Japanory

How a Child Copes with Becoming an Expat

It’s all a big change for a small child - moving to a completely different country - yet Rhiannon is coping brilliantly on the whole.

Apart from a few moments when she becomes overwhelmed missing her friends in the UK, she has settled into her new life remarkably well. She has had a lot of time off school though. She left her first school in the UK early in November and a place won't be available here until January, so this means we are spending a lot of time together. Maybe this is helping her get used to the whole new life ahead of her.

However, I am very much looking forward to being able to visit the shops on my own when she has her two acclimatisation days at school... I need some 'me time'!

Overall, Rhiannon has taken to city life like a duck to water; she hops on and off the Metro like a seasoned commuter and isn’t fazed by the crowds and noise at all, which is quite surprising as she hated loud noises in the UK.

One difficulty we’ve encountered is the incredibly dry air in Tokyo at this time of year, which is compounded by our hot air heating system. Two problems this has caused are flyaway hair (Rhiannon) and a huge static build-up (me).

Rhiannon’s long, fine hair is completely unmanageable and the cat won’t come near me due to the sharp shock he receives through his nose on contact. A friend kindly suggested I fit an earthing strip to either myself or the cat!

As this wasn’t entirely practical, and Rhiannon won’t allow her hair to be cut, we bought some humidifiers which helped not a jot. I guess we’ll get used to it.

Unfortunately, the dryness also proved too much for Rhiannon’s delicate nasal membranes and the poor girl succumbed to frequent severe nosebleeds which upset her considerably. Her nosebleeds occur almost every night around 3am. Mercifully, we eventually found a remedy; she rubs Vaseline in her nostrils each night and this has solved the problem.

Another predicament is Rhiannon’s fear of the ‘shower toilets’ found in most stores. She was startled by her first experience in one when an automatic ‘running water’ sound turned on automatically, and is absolutely terrified by the wires and buttons attached to the seat. Logic will not prevail in this case. She is just about OK with the heated seats, but would much rather use the Japanese style facilities.

Something to keep working on!

 

Life goes on

To keep ourselves occupied, Rhiannon and I visit the school she’ll be attending from January. This involves a walk to the Metro, two trains and then the impossible task of trying to find the right exit at Shibuya Station, probably the most complicated station on the planet.

There are several floors, not escalators or lifts and numerous exits. Not one of them is marked in English and they all lead to radically different parts of this hectic and complicated area.

Once outside, you are greeted by an incredible number of people crossing a massive interchange striped with many pedestrian crossings at angles to the road.

This YouTube video gives you an idea of what it’s like http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ThaPhSf67Ds

It took us twenty five minutes to get from home to Shibuya and a further hour and a half to find the school! We spent a very long time being lost. Needless to say, neither of us took in much information about the school, but Rhiannon does have the opportunity to join her class for a couple of mornings later this week. We are also invited to the school’s Christmas Show.

The following day we tried again, using a different station. This time it only took us an hour to find the school. Oh dear.

The thought of this school run twice a day is daunting and depressing. So Tim went out one evening and drew us a beautifully precise map of how to get out and where to go.

It would become my lifeline for some weeks until I got to grips with the route.

 

Tragedy

Sunday 3^rd December 2006

We returned home this evening, after a day out, to be met by the awful sight of my cat, Inti, dragging himself pitifully across the floor while Raymi fussed around him looking anxious.

Rhiannon was in hysterics and I wasn’t far off. We had no idea what had happened, but his back legs were completely paralysed and a strange smell emanated from him. Tim’s precious wooden carving from the South Pacific was in two pieces on the floor having originally been placed on the top of the bookshelf. So, our first thought was that Inti had been injured by the falling statue or some other mishap.

Not being useful in any traumatic situation, I immediately panicked and telephoned the first person I could think of, our liaison helper. But she was unable to find out where a vet would be at this time of night, on a Sunday.

Then I had a brainwave and sent Tim to our neighbours, who speak both English and Japanese, for help. They were fantastic; found a vet and offered to drive me and the cat over there immediately. By this time it was about 9pm.

We had trouble finding the vet, then trouble parking. But we made it in the end. A lot of paperwork had to be completed, in Japanese – there is no way I could have done this on my own, and I will be forever grateful to our neighbours. Finally, Inti was taken into be examined and I was asked to pay several thousand yen up front. We were told to go home and come back later after they had done numerous tests – it really didn’t sound very hopeful.

At 11pm our neighbours received a call for us to go back.

It was very bad news indeed. Inti had a grossly enlarged heart – cardiomyopathy – probably from birth and there was not enough room in the ventricles to make it work properly. He should never have been cleared to fly over here. (The vet was really quite judgmental of me and made me feel worse than I already did, but my vet in the UK had said absolutely nothing to me about this, so how could I have known?)

The paralysis was caused by a massive blood clot in the artery leading to his back legs and the odd smell was his body shutting down. Inti was in an incubator with drips and so on in order to assist him and I was invited in to see him. Heartbreakingly, he purred and licked my hand as he normally does. I kept the British stiff-upper-lip as my neighbours were watching, but I think the vet thought I was heartless.

I asked for a prognosis. If he survived the night, Inti would never walk again, and must be kept quiet and indoors for the rest of his life, which would probably span only another six months at best. He would require daily injections and medication. This is no life for a two-year old cat, especially one who loved life and was particularly playful and spirited.

So I did what I believe many people would do – I requested that he be put to sleep.

I certainly did not expect the reaction I got from the Japanese vet. It was as if I was asking her to kill my child! “We do not euthanase”, she snapped, “We are doctors who make our animal children better”.

There was no point in arguing; to do so would have put my neighbours in a very awkward position and I was too stressed to think straight at this stage. So we went home.

The next day, I took a taxi to the vet to see how Inti was doing. I had to take Rhiannon too, which made the whole situation harder than it already was. He was alive, but incredibly ill. Once again he greeted me with purrs and licks. This was tortuous: he had no life ahead of him and the kindest thing to do would be to “euthanase” him, but this was hard to get across to the vet without Rhiannon hearing the conversation. Once again the vet refused.

Such a painful day: Rhiannon asked constant questions requiring in-depth medical information as well as asking distressing things like “would Inti die and be with Grandad”. I told her yes, Inti will die as his heart wasn’t well, but I didn’t know when.

Another 24 hours passed, Inti was not recovering and the vets refused to put him out of his misery.

In the end I had to get the “fixer” at Tim’s work to call them and make it happen. But even this didn’t go according to plan, as I had to visit once again to “say goodbye” and to sign some papers. And the deed was finally done the following day.

The vets asked if I “wanted a bone”. This puzzled and upset me, but apparently is common practise here. After the body is cremated (humans too) a vertebra is kept as a memento.

I refused.

And cried a lot.

Tokyu Hands

1^st December 2006

We discovered the most amazing shop today called Tokyu Hands. 

It sells everything you could ever want and a lot of things you couldn’t imagine owning, ever. From acupuncture needles to aquariums, piano wire to paper, kitchenware to kitten toys, chopsticks to chemistry equipment, it’s all here. I foresee many happy hours spent in this shop.

It also sold some Christmas trees and decorations, hurray!

So, we now have a Christmas tree (fake), but upon returning home I remembered that one of the few things I hadn’t shipped over from the UK was… Christmas decorations. Oops! The reason I hadn’t sent them was that I was bored with them and thought, incorrectly as it turned out, that I would be able to get much nicer ones here. So we will be having a minimalist Christmas this year, which pleases me after the chaos of the unpacking yesterday after the lovely empty space of the previous weeks.

We also bought a load of picture hangers so Tim was able to put up our many pictures and make the house seem more like a home. It’s amazing the difference that one job made.

The walls appear to be made of cardboard and large pictures have to be hung from wires suspended from a rail around the top of the walls. I suspect this has something to do with earthquakes, a subject I am trying hard to ignore for now. Smaller pictures go up with just a pushpin holding them.

Being British, I feel I have to mention the weather. The only grey day was the one on which we arrived, and since then the weather has been glorious. Brilliant blue sky, sunny, crisp and cold, each and every day. The trees are turning, showing brilliant reds, oranges and yellow. Ginko trees are dropping their bright yellow leaves like snow and there are many pretty little birds bouncing and chirping in the hedges outside. I need to get a bird book, but I believe they are White Eyes and a Japanese version of a Great Tit, although this one is pinker than the British yellow version.

Luggage at Last!

30th November 2006

Finally! Our non-urgent luggage has arrived! Ah well, better than nothing, I suppose.

Somehow a large lorry reversed up the very narrow lane to our house and a large gang of men unloaded the boxes. They were all prepared to unpack it all for us too, but I wanted to do it myself.

It was like having an early Christmas, discovering things we hadn’t seen for so long. English tea! Green and Black’s chocolate!! How clever I was to remember to pack those.

Soon, the house was a complete tip. We set about filling shelves and cabinets and wondering, once again, why had we packed all these random items? Why on earth had I bought a box of old pens? Why hadn’t we left more of Rhiannon’s toys behind? She hadn’t missed them and we could have taken the opportunity to pass them on.

I wonder when our "urgent" luggage will get here? Christmas presents, my PC, our winter clothes and so on?

Eventually we found a home for everything and a very kind person gave us their old TV. So, for the first time, we were able to connect our video and DVD system and sit down with a nice cup of tea and watch a film or two.

The house seems much smaller now with all our things around.

Last Week of November – roughly!

Tim has gone away on business and our luggage still hasn’t arrived! We know that it reached Japan on 31^st October, so it’s just being held up in customs.

What is slightly worrying is that I am beginning to like not having loads of stuff around and, although I do miss my books, I could easily live in this minimalist way. For those of you who actually know me, you will find this extremely hard to believe. Rest assured, I am back to my normal, cluttered self!

Rhiannon has been playing computer games (educational, of course!) and hasn’t missed TV at all. But she is anxious about her toys, "I hope nobody plays with my toys before they get delivered to me", she frets.

She hasn’t got a place in school until the new term starts in January so we are able to spend some time together exploring and so on. It’s hard to know where to go when we don’t actually have anyone who can show us. Tim is busy settling into work and we don’t know any other families with children.

Rhiannon’s school in the UK kindly gave us some workbooks so my intention was to do some home tuition in the meantime. So we have been playing “schools”, but she doesn’t understand quite grasp the intention and wants to be the teacher while I play the child.

Instead, we spend a lot of time searching for food. Me = hunter-gatherer!

The supermarket is within walking distance, but not quite close enough to make it easy to carry enough shopping for more than a couple of days. But Rhiannon and I do enjoy looking at the wares even if we have no idea what they are or how to eat them.  I'm sure I've seen krill in packets and some small white worms, with eyes! These are the same things we have found in the cat food… Oddly, none of the cat food contains meat – just fish. I was under the impression that cats HAD to have meat. Anyway, Inti and Raymi aren’t too impressed, but they’ll eat when they are hungry enough.

We have also found "Asparagus Biscuits", hmmm, and various green items that appear to be green tea flavoured. Not very appetising.

No 'real' meat (that's affordable) and many things that look like bits of an animal us Westerners just don't recognise anymore. And as for the mushrooms! My word, I never knew there were so many edible types. I am sure some of them are the things my mother said never to touch!

All the food we like is expensive; for example, a loaf of sliced bread (the only type available) costs about £3 for 8 slices! So I have ordered a breadmaker from the States. I couldn't bring any electronic goods with me as the voltage here is just 100V so nothing would work without a transformer. Also saw a slice of fish, about the size of a small beef steak. It was the equivalent of £75! Wow!!

I've even taken to haunting expat food websites and for a while I was actually believing it might be nice to spend £60 to have some teabags sent to me!

Even though there are lots of Christmas lights up and trees twinkling with fairy lights everywhere, Christmas isn't celebrated here and the day itself is a normal working day. Piped Christmas Carols entertain us in the stores but they are 'poppy' rather than choral.

One of our frequent expeditions is to find Christmas decorations and general bits and pieces. I was terribly organised and sent my cards before we left the UK and also bought Rhiannon's gifts - which haven't arrived yet... But we need a tree and some extra decorations.

We've also been doing a lot of walking. I cannot believe just how many stairs there are in the Metro stations and some of the distances to walk between changes are incredible. The Japanese must be very fit. I am just exhausted.

A lot of this is to do with getting very lost most of the time, but we always get home eventually.

 

Our Cats Have Arrived!

24th November 2006

Inti and Raymi, our gorgeous two-year-old tabby boys were delivered straight to the door from the airport. What a horrible trip for them, poor things! At least we knew what to expect and why. Raymi is fine, if a little exhausted, but Inti is very twitchy, nervous and just not himself. We feed them treats and make a huge fuss of them and they soon settle down enough to explore their new home.

The top of the empty bookshelves is considered to be the safest place to be for now, so there they perch while Rhiannon practises her skipping - in the house! The cats are eminently sensible.

Then some of our luggage arrived!!

Tim started work today, leaving me to do all the unpacking - quite a good move on his part, I thought.

My meticulous packing plan involved shipping our unimportant goods, such as summer clothes and general knick-knacks (aka 'stuff'), two months before our departure from the UK, with the intention of them arriving a couple of weeks after our arrival in Japan.

Our urgent possessions were flown over so that they would arrive first.

You can guess what actually happened, can’t you?

Summer clothes arrived first and our urgent goods were to be delayed in customs for over a week. We survive by borrowing bedding, crockery and, my greatest necessity, a laptop, from friends. As my mother was due to arrive before Christmas, I threw a good deal of the 'stuff' randomly into cupboards intending to sort it out in the New Year. I look at it and think "why on earth did I bring that?!"

I still haven’t found time to do this and I fear I'm now stuck with my lack of organisation.

 

Time to explore our environs again!

What a wonderful discovery! A National Garden is right on our doorstep: Shinjuku Gyoen Garden is a large, beautiful, green space with plenty of space for a super-active child to run off some energy chasing fallen leaves. And for a rather stressed and jet-lagged Mum to find some tranquility and fresh air. I think I will be spending a lot of time here.

The Japanese touches are perfect; huge stone lanterns, a magnificent tea-house and massive carp in the many lakes. There was even an enormous greenhouse that we shall investigate another day. At least my mother will have somewhere green to go - she's not a fan of cities, preferring to explore wilder regions hunting for unusual plants to paint.

A Japanese gentleman insisted on taking our photos and, once again, Rhiannon was treated to lots of "kawaii" comments. She really must get used to it!

Jet lag is really kicking in now. I've never really experienced it before as whenever I've been due to have it I've been on an adreneline 'high' due either to work or excitement on holidays. The way it's affecting me this time is a general 'spaced-out' feeling, and waking at 3am absolutely starving yet too tired to get up and eat. Unfortunately, it does not seem to affect Rhiannon at all and she awakes as normal in her 6am-full-speed-ahead mode. Not fun for Mum.

 

Our First (Very) Full Day

The following day was a Public Holiday so some friends could take us sightseeing. They showed us how to use the Metro and we quickly got the hang of getting around, but the stations themselves are challenging. Finding the right exit was initially done by trial and error - usually error - but luckily we discovered the many maps with "you are here" written in English. Also gratifying was the way that many people took pity on these poor gaijin looking lost and many times we were approached with offers of help.

Having lived in London for many years, I am used to the crowds and navigating underground railways, but Tim and Rhiannon were wide-eyed at it all. We find the Metro incredibly cheap, immaculately clean and exceptionally efficient. The large pot plants that adorn the stations amaze and cheer us, and our most used phrase about nearly all aspects of Tokyo is, "can you imagine this in the UK?!" The plants would be stolen and / or vandalised within minutes.

Despite spending her entire life deep in the suburbs of an East Midlands town, Rhiannon seems to be a natural city-girl and experienced no qualms about the crowds or the Metro, which was advantageous because our first excursion was to Shibuya; what a baptism of fire! The busiest place in Tokyo on a normal day: on a Public Holiday it was incredible. Hachiko crossing was a sea of people ambling across at less than normal walking speed.

As a blue-eyed blondie, Rhiannon gets masses of attention when we are out and about. We hear "kawaii!" (cute!) a lot and someone even told her she looked like "a doll"! She was not amused. Initially, she became cross and embarrassed about it all but soon started to enjoy the interest with a shy smile.

Our next excursion was to Asakusa, which gave us a taste of a slightly more traditional Japan, with its rows of wooden stalls leading to the Sensoji Temple. Again it was incredibly busy so we didn't stay long - just enough time to get a taste for the area and to see the famous Philippe Starck Asahi Brewery building with its golden 'flame', or 'golden poo', as it was soon christened... The building to the left represents a glass of golden beer with a foaming head.

On the way home we made our first foray to our local supermarket. We have been blessed with a nearby Marusho and didn't discover the expat essentials of Costco and Nissin for several weeks. Rhiannon expressed a desire for fish-fingers and baked beans, bless her! The look on her face was an absolute picture when she saw the extensive fish displays in Marusho. Fish fingers were quickly forgotten and she decided she wanted an octopus and some of the "pretty jewels" (glistening red salmon eggs). I had to refuse as I have no idea how to deal with an octopus and we finally settled on chicken and vegetables for the time being.

I decided to buy something unfamiliar on each shopping trip, but this hasn't been successful. The baps I bought were filled with azuki - red bean paste, which was a surprise, and not a taste we are accustomed to. Rhiannon chose something she thought were packets of sherbet that turned out to be furikake, a mix of seaweed and seeds. Surprisingly, she didn't like it - such English tastes will soon change, I'm sure.

Arriving in Tokyo

22nd NOVEMBER 2006

Three exhausted and jet-lagged individuals arrived in Tokyo on a grey Wednesday at the end of November 2006.

Nobody had slept during the twelve hour flight from London to Tokyo. Our incredibly excited and talkative daughter kept us (and everyone else on the flight) awake with her incessant chattering about our impending new life. However, her five-year-old logic didn’t quite understand the concept of the distance from England, because she kept asking, “can my friends come for a sleepover tomorrow?”

Our first view of Japan was through the windows of the plane – Mount Fuji emerged above the clouds looking every bit as magnificent as expected.

Moving through the airport was a joy compared with the maze of incompetence that is Heathrow and we soon reached ‘the outside’ where we were collected by car for the final leg of our trip to our new home in Tokyo. Gazing out the window on the way from Narita to Tokyo, I was in a kind of sleep-deprived limbo so recall little of the journey. However, I do remember expecting to see glamorous skyscrapers, similar to Hong Kong’s spectacular architecture, and being slightly disappointed at the expanse of bland, grey concrete greeting me out of a layer of smog. But I remained open minded and was pleasantly rewarded. Most obvious was the exceptional cleanliness of Japan, with teams of cleaners on every street corner sweeping up the falling autumn leaves. Tokyo was greener than I was led to believe, with tree-lined streets and a profusion of potted plants outside most homes and businesses.

Even the driver’s state-of-the-art GPS had problems finding our new house – I never expected there to be such narrow side roads in the city! By the time we stepped inside, Tim and I were almost comatose with tiredness but still Rhiannon didn’t take a breather! She zoomed at top speed through the house, immediately laid claim to her new bedroom and proceeded to plan exactly how it should look. Amazingly she chose the smallest room, which was fine with us. With wonderful forethought, a colleague had left some life-savers at the house: tea, milk, food and a large pack of colouring paraphernalia which finally kept Rhiannon happily and quietly occupied while we sorted ourselves out by drinking tea and getting our bags unpacked.

Somewhat restored in mind, spirit and body, we explored our immediate neighbourhood with its one-car-width streets, little shrines and interesting private homes. Since it was nearly December, we were pleasantly surprised to see camellias and daffodils blooming and a nearby house with grapefruits growing in the garden.

Finally, we all collapsed into bed early in the evening and managed a full and refreshing sleep before I was rudely awoken at dawn by spine-chilling screams and guttural shrieks. With relief, I soon realised this was the Japanese birds’ dawn-chorus; far more discordant than the melodious British songbirds.

Our new life was about to begin!