SMILE! God Loves You!

When I was young I remember that my father used to tell me that more than any expensive dress or makeup, a smile made a person attractive. It seems to me that smiling is the root of communication and it lets others know if you are happy or sad, it encourages the speaker and says non verbally,

"I am with you here. I'm trying to understand your message."

Historically, Japanese, and especially Japanese women, don't smile. It used to be considered bad manners to show the teeth and so during the earlier eras women's teeth were blackened. Even now, all formal pictures are taken with stern expressions and wedding pictures always look like such grim affairs from the albums. If any of you have Japanese women friends you may have noticed that they will laugh with their hand held up to the mouth. It is an unconscious habit and extends to even speaking with the hand held over the mouth (making it very difficult for me to read the person's expression!)

As an English teacher in Japan sometimes I wonder what I'm supposed to be teaching. It seems easy enough. English right? But recently I've been trying to teach my English kids to SMILE. For the past few weeks I've been working with a girl who will be going to the States with her family, but she is very quiet. This has always been a very clear cultural difference in my mind. Even when I was a college student the foreign students from Europe, the Middle East and South America blossomed while all the Japanese students stayed quietly together in their little group and studied their books. They just weren't very good at expressing themselves and developing communication skills and smiling, though they were very good in academics.

Of course not all Japanese are quiet and somber but I run into a lot of young women who are similar to my jr. high girl and I can't really figure out why. They don't smile. They don't look people in the eye. They don't answer when spoken to instead choosing to look intently at their books or the table. I have tried teaching that communication (not English) is a give-and-take process, an interaction between people, but most of the time I feel like I'm throwing the ball and no one is catching it, let alone throwing it back to me!

For my student I decided to focus not so much on language but on communication skills. (She's very good at reading and writing!) Eye contact, body language, little ways of conveying that you are listening to the speaker or are thinking about a response, but all this "communicating" is close to torture for the girl and after an hour of this we are both exhausted.

"It is too much to expect her to change her personality at this late date just because she is going to be thrown into American culture. These kids have to be taught communicating skills earlier."

Then I look at some of my elementary school students and see the same pattern in them. And I look at some of my three and four year old kids in kindergarten and already I can see the somber, serious look in the eyes. Maybe it is a safety measure and saying nothing, making no acknowledgement is a way to blend in with the crowd and conform. Maybe it is just cultural. Maybe the people I know are just not happy!

Come on people. Let's start a smile campaign! ^_^

By the way, this is the computer mark for smiling in Japan. Notice the eyes smile but the mouth doesn't! Isn't it this in the international computer world? :-)

Sony recently came out with a camera that won't take a picture until everyone posing is smiling. Hmmm. Either it is going to take awhile before the picture is taken or people are going to learn how to smile thanks to the camera.

A smile is the light in the window of your face that tells people you're at home.

~Author Unknown

More villages!

Look at this lovely village! I wish I could claim this as my own, but alas it was made by my friend Mrs. Ochiai. I showed a picture of her hard at work on it last Friday and this is the end result! Isn't that fantastic?! As I say, these aren't very difficult but even so I think her first attempt is way beyond our expectations!

Mrs. Ochiai got her village cut and placed and sandwiched at my house and then she went home to do the quilting. She said it took her two days to do this. What a great idea! Look at all the houses she put in the border! I've got to try this! (Which means I'll be making another village...)

Mrs. Ochiai occasionally comes to my house either to teach me things on the computer (or fix whatever I've managed to mess up in the computer) or to sew together. She loves Choco but isn't very fond of my cats (they love her!) The last time Mrs. Ochiai visited we spent most of the day looking at websites and blogs and I showed her things I had discovered and new techniques etc. She was especially impressed by the quilting that can be done on the sewing machine and so she went home to practice on her domestic machine. I'd say her practice paid off if she can do all this lovely quilting on her village!

Doesn't this make you want to try this? How much of showing on the blog how this is done is violation of the book author's copyright? Anyway, here is the book so see if you can find it because it has some wonderful examples in it. I'll try to get back to showing how this done at a later date!

Stars

I had a busy day yesterday and didn't get home until evening. Teaching at the nursery school and at a friend's house and then again in the evening so I never got to the computer.

My head though was spinning all day with ideas of things I wanted to make and try. I think it is the challenge of creating something rather than the actual finished product that I like.

"Can I really do this? Is this really a time saver or a new technique?"

Last night at 8:30 I was upstairs trying out Patti's stars at Quilting is My Passion, and I made four. You really should go to her blog and see the beautiful quilt she is making. I don't know why I'm even showing my feeble attempt. Patti's instructions were very easy BUT I was reminded again at what a complete dunce I am with numbers and measuring. There really must be some gene missing in my DNA. How difficult is it to make 3 1/2 inch cuts in a square. How many times did I measure and re-measure and count out the inch lines in my rotary mat? And yet, twice I mis-cut and ruined some very good fabric. Once I can understand, but twice? Makes me think I should leave all cutting to someone else and just dedicate myself to sewing seams.


Here are my colors. I ignored Patti's advice and am not doing this in two colors which I'm not sure was a good idea or not. Calico Cat had sent me all those gorgeous bright patterns on black fabric and I decided those would be nice against some bright fabrics of my own but I don't know if you can really see the stars in there. I'll work on this a while longer hopefully adding some red and pink fabric and see where this leads me. No real plans for giving this to someone but hopefully it will grow into something nice.

Mother's Day!

Thank you for the compliments on yesterday's village. I think I'll write more about making that later.

Today is already Mother's Day in Japan and though probably a lot of us are going to do this, I thought I'd tell you about my mother.

Mom is 86 this year and in pretty good health. She lives with/next to my brother's family in her own apartment. Up until two years ago she was still driving around and volunteering at a neighborhood school but these days I think she mostly spends reading library books. I wrote a lot about her last July when I was in the States and I'll probably be saturating you with tales of her when I'm in California next month so I'm skipping anecdotes about her today.

One of the best Mother's Day presents I ever gave my mother was a book called "Grandmother". It is a book with lovely little country style illustrations and questions on different topics with blank spaces so that memories can be recorded. My mother and I wrote letters back and forth to each other for most of the 30 years that I've been in Japan and both of us have always been teased that we could write volumes if given a chance. In this little book, although there were only three or four lines given for each question, my mother got on the computer and typed out her answers and then pasted pages and pages into the book!

One of her entries for the page about her own mother was:

I was blessed with a dear, loving mother whom my father brought over to the U.S. from Japan in 1917... Her name was Taka Iwanaga before she was married. She was Japanese, as was my father. She was born there, lived with her family for a time in Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. Then she moved to Kamakura where her family lived near the Ohki household.

She had studied English at a Methodist school, Aoyama Jo-Gakuin, and so was attracted to the opportunity my father offered her to marry him and live in America. So off they came on their honeymoon--which never ended, for my mother never returned to Japan during her lifetime.

It makes me smile to read about my mother's childhood memories and so see how her positive and cheerful personality shines through her writing. Not a mention of hard times though I'm sure that during the war years being a second generation Japanese must have had its hardships. I'm also grateful to her for recording her good memories about my father and their courtship and marriage though nearly 25 years later their marriage ended in divorce. Some sections of the book there are pages for photographs and for recipe cards etc. and Mom made copies of some of her favorite photographs from her childhood, from my own and all in all my family history on her side is written down in this little book.

Two months after I sent her the book she returned it to me with this handwritten note.

July 1, 2002

Dear Tani and family,

So many hours of pleasure I have had completing this beautiful book you sent me for Mother's Day this year.

I can't thank you enough for giving me this opportunity to reflect on my life so far of 80 years!

Much love,
Mother/Grandmother

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY !

Villages

Yesterday my friend Mrs. Ochiai came over and the two of us made some village collages. I made one earlier this year which Mrs. Ochiai really liked so she asked me to teach her. It is not so much teaching/learning as just doing! I also had wanted to make another village collage and try putting sky and some trees into my picture and I also wanted to see how the finished product looked with borders so yesterday with those goals in mind, Mrs. Ochiai and I went to work.

The two of us cut and placed fabric randomly with very little said between us. Lots of concentration! Occasionally, Mrs. Ochiai would look up and say,

"Tanya, this doesn't look anything like a village."

but I assured her that it would once she got to the roof and window stage. And what do you think? That's a pretty good village isn't it!? By early afternoon (time out for lunch) both of us had our villages sandwiched and Mrs. Ochiai took hers home to quilt. She's probably working away at her sewing machine right now!

After Mrs. Ochiai left, I just couldn't stop and by 7:00 last night I'd finished the machine quilting and started playing around with borders. Then this morning I got my borders on and my village is completed!

That was fast and easy and a LOT of FUN!!

Escape artist

Yesterday I pondered small miracles and God's blessings that we don't realized. When made me reflect on such a deep and meaningful subject? Choco got out!

Last year I was writing about Houdini Choco and how she was escaping regularly. She would slip her collar and I would tighten it further. When that didn't work I went out and bought a harness but the harness lasted 10 minutes and she was out of it. I thought we'd have to lock her in a kennel but we "solved" the problem by putting two strong leather collars on her, one that she is hooked up to and one that acts as a "stopper" so that she won't be able to pull the other one off.

I don't know why (my carelessness?) but yesterday Choco managed to slip her collar. I was teaching a new group of first graders and I had closed one of the window shades just because Choco barks so much at the kids when she sees them. She does not like children. Just by "chance" (nothing is by chance in my book) I'd left the other shade open. With only 15 minutes left of class a streak of white outside the window caught the corner of my eye. It was dark out already so I thought I must have been mistaken. Another streak going in the opposite direction.

"Oh no! Choco's loose!"

What to do? She was out of sight by the time I got to the front door but I started yelling at her and she came streaking back but this was a big game for her. She was not about to be caught! A major problem. Do I leave 7 children in my house (all new kids) and go out chasing my dog, or do I hope Choco will come back on her own after she's had a run around the fields. She could get hit by a car (all that streaking and it was dark!) or lost. More than that, even if she came home I had parents who would be arriving soon to pick up their kids and another class that would be coming in the front door. I'm very leery of Choco around people because she can be ferocious if she thinks someone is not right.

I left the kids, got in the car and honked the horn quite a lot from the driveway. My neighbor (who has complained about Choco's barking!) peered out the window at me probably thinking,

"Now I've got to deal with the dumb dog's owner who is yelling and honking her horn!"

The miracle is that Choco came back! She didn't disappear. She didn't get hit by a car. She happily jumped in the car! I went back to my students who were excited but none of them had come outside to see the ruckus (and maybe get bit). Parents started arriving a few minutes later and no one (but my neighbor) ever guessed of the excitement a few minutes before.

Thank you Lord for your blessings and miracles!

Here is Choco this morning and here is the offending collar. How much smaller can I tighten this thing without choking her? I'm just trying to keep her safe!

Edible nature

This post isn't probably going to help anyone's cooking skills but I thought I'd show you what we've been eating recently.

In early spring the forests are filled with a wealth of edible shoots and sprouts but I'm afraid I have no knowlege whatsoever about what one should eat and what one should avoid. However many Japanese make it a hobby to go into the woods seeking out greenery that can be brought home and served at the dinner table. A few of my friends enjoy this treasure hunting and they will bring me the fruits of their search or cook it up for me to sample. Here are just a few of the natural foods that we've enjoyed the past couple weeks.

That bump back there behind the poles is a bamboo shoot. That is probably already too big to even think about eating but these little bumps can be seen every morning in the bamboo forest and by the evening they have grown an amazing number of inches. My kitchen has been overflowing with bamboo shoots already and they are somewhat of a pain to cook up but I do know what to do when someone hands one to me. After cooking the shoots last week I cut them up and made bamboo shoot tempura and bamboo shoot rice.

One neighbor brought me a bag of greenery last week which turned out to be shoots from a tree. The neighbor even took me into the forest to show me which tree was edible but I doubt that I'm going to go back there hunting for my own food. The tree shoots also got made into tempura alongside the bamboo shoot tempura.

A wonderful delicacy is fuki which I've never seen in the States though I can imagine that one might find them in the wetter parts of the States. (Any of you in Oregon and Washington ever seen this plant?) The stalk of the plant is eaten while the leaves are thrown away and it tastes sort of like a very soft celery... This is also best served simmered in soy sauce. And this morning someone brought me a plate of fern shoots and lightly fried Japanese pepper bush shoots. I remember my Japanese teacher's wife in Portland would go into the forest hunting for fern shoots and we students thought she was off her rocker.

I sometimes think all this knowledge of forest botany might come in handy if I was lost on a deserted Japanese island but since I have generous neighbors I'll depend on them for my very NATURAL food and the rest I'll get at the supermarket.