Reia returned to yochien (preschool) a week ago. She was happy to return and, very proudly, drew a picture of a tent on her first day back. We were happy to see our camping trips had meant a lot to her. A couple of days later, all the kids lined up and shared (one at a time) their favorite memories from the summer. Reia said, "Going to Disneyland!" Hmmm, but we didn't go to Disneyland. Someone at the beginning of the line said Disneyland, and more than 90 percent of the kids after that gave the same answer. Reia planned to say, "Going camping," but she would have been the only one. Kids in many cultures, of course, don't want to be singled out. But I'd say that's especially true in Japan. The same thing happened in the Spring, when all the kids shared their favorite fruit. Reia was going to say Strawberry, but she switched to Apple because that's what 100 percent of the kids before her said. The same thing happened, my wife says, when she was in preschool. You wonder why they have these sharing times...
On a somewhat related note, they're having a national election today. Most people are expected to line up and vote for the LDP -- as most have for the past 30 years or so.
My wife just went out to vote, and I wonder who she'll choose. I don't know who I would choose. I can't vote here, of course. Just to help out, though, you have the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP (like the Republicans in the USA). Then you have the Democratic Party (sort of like "the other Republicans"). It's much more complicated than that, but not really. Finally, there are the Communists, along with a host of smaller parties that few people bother to sort out. I mention the Communists separately because: a) they're recognizably different from the others, and b) I still can't believe they haven't gone for a name change considering.
But seriously, staying with the group (call it what you will) is a very strong part of the culture here. Another example. Two days ago...
(Click the link below to read the rest.)
... our daughter came home from school and refused to eat dinner. She didn't eat breakfast or lunch the next day. For three days in a row she asked for the thermometer to check her temperature (because she wanted to be sick and miss preschool). After much time trying to understand what happened (she was doing great before that), we learned that the teacher said (or seemed to say), "If you eat lunch too slowly, you'll throw up." One of the girls in the class really does throw up from time to time. She gags on food she doesn't like, but eats it anyway and pukes. My daughter has a fear of throwing up, so she took what the teacher said to heart. Even tonight she asked if she could come home before lunch tomorrow, but we think she's starting to get over it (and my wife will follow up with the teacher).
Many expats send their kids to Japanese preschools so that they'll learn Japanese. Most (if they can afford it) pull the kids out after preschool and send them to international schools. Usually it's because they want their kids to be socialized in a way that matches the culture of the parents (if possible).
As for us, we intend to send our kids to Japanese school through elementary school at least. My wife is Japanese, so we want our kids to learn the language, including writing, and the culture to an extent. We'll have to decide when and if to put them in an international school. In an ideal world, maybe you'd let the kids decide for themselves what culture they'll be. But, in reality, the parents have to make key decisions while the kids are still quite young that will impact their future cultural identities.
My wife has a bi-cultural perspective. Like me, there are things she likes and doesn't like about Japanese culture. She can work with the teacher in appropriate ways, and that includes gently making the teacher aware of the impact of that remark. But choosing a Japanese school means accepting that we DON'T have the same input that parents would have at a similar school in the USA. Nor is it appropriate for us to barge in and defend our child's right to be herself. (Japanese teachers want kids to be themselves, by the way, but in practice the group oriented culture kicks in.) As our kids pick up the culture, they'll get the good and bad. As for us, we'll try to raise them to be healthy and equipped to sort it out their identity (some things now and others later).
This entry originally appeared, with a cute picture, at Japanwindow.com.
No one is an accidental expat. Anyone who leaves their home country – whether it's for reasons as carefree as wanting to taste adventure in far-off lands or as devastating as fleeing an oppressive dictator to save their lives – has to put a fair amount of willpower into it. It's not easy to leave the land where you first learned to speak, where your parents raised you, where you know the names of everything without having to ask someone. No matter where you go, you still came from somewhere, and that somewhere is your culture, your background, your point of reference, and no matter how many new passports you collect, it's still – in some way and in some small part – your Home.
So even though there's much I don't like about American culture, values, politics, and so on, and even though I've actively wanted to move out of the U.S. for most of my life, and even though I've always identified as a New Yorker and not an American, I can't deny that the U.S. is still where I come from, and it has a certain importance in my life that I'll never be able to expunge. And so the events of the past week have struck me with an indelible sadness, and shock, and most of all, shame. No one – no matter what their culture, values, or politics – should have to go through what the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have been going through for the past number of days. How can the most powerful country in the world allow an entire city to fall beneath the waves and leave its poorest citizens to die on their rooftops? If you polled 9 out of 10 average Americans on where they'd rather live, the U.S. or Thailand, they'd all say, "America's the greatest country in the world – why would I want to live anywhere else?" And yet when the tsunami struck out of nowhere on a clear morning, the government of Thailand (and of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, etc.) sprang into action to help its people. They brought in people, they brought in trucks, they brought in elephants, for god's sake. The U.S. government, who had days of advance warning, dragged their collective feet and smiled for the cameras, insisting that everything was fine and help was on the way. But can they really say that to the face of the man whose mother, an elderly woman trapped in her nursing home, drowned after five days of waiting for someone to come and rescue her?
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one staring up at the naked emperor and wondering why the hell no one else can see he's not wearing any clothes. And I want to shake everyone else by the shoulders and force them to see past the red-white-and-blue-colored blinders they've got on, because they don't deserve to live like this. No one does, not anywhere, and it's the least understandable when something like this happens in one of the richest nations on the globe, a country whose federal stationery budget could feed an entire developing nation, a country where the rich get massive tax cuts while the poor send their children off to die in foreign countries because at least in the military they'll get some health insurance.
I'm torn between feeling so glad not to be back there, and so sad that the people I love still are. Or that anyone has to be, really.
If you haven't already, please give some money to relief efforts.