My Baby is a First-Grader

Ahhh--when the cherry trees are in full bloom, the view out our back sliding door is so lovely.  You almost can't see the power lines that disfigure so much of Japan...


The cherry trees have come and gone...

....and my baby is a first-grader.   Awww.  On the right getting ready to change into her "inside shoes" (a useful precaution taken by schools in Japan--keeps the floors much cleaner, especially since the kids do the floor cleaning.)  Like all schools over here, the children walk to school--there are no school buses except for kindergarten.  All kids (unless they got into a swanky private school) go to a community school within walking distance (about 10 minutes from our house to school).  Since there was no Civil Rights Movement, and therefore no enforced busing, they get to go to the school closest to home.  Nice.  ( Not saying the Civil Rights Movement was bad, just that there were drawbacks to busing kids to the other side of town).

There she is with her Landosel, those big backpacks that all japanese schoolkids use.  In the past, boys had black, girls had red, and that was that.  In the thirteen years I've been here, I've been witness to a sudden explosion in individuality--now there are over two dozen colors to choose from (Cici, as  you can see, chose yellow--although originally she wanted black, like her big brothers:).  In fact, although there is still tremendous pressure to conform, it doesn't seem to be as strong as it was when I came to Japan in '97.  Like maybe now if you're the nail that sticks up, you'll only get hammered half-way down....

One more picture, since the peach trees were *sooo* lovely this year (the mixed pink-and-white trees are my favorite:).....

Now that we're well into first grade and things have settled down  a bit, I should be able to post more often than  I have been!

Mata asobou, ne!