinions about lobbyists employed by U.S. defense contractors. Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed much the same viewpoint as Pratap's shortly before stepping down from the presidency nearly 50 years ago. Still, for a few awkward minutes I couldn't help wondering whether 100 Japanese ladies with an average age of 70 were going to turn on the 20 American military spouses in the room and start beating us with flower stalks and umbrellas.

Then Pratap told us about Norway. She said seven million people live in Norway these days. So many people left Norway during an economic downturn 50 years ago - I figure just when Ike was leaving office - there are now more Norwegians living in the United States than in Norway.

I don't know what Pratap talked about next because this is when I turned to the Japanese lady on my right, a total stranger, and whispered, "How nice of America to offer them a home and economic opportunity. I guess Americans aren't all bad." And that's when Akusara became my friend. We became even better friends during lunch when she told me I didn't have to eat the shiitake mushroom and tofu chunk in my bento box.

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 . . .

If It's Thursday, It Must Be Ikebana

Hangers are jangling in Yokosuka closets this morning. It's the third week of the month, wild and crazy times from September until May with YOSC (Yokosuka Officer Spouses' Club) on Wednesdays, Ikebana on Thursdays, and Shonan Ladies on Fridays. This year I'll also be part of the Japanese and American Wives group. JAW meets twice a month, usually on Tuesdays, which was too much of a commitment during my late and lamented CO spouse days.

Since the very nature of jangling supposes more than one hanger, there's no chance of hearing that happy sound at #13 Gridley Lane. But I've made the pleasant discovery that the one dress in my wardrobe drips dry overnight if I hang it in front of the air conditioning vent in the dining room. (The HHG shipment sailed into Yokohama two days ago and they tell me it will clear customs in about a week. I wish someone would explain what "clearing customs" entails when the crates were sealed on G Street and will not be unsealed until they reach #13 Gridley Lane.)

In any event, the social season started with a bang yesterday with the YOSC coffee at CNFJ (Commander Naval Forces Japan) house on top of Halsey Hill. Diane graciously opened her home to YOSC and representatives of Ikebana and JAW (she's pictured here with the Ikebana board). Usually I walk up Halsey Hill but with two newcomers in tow I opted to charge up the steep incline in the Toyota ED which would still be parked up there, taxing the limits of Diane's hospitality, if one of my guests had not shown me how to release the parking brake.

Introducing potentially like-minded people to each other continues to thrill me. It reminds me of watching my children interact with other children for the first time, and I get the good kind of shivers imagining the lifelong friendships that will sprout from these initial encounters. At the very least, I know my charges were more enthusiastic about spending the next three years in Japan when they came down the hill than they were the day before.

I'm off to Ikebana this morning and then I'll start announcing contest winners.

Guam: Been There, Done That

The USS Blue Ridge stopped in Guam on the first weekend of Southern Swing. The reason I didn't mention this sooner has less to do with OPSEC and the Seto Pottery Fair than my fascination with maps. Once I got out my magnifying glass and managed to pinpoint Guam on a Western Pacific map, I just couldn't resist peeking at some other maps to get a better handle on Mike's whereabouts relative to other land masses.

Guam is 30 miles long and 4-12 miles wide. Frankly, I think it's nothing short of amazing that the guy driving the ship found such a tiny little speck in such a wide expanse of water. I feel the same way about Okinawa.

Mike and some of his shipmates covered most of Guam on their bikes soon after arriving on Friday afternoon. There's a Navy hospital in Guam and the commanding officer and his wife hosted a dinner where Mike ran into RADM Cullison, the deputy surgeon general, and passed him some bags of Japanese goodies to deliver to my three favorite officers at BUMED. So if you work at BUMED and think you might be one of my three favorite officers but have not seen any boxes of mushroom-shaped cookies yet, talk to RADM Cullison. You might want to check the corners of his mouth for telltale crumbs.

Here's a few things you might not know about Guam. It's north of the equator. It's the southernmost island in the Marianas and the westernmost possession of the United States. The highest point on Guam is Mount Lamlam at 1,332 feet, a mere pimple compared to Mount Everest which towers over the earth at 8,848 feet. When scientists factor in the section of Mount Lamlam below sea level, however, many believe it is the tallest mountain in the world. So now you know.

If it's raining in your part of the world today and you are on the verge of drop-kicking a bored adolescent through the front window, task them with finding Guam on a map. Then let your eyes drift due south and soon you will see Manus Island where Mike's father had such a wonderful time during World War II that we taped that Atlas page to our kitchen wall in Norfolk when he lived with us.

Mike doesn't know if his route from Guam to the next port of call will take him within sight of Manus Island, but he will definitely be checking the starboard horizon regularly. Or maybe the port horizon. And if someone other than Ancient Mariner can tell me which is right and which is left, I promise to make it worth your while.

Organization & Lack Thereof Contest(s)

Aren't organized people fascinating? My mother was organized, I have a sister-in-law who could give Mom a run for her money, and here in Japan there's Mimi.

I nearly tore a muscle congratulating myself when I woke up at 3:00 am Friday morning. Patting myself on the back as I skipped down the stairs to start the coffee, I chortled "Way to go, Self! Great job! You have altered your sleep cycle without even trying so it will be easy-breezy to catch that bus to the Seto Pottery Fair at 5:00 am tomorrow morning." Yes, three days into Southern Swing, I was already talking out loud to myself. Sometimes I pretend I'm conversing with Matt but he hasn't removed that headset in three years.

When the caffeine kicked in six hours later (that would be 9:00 am), I remembered I was going to Seto on Sunday rather than Saturday. Sticking with this topsy-turvy schedule for 48 more hours would be a challenge. Sticking with anything for 48 hours is not exactly how I define myself. What could get me to fall asleep by 9:00 pm on a Saturday night? Which book should I take to read on the bus, five hours each way? Working through thorny problems like these depletes all the organizational fuel in my tiny tank.

Fortunately, the 7-11 store just outside the base is carrying the jumbo-size Kirin autumn brew. Say goodnight, Kathy, but put the Evanovich book next to the front door first.

One of my children forgot to take a coat on a middle school ski trip some years ago. In the middle of January. Something like this would never happen to one of Mimi's kids.Five days before the pottery fair she was making detailed plans, free associating the advantages and disadvantages of wheeled suitcases versus backpacks to tote our potential purchases. Snacks for the bus! Plenty of water! Pillow? Blanket? Don't forget bubblewrap and old towels to protect our treasures during their bumpy ride home in the bowels of the bus.

Neither our old towels nor any of our blankets have caught up with us yet. I considered borrowing Matt's quilt but, well, he was wrapped up so tightly at 4:45 am that I couldn't figure out how to quickly unroll the quilt without sending him flying into the closet or out the window.

While I'm deciding which Seto pottery pictures I can post without ruining any/someone's Christmas, you can duke it out for a taste of those choco-bana cookies featured the day before last. You get two shots at the cookies:

1) Name the sister-in-law mentioned in the first paragraph (voting for yourself is always appropriate per my mother).
2) Identify the offspring who went skiing without outerwear

Simply Delicious

The Meiji Corporation is expected to report a sharp rise in sales for the third quarter. Although the confectionary firm has dozens of products on the market, an anonymous source within the company credits increased sales of mushroom-shaped cookies with the unanticipated profits. Further, most of the sales have occurred in Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture.

"Since the middle of July our distributors on the Miura Peninsula - primarily grocery and convenience stores - have been restocking their cookie shelves hourly to keep up with the incredible demand. Meiji responded to this opportunity by test-marketing a new flavor in early September. The response to choco-banana has exceeded our expectations by a wide margin, particularly in Yokosuka City where a middle-aged American woman has been spotted giving our cookies to security guards stationed at the entrances to the U.S. Navy base."