January 13th 2007
Today is the day for our first ever playdate in Japan. We are due there at 10am.
I woke up at 11am. Oops!
In my defence... OK, no defence, I was hung-over after a late night at the bar yesterday.
So, an apologetic phone call to the mum, who was tangibly unimpressed, and the quickest dressing-and-heading-out-of-the-house-run on record. Rhiannon and I make our weary way to the station for a two-change Metro trip to Roppongi. Once out of the station we immediately become hopelessly lost in a shopping mall of labyrinthine proportions and properties.
At one point we had to venture up an escalator with a height nearing that of Fuji itself. We distracted ourselves from our slight acrophobia by admiring a colossal advertising hoarding portraying David Beckham with a cut face. This brought a lot of questions from Rhiannon who still hasn’t grasped the concept of advertising. “Who is he? How did he cut his face? Why hasn’t someone given him a plaster?” and “He is rather cute, isn’t he Mummy?” Erm, not my taste, but he’s better than thinking of how high this escalator is!
Another phone call, and the mum, whom I shall call M, talked us through the miles of bland corridors and funky sculptures and water features to the correct exit.
Thankfully, we found the apartment without much difficulty, but I’ll never make it through Roppongi Hills alone! What a complicated piece of planning, especially for someone like me who gets lost just crossing a road.
Now, usually with playdates, us mum’s tend to take to opportunity to drop the child off and beat a hasty retreat to go and indulge in some child-free time. Not this time though. I was fully expected to stay and chat with M. OK, I’ve not actually planned anything so I settled down in the hope of making a new friend.
M is a large American woman married to a quiet, slight Japanese man. Apparently gaijin woman + Japanese man is quite a rare pairing, but I haven’t worked out why. Her husband appeared bearing a tray of tea and disappeared back into the kitchen, where he stayed for the entire time I was there. Apart from his regular and soundless visits to refill the endless cups of tea, I saw nothing more of him. Was he a servant? Or didn’t he like to socialise? It was all rather odd.
Their apartment was beautifully decorated and crammed with some incredible Japanese antiques such as rare tansu, (cabinets), screens and scrolls. I imagined this was like a Real Japanese Home.
Rhiannon went off to play with the two girls and M proceeded to educate me.
Now, this is quite hard to write in retrospect as things have since changed between us, but at this particular time, I was very open to learning all I could about Japan and its beautiful culture and objets d’art.
So, I learned a lot and we organised a trip for the two of us to visit Kappabashi – AKA Kitchen Town - a wonderful sounding place where shops selling ceramics, plastic food and all kinds of fascinating kitchen stuff.
Lunchtime approached and the husband brought us both a small meal on neat trays while he served the children a different lunch in the kitchen.
From time to time, a minor argument would erupt between the kids, and one or other of them would traipse in with “Muuuu-uum, so-and-so did this...” My reaction to these common upsets was normally to listen and encourage Rhiannon to “deal with it”, but M had a very different approach which was somehow belittling to me and Rhiannon. She would set the children down and proceed to give a psychobabble lecture which always seemed to make me out to be a bad mother or, worse, to insinuate that Rhiannon was badly behaved.
It was all very subtly done however, and it wasn’t until later in our acquaintance that this became a problem. At the time, I just put it down to a culture difference, her being a much more capable mother than myself and perhaps a little showing-off to a newbie. I was also feeling very guilty about being so late for the date and the obvious disapproval she projected about my being hungover!
After many hours, I could take no more tea and information, so we left and went home.
