Furiai Hiroba--Playing With Bamboo at the Fall Festival

Or:   What The Fourth Graders Did

As promised, here is the rest of the piece on the Fall Festival held at my kids' school two weeks ago.  The first time I posted on this, I wrote about what the first, second, third, fifth, and sixth graders did for the festival.  Everybody but the fourth graders, because it would have made the original post too long.

The fourth graders, for the second time (last year's fourth graders were the guinea pigs, apparently), made charcoal out of bamboo, as well as a number of traditional toys.  I stopped by school several times to watch the sumi-making process ("sumi" is charcoal or ink)

After they'd gone across the street to cut bamboo (with help, of course, from the teacher and a couple of community members who live near the school), they spent the last hour of the school day one afternoon sawing the long stalks of bamboo shorter, then splitting it so it would burn better.

...Koshi manfully wrestles with the saw:-))  It was harder to saw through than he thought!  The group members had to take turns as they got tired...

(Yes--they really trust 10-year-olds with actual sharp saws in Japan.  Not yet an overly litigious society...)

the split bamboo

....one of the maintenance guys used the iron rings below to split the bamboo length-wise.  Then it was cut a little smaller to make pieces of a uniform size for burning to make charcoal.  Watch the video below to see how he uses those tools to split the bamboo!

...sledgehammer and iron bamboo-splitting rings (small, medium, and large for various sizes of bamboo).







See?  Tap the bamboo down onto the iron ring with the sledgehammer, turn it upside down, and push.  Voilà!  The bamboo was then dried for a week, and the following Friday put into this contraption:

...I was so waiting for Bilbo Baggins to walk out of there...

...he had to seal the edges with clay so the smoke would only go out the actual smokestack...

...and as you can see, this is a completely hand-made affair.  Plugged up with a can of DyDo coffee...  But it worked just fine--made lovely charcoal (which burned over 24 hours), deep black, perfect to put in the fridge or the shoe box to absorb odors or to filter water in the manner of a Brita.

 ...Lovely black charcoal, still clearly a piece of bamboo...

 ... after cutting the charcoal into uniform sizes, the kids bound it with twisty-ties and bagged it for give-away at the festival...




 
 On the day of the festival, I discovered that the kids had made a lot more than just charcoal out of all that bamboo...

Pakah! Pakah! Pakah!  Clip-clop, clip-clop!  Horses' hooves made from bamboo.  You probably had a pair of these when you were a kid, but maybe made out of plastic or cans (stand on top, hold onto the strings, and try to walk).  I thought the bamboo made a more realistic, more satisfying, clip-clop...

...the ring toss game--a common game world-wide, but not often made of bamboo...













...low stilts, a nice size for kids to practice walking and balancing on.



....then there were the games the kids had made for parents and siblings to try at the festival, like the bamboo spinner below--as simple a toy as ever there was, consisting only of a flat piece of bamboo and a piece of string threaded through a hole drilled in the center.  Markers were out for us "O-Kyaku-san" (Honorable Customers) to decorate if we wished...







Watch Papa below play with the Spinner:







In order to get a baggie of charcoal, we customers had to go around and play with/make all three toys the kids had prepared--the Spinner, the Shooter, and the Take Tombo (Bamboo Dragonfly).

...the Shooter.  You stuff wet toilet paper inside this, then use the piece on the left to "shoot" out the toilet paper.  Papa was much better at this than I was--he made the pasty toilet paper go at least 10 feet!

My favorite toy, though, is the Take Tombo (Bamboo Dragonfly)--a very traditional children's toy, which in all likelihood originated in China (though it doesn't do to say so to the Japanese ;-)).

...one of the kids is getting ready to make the Bamboo Dragonfly fly!  It takes some practice to really make it go--but once you get the hang of it, it's great fun to make it fly far and high.

And most interesting of all (at least to me), was watching an older gentleman whittle one.

Watch:



Did you see how he whittles from the center out, but on opposite sides to balance it so it flies straight?  Here's the last bit, where he whittles the handle and puts it in, then demonstrates how to make it fly:



I love those Bamboo Dragonflies--they remind me of the oak seed pods my sis and I called Helicopters and played with as children (another natural toy :-)).  But by far my most favorite thing that day was this table full of animals and bugs made of leftover bamboo bits (made by a community group that makes hand crafts like this):

rice straw boots, bamboo animals and bugs

...the Crab...





...the Stag Beetle below...

      ...the Preying Mantis...

...the Dragonfly...

...and the Kitteh (with the Fox and another Crab visible in the background).

Outside, the fourth graders had also made bows and "arrows" out of bamboo, though I didn't get a good photo of those.  I do know, though, that those kids were having a ball that day:-))





Mata asobou, ne!

"Summer Was Over *Last* Week, Honey"

If you've been following along here, you know that my genkan turns into a zoo come summer, and also that my oldest will pick up virtually *any* bug, amphibian, reptile, or crustacean and let it crawl all over him. 

However, this past summer was so hot, all the fish died (papa performed burial rites).  The Kabutomushi have all gone to that great jelly-cup in the sky, and my genkan is clean.  Shoes put away, counter wiped and *visible*, and no bug boxes.    If it weren't midnight, I'd take a picture and post it. 


You know where I'm going with this.  Exactly--I looked out the window today to see him awkwardly trying to carry two bug boxes home from school.  His teacher must have lent him the boxes, I think, since he certainly didn't take any with him to school in the morning.  Teachers in Japan do that sort of thing.

  Since bugs freak Aun' Bef' out, here's a nice big photo of what he brought home:

I know that photo overruns the sidebar, but it's for a good cause:))  Be sure to click on that, so's to see our Kamakiri (preying mantis) in all her glory.  I think she's mugging for the camera, don't you?  I'd post the video I took of it crawling all over his arm, but you probably don't want to see closeups of my husband's underwear...


The other box had a lone male cricket--no spouse yet, which means he won't sing for us.  Tomorrow's homework for Koshi:  go catch some female crickets!  If I have to have crickets in the house, they can at least be singing.


Mata asobou, ne!

comedy of Hair--ors

 

This piece is actually for my dad because I realized I never told him about it.  And when I thought of the title, it was such an awful pun, I knew this must be for him.  I mention this lest my other readers think I go around on *purpose* thinking of puns like that.  Let me hasten to assure you that it's congential...

When Cici was 4ish, she refused--foot down, lip out, squirmingly refused to let a stranger cut her hair.  Even if I sat in the chair with her.  Even if the stylist put the big smock around both of us.  No. Way. Jose. 

Well, not completely no way.  *One* time she did allow the barber who cut her brothers' hair to trim her bangs, too.  "Great!"  I thought, "Cute, too!  (followed by a big sigh of relief)." 

Short-lived relief as it turned out.  The next time I tried to take her to the same stylist/barber--by the time her bangs were in the vicinity of her lower lip and she was starting to develop an odd tic, well, it was do or die.  So--off to the 100Yen shop to get scissors and a smock(see--no expensive scissors, 'cause I'm only going to do this ONCE, I tell myself subconsciously).

OK.  So.  OK.  So...where's Aun'Bef when you need her?!!?  Aunt Bef, of course, inherited all the hair-cutting genes (on Chromosome 17, next to the stapler/tape/glue genes), leaving me with the need to cut hair, but no actual skill.  Of course, I could have practiced at some point in my life.  My sister did--all her dolls looked like Yul Brynner auditioning for a horror flick, whereas mine sport to this day the same coif they came out of the box with.  I knew, you see,  that if I took her hair out of the carefully arranged bun-with-ribbon that I'd  never get it back that way again.  So, I left it.  This attitude toward hair-styling is readily apparent in most of my school photos.

Darling Cici--you have no ideawhat you're getting yourself into.  Why...oh why...do you want Mommy to cut your hair?  Sweetie--the last time Mommy tried to cut your bangs, they came out looking like the Dow Jones Industrial Average after Black Monday (see photo above).

This time, weeeeell... :

I know.  It looks like I used Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle as a cutting guide.

Ok, so I stink at math--cut me some slack!  I tried using Feynman's sum-over-histories, but I couldn't get everything to cancel out...

Poor kid.

Sweetie, I promise I will *not* show this to your first boyfriend...:))

 

Paybacks are Hell

"There should be a statute of limitations on blaming your parents for the problems in your life."

I read that pithy statement somewhere recently (unfortunately mommy alzheimer's prevents me from remembering where--if anybody out there recognizes the quote, please let me know so I can credit it appropiately).  I thought it was one of the truest things I'd heard in a long time.  Of course having three children myself, and being excruciatingly aware of how many things I do wrong on a daily basis, gives me the necessary perspective for appreciating the truth of it.

I just finished reading an essay on the invisible privileges held unawares by men, whites, and others in dominant positions in society (linked to by Dale McGowan at the Meming of Life--one of my favorite bloggers, I wait breathlessly for new posts in spite of knowing that he also has three children and a zillion things to do:)).  An insightful essay, and a well-written post by Dale, which for some reason shot me off on a completely different tangent.
 
The idea of invisible knapsacks of privilege we carry around with us, unaware of their contents, unaware even that we have such an accessory suddenly made it clear why I have been unable to write the letter to my parents that for years now I have felt a pressing urge, a duty, to compose.  Every time I tried to write it, even just to say "thank you", it seemed so.... incomplete.  So much unsaid.  So much to say, so much I feel grateful for, indebted for, that a few sheets of letter paper seemed woefully inadequate.  One of  those loooooong egyptian scrolls would be better, but probably fussy to read.  An invisible knapsack, with ideas and values, prejudices and preferences, put in by our parents, stuck together with things passed on with things from their parents, things that I'm sometimes only dimly aware of, or that I couldn't even access until I had children myself (all those things your mother tells you you won't understand until you have children of your own--and when you do you discover she was right)--well, no wonder it was so hard.  There's just too much in that knapsack to be able to write about it all at once without it turning into The Illiad, or the Book of Leviticus.

So what this post really is, is the beginning of a *very* long letter to my parents.  The one I've always meant to write, but never had a sheet of paper long enough.  In posts, little by little, as I discover yet another treasure they packed into my knapsack, I'll write about it, and try (however inadequately) to say thank you.  To let them know that I've found what they put in there.  That I understand what it's for, and  how profoundly grateful I am to have it, that they thought to put it in there.  Some of the things maybe they don't know they put into my knapsack, but they should.  Some of the things I find are sometimes things that hurt, things that I should take out and try not to put into my kids' knapsacks.  Now that I'm an adult (most of the time), I can take those sorts of things out.  Look at them, evaluate them, use what I know now as a parent to understand how they got in there, and decide what to do with them. 

I realize this particular post is lacking in specifics, but the specific things I'm thankful for deserve to be elaborated on in posts of their own.  The letter would turn into a bullet point list otherwise.  In fact, most of the things I've written about here are unsaid thank yous, and many things I plan to write about come from that sense of need to tell my mom and dad how much I love them, and how much I have to thank them for.  How grateful I am, now that I see all my less than stellar traits parsed out among my children, that they didn't sell me to the gypsies.  That I understand why we have children exactly like ourselves (what--you thought there was no justice in the world?).  The title of this post is what my mom says my grandma always used to say.  I never really understood it--but I have three good reasons to now:)

I've never said thank you or I love you enough--like Cordelia (and my dad), "I cannot heave my heart into my mouth".  But mom and dad--keep reading, because almost everything I write here is really my way of saying thank you, and I love you.

derailed intentions and excess olympics

How is it that our best intentions, for the betterment of noneother than ourselves, seem invariably to become derailed, laid aside, remembered only now and then with an accompanying jerk of guilt? Usually it's no great thing which throws me off track, causes me to give up for weeks (months) at a time a new diet plan, exercise plan, sleep plan, budget, blog, so...why? A cold, a sore shoulder, too much coffee, too little sleep, a sale, the Olympics.  In short, anything or nothing.

 I gave up daily push-ups after throwing out my shoulder trying to throw a baseball too far (don't show off for your kids if you're over 37). Alas and alack, during the week it took for my shoulder to heal, I was able to think of any number of excuses not to start exercising again when my shoulder did feel better--and in less than a parsec that space of open time was erased by an incoming tide of other "things to do". The time just seemed to disappear out of my day. Where did it go? I do wonder...

So what's my excuse this time?  Too much olympics, two sick kids, and a feverish, sick, sick, me...(singable to 12 Days of Xmas).   Mostly, too much olympics.  Long time skating fan (chinese zodiac--monkey.  skating zodiac--Peggy Fleming),  *loved* the skating this olympics.  I told my mom 4 years ago after Torino that the next olympics was going to come down to two (at the time) little girls-- Asada Mao from Japan and Kim Yu-Na from Korea.  (Bowing) thank you, thank you very much.  In spite of the fact that I live here in the Land of the (Cute) Rising Sun, and I've been pulling for Mao-chan to bring home the gold.... well, it was Yu-Na's to take home this time.  Were the judges on the Yu-Na crack with a 150 point LP score?  Maybe.  But the gold was hers, no question.  Several things came together for Yu-Na this time--good coach, music that suited her style well, smart move to Toronto to train (less paparazzi for her), no 3X....

My heart broke watching Mao be interviewed by the Japanese press just after the LP (before the medal ceremony--so she had to keep dabbing at her eyes so's not to smear her mascara)--poor kid stood there beating up on herself over singling a triple toe.  I have read comments on other blogs and skating forums saying that Mao was "stubborn"--insisting on keeping the 3X in the program, in spite of problems landing it, not changing the music, not going to Russia to train with Tarasova, staying in Japan instead.  I have to defend Mao here.  It's not stubbornness!!  Mao is a "Gambari-ko" and an "Akiramenai-ko", two major parenting goals for Japanese parents (at least judging from the titles of parenting books in bookstores over here, and listening to mom friends talk).  "Akiramenai" is "won't give up".  "Gambaru" is "perservere".  We hear people say "don't give up" in English fairly frequently.  "Perservere!"--not too often.  It would be hard to overstate how often that word is said in Japanese--a hundred times a day is probably low.  The maternity nurse said it to my oldest son 3 days after he was born (we were having trouble with breastfeeding--he couldn't latch on right. So--"Gambare!!" came the natural response from the nurse.  He did, too--latched right on.  I was hum-dingered.  How the heck did he know what she meant?).  "Gambare!" is something that can be shouted casually to a stranger by way of friendly encouragement.   When Mao started having trouble with her 3X (I watched her fall on the *take-off* for her 3X one time--fell hard on her side, slid clear across the ice, and slammed  into the wall.  ouch.), she simply would not have taken it out of her routine.  She would not have blamed her coach.  She would simply have thought, "I can't give up.  I must not be working hard enough.  I have to perservere!  Gambaranitoikenai!"  What looks like stubbornness through western-colored glasses, is Gambare-spirit if you put on eastern-tinted lenses.  Trying to picture kawaii Mao-chan as a stubborn, my-way-or-the-highway diva is....like trying to picture Phyllis Diller as Miss America.  Nope.  So why didn't she go to Russia to train 24/7 with her coach (who couldn't leave Russia easily since apparently she was caring for an ailing relative)?  Mao does not have the Princess Di-level superstar status in Japan that Yu-Na has in Korea (Yu-Na's coach described travelling with Yu-Na that way).  Mao has a nice rink in Japan to train in, little or no paparazzi,  and the needed support of family and friends here.  For Yu-Na, leaving friends and family to train with Orser in Toronto was probably the lesser of the two evils as compared to not being able to walk outside her house in Korea without bodyguards.  Much calmer in Toronto for her, I'm sure, and much easier to achieve the necessary focus.

So what happened to Mao--the prodigy from Japan who had Dick Button and Peggy Flemming gushing at the 2006 Skate America (watch it here if you'd like to see how Mao *really* skates:)?

Bells of Moscow, for one thing.  Who on earth thought it would be a good idea for a light, effervescent skater like Mao to skate to orchestral Rachmaninov??  Did Satan pick that music?  Wrong, wrong, wrong music.  And the heavy-footed walz for the SP was no better.  For crying out loud, Tarasova--why did you have little Mao skating to music that should have been skated by elephants in tutus?

A commenter at Aunt Joyce's Ice Cream Stand came the closest to what I think might really be going on:
"I wonder if Mao was complicit with the dark and dramatic programs becuase maybe she thought lighter programs = too immature and juniorish?".   I think that might very well be exactly what's behind not just the music choices, but Mao seeming so... off-center, somehow.  Like she's trying to put a personna out there on the ice that just isn't her.  Right around 2007-08, here came Yu-Na (who up to that time looked not too different from Mao--young, girlish, and slight) in a sexy black skating dress and a much more "adult" personna on the ice.  She says she's shy, and it's something she's had to work at--but it had to be there to begin with for her to draw on.  And Yu-Na is pretty.  Mao is cute.  One is not better than the other, just sayin'.  Mao's sister Mai is the model, not Mao.  Mao will probably alway look somewhat girlish and cute--her cuteness cup runneth over, in fact.  Mao--you are not Yu-Na!!  You will not ever be a Bond Girl--and you don't need to be!  You can be yourself and win, Mao.  You really can.  Growing pains are hard, girl, and the only way to ease that kind of pain is to stay true to yourself.  Mao, if you read this, click on that link above and watch yourself skating the Nocturnes for us all.  That's not behind you--that *is* you.  It's still there inside, and if you stay true to you, you can find it.

Sorry to go on.  Just had to get that out, instead of leaving it in dribs and drabs in blog comments.

Congratulations to all the skaters at this year's olympics--very high level of skating overall!

2014 nen--gambatte, Mao-chan!

mata asobou, ne!

Do you Look Like Yourself?

My eldest was at home today because he'd hurt his neck (playing with papa, of course) the day before. We sat and looked through a book of his baby/toddler pictures, something he doesn't normally show much interest in doing. Come to think of it, I got the book out for him to look at when I was putting away his sister's baby book. For some reason, the younger two love looking at their baby pictures and having me tell them how cute they were--not Koshi. Embarrassing. I knew this, so I said, "wait--here's mommy's favorite" so he'd look. Then we went back to the beginning with the 5- and 6-month old photos, and kept looking, up through 9 months, a year, a year and a half, two, almost three. At which point, he suddenly said, "That looks like me!" Circa 2-going-on-three he finally thought the little boy in the photo looked like the little boy he sees in the mirror every day. Of course, I, who have seen him every day of his life, think that all the pictures look like him. But it did give me a queer feeling. Those photos weren't taken all that long ago (he's only 9), but still, I suppose an immigration agent wouldn't be able to connect his now face with that darling (sorry) baby face. It started me thinking about the snapshots we carry around in our heads of all the people we know, some of whom we see all the time, some of whom we haven't seen in ages. It's such a shock to suddenly think of someone you haven't seen "for a while", and realize that the three-year-old you taught English to must now be....(do the math, that was a decade ago)...13. Or 14. A teenager for crying out loud.

So...if she...weighs the same as a duck... I'm...41. Setting that thought gingerly to the side, I start thinking of other people for whom I have no updated mental snap. Step carefully around wondering what their mental snap of me looks like. Would the people I spent a year in Germany with think I look like me? I usually think I look more or less ok, but then I probably engage in a certain amount of mental photo retouching without really realizing I'm doing it. What if I actually look like somebody completely different now?

I had a dream about my mom and my grandma (who rarely comes to my dreams). We were in the kitchen in the house I grew up in. I looked at my mom, then at my grandma and thought, "wow--mom looks so much like grandma. When did she start looking so much like grandma?" Then my grandma walked out the backdoor. And I was terrified that my mom would follow her, because I knew if she went out the backdoor that I'd never see her again. I woke up crying and afraid. I never told anyone about that dream. About a year later, my mom told me she'd had a near death experience around that time.

Do I look like myself? Or sombody else and I just don't know it?

Weekly Origami--Ice Cream

Today's origami uses almost the same folds as the house, just going a different direction.  If your little one (around 3 to 4) can do the main 3 folds, mom or dad can nick the corners back to give it that rounded "scoop" look.  Use different colors of paper for different "flavors"--make lots and play "ice cream shop":))

So, first fold your paper in half and make a mountain (big triangle)--colored side outside if you want vanilla ice cream, colored side inside if you want a "flavor".  Then unfold--guide fold made!  Like this:

I'm making "chocolate" in the photo.  Next, fold one corner over to the guide line, carefully matching up the side edge to to guideline:

and fold the other side the same way in to the middle...

Done!  Chocolate ice cream in its simplest form, sans calories.  If this version satisfies your youngun', leave it at that.  If not, mom or dad can nick the corners back for the "scoop" effect, like this:

Make 31 Flavors and play "Ice Cream Store".  Put them away in an envelope and play again tomorrow:)  Or until they fall apart, get slobbered on, tear, or get eaten by the dog.

Don't think about fine motor skills--it'll spoil the fun.  Just make a bunch and enjoy!

Mata asobou, ne!

How to Get Kids to Eat Spinach

Something that used to mystify me living here was how all the kids seemed to eat vegetables, more or less without quibble.  I remember watching a 5-year-old and his 3-year-old brother eating raw octopus like candy.  Wow--how do they do that?  I *know* I wouldn't have eaten octopus when I was 5...or 15... so how do they *do* that?  Mostly, I think, lack of pressure combined with "allowing" kids to eat what the grownups are eating.  But more than that, they tend not to overcook things (obviously not in the case of sashimi), especially vegetables.  They also tend to let kids learn to like things in their own time frame, which, now that I think about it, is pretty much what my mom did and the reason I can eat a wide variety of foods now.  Thanks, mom!  I know there were times she despaired of getting me to eat this or that, but she gave up, finally, on asparagus.  I didn't like asparagus till I was 23 or so.  The first time I came home and chowed down on asparagus, I thought my mother was going to collapse in shock.  "What?!  You don't *like* asparagus!  You *never* liked asparagus!!"  Why did I suddenly decide I liked it?  Lack of pressure combined with a different dippy sauce, I think.  So keep the faith!  My mom's trick for getting us to eat spinach was to use it raw in salad without telling us what it was until *after* we ate it and said we liked it.  Which worked pretty well--I still like fresh spinach better than iceberg in a salad (good one, mom!). 

I never cared for cooked spinach until I tried it in Japan.  Here's the receipt that my kids eat like candy (really!):

Goma Horenso (Sesame Spinach)
One bunch spinach, washed
2Tblsp  ground white sesame seeds
2tsp sugar
1Tblsp (scant) soy sauce

Boil the spinach for 30 or 40 seconds (stand there and count so it doesn't overboil and taste gross), dump water, rinse in cold water
Squeeze out as much water as you can, then cut the whole mess into 1/2 inch pieces
In the serving bowl, combine the ground sesame, sugar, and soy sauce (last).  Mix to form a paste.
Put in the spinach and toss around in the sesame paste until it's all more or less coated
Lick fingers and wash hands :))

You can adjust the sugar amount to taste, or probably substitute Splenda (I don't have any over here, but I don't imagine it would taste any different).

I'm still thinking about how they get kids to eat so many different things.  I'll write about it when something comes to mind.  Till then, I'll try to post some easy receipts that I've had good luck with.  Try the spinach--it's really good!

Mata asobou, ne!

p.s.--I forgot, you can use the sesame paste on fresh green beans (goma ingen) or broccoli:))

How To Make Clover Necklaces

Does anybody still spend a warm afternoon making clover necklaces and crowns with their kids?  I don't think so--not many people, anyway.  Not because people don't want to, or think it's a frivolous thing to do.  I think the real reason is that hardly anybody remembers how.  Or (like me) never learned in the first place.

When did we forget how to play with kids?
When did we forget how to play?

The first badguy that will come to most peoples' minds is "TV" or "computers".  I agree, but possibly not for the same reason.   Those things are a time drain, to be sure, but the time drain on family time started a lot earlier than the invention of television.

The Industrial Revolution took fathers out of the home.  Fathers who worked 16 hours a day in a factory had precious little time left over for being fathers to their children, let alone playing with them. 

The Compulsory School Movement took children out of the home (and therefore away from mothers, siblings, and extended family) for a large swath of the day.  So children had far less time to spend with parents, whether playing or working productively in the home.

And finally, since nobody else was home and invention after invention of time saving devices gradually took away any meaningful work done in the home by women, women finally left home, too.  Went to work at a job to get their own paychecks instead of living off somebody else's.  Irrational consumerism drove that change much faster.  Heck--people had to go and get two or three jobs just to pay for their lifestyles.

Not much time for making clover necklaces.

Not that these changes in where people spend most of their time has changed peoples' basic instinct to do right by their kids.  No-- I think most parents are as conscientious as parents have ever been.  Today's parents, in fact, have access to a dizzying amount of information about how to raise children well from battalions of experts in child psychology, early childhood education, pediatricians, and ronin grandmas.  Really, we ought to be the best parents the world has ever seen given how much research and advice is available to us.

Or not.

When I was pregnant with my oldest son,  I remember clearly looking at catalogue after catalogue of baby goods and feeling... overwhelmed.  Desperate, even--  I knew we couldn't buy all that stuff.  Living in a rabbit hutch apartment in Tokyo and my husband going back to school to get his master's--well, if I could only get a couple of things, which things?  Every toy, chair, rattle and spoon these days is marketed as having been carefully created and tested according to the latest research in neuroscience...or child development...or early childhood education...or all of them.  So if I don't buy *this* "educational" play mat/mobile/spit-up rag then.... then.... I'm...I'm...[wail!] ...a bad mommy!
 
I have no idea, really, whether today's toys and baby goods are actually marketed in such Machialvellian fashion, or whether the type of marketing now prevalent is due to more Darwinian market forces.

So why does everybody buy the huge $120 plastic (with highly contrasting colors and textures, because research has shown...  stop that) educational (it was designed specifically for the needs of your 6-month-old, so you'll have to throw it away in three months) play mat/walker/bouncy chair/piano/busy box.... only to watch their child spend hours playing inside the big cardboard box the thing came in.

Our Leappad gathers dust, whereas every decent-sized cardboard box that comes from Nana gets played with till it falls to bits.

Smack!  I knew that.  So what happens to my self-confidence when I walk into a Baby Store, or a Toys-R-Us, or a Wal-Mart, for that matter?

Does anybody else want to remember how to play?

I do.  The biggest shock for me as a new parent (of course, I had read everything--and therefore thought I knew, well, something anyway) was watching Japanese mothers with their kids.  And fathers.  And grandparents.  And strangers on trains.  They all played with their kids in such a...completely natural way.  As though they had never forgotten how.  I watched them play with their fingers, with string, with mud, with flowers and leaves... and I started learning, and sometimes remembering.

Here's how to make a necklace ( bracelet or crown or whatever) of clover.  The little white variety works just fine.

That's it-- lay one clover crosswise over the other one, wrap the stem around and down, repeat (wrapping the next clover around both stems).    As soon as it warms up, and the clovers come out, I hope you take all afternoon to make enough necklaces and crowns for Marie Antoinette *and* Mary Queen of Scots, and still have some left for tomorrow. 

Mata asobou, ne!  (let's play again, 'kay!)