DEPARTURES

Lotsa stuff going on, small stuff under the circs-- like the monkeys got all my biwa (loquats), what's new; I just took too long to get to them myself. Been meaning to post about the daily this and that but there's too much and too many types of bigger goings on, primary among them the fact that Kasumi and Trio are moving out of their apartment three years after moving here from up north right after the Fukushima disaster that set all this in motion.

The Quartet is now staying with us for the week of finalizing before moving on to California to start new lives there, so it's the beginning to an end of sorts for us as well; we'll now have less need for this big house, garden, firewoods... Uberdecisions must be considered; it's like I'm 25 again, but a few decades hopefully wiser... Hmmm...

This caught me short, I must admit; I'd been unaware of leaning so hard on the past, less toward the delight in things that come from tomorrow like light to the eye... But for the grandies themselves, whom I have seen grow to this loveliness, now will go on without end, just as it once would for me...

Once I did what they are doing: departed for but a mere spell of time - when I had so much of it - without need for a long glance back, since I would be returning before much time had gone-- and then one day, a moment ago was a lifetime away, and I learned that a heart could grow so large, hold dear so many worlds, and not quite fall to pieces...

LITTLE GIRLS IN A GARDEN

I remember when the twins Mitsuki and Miasa were about 4 years old, we were doing garden work and I handed each of them a rake. They looked at the huge objects in their hands the way I would look at a 50-quon Grongorch from the Gas Jungles of Saturn, then their eyes turned to me with a glint of a hint at what a bonehead I was, for assuming that one is born knowing how to use whatever a "rake" is. 

This characteristic of mine doesn't seem to diminish as I get older. The other day I and the twins (now 10 years old) were out in the same garden and I gave each of them a packet of spinach seeds, showed them the new furrows I'd made, asked them to plant the seeds about 2 cm apart, said we could thin them later. 

They started at opposite ends of the long rows and worked toward each other, reaching into their packets and carefully lifting out just one seed at a time, grasping it softly between two fingertips, like a tiny egg, then reaching down and placing it gently upon the soft cushion of soil - just there - like putting a tiny doll to bed, then patting it into place with the end of a loving finger, taking each seed at its true value, even tucking it in with a little earthy blanket, then extracting the next seed in all the same way and placing it, as precisely as possible by eye, about 2 cm down the row. The rows of seeds filled slowly, but perfectly. 

With a row-and-a-half per twin, it took quite a while to get all the seeds arranged in comfort and sleeping softly, but M&M seemed to enjoy it, they were fully absorbed and far away, and I'll bet it was all worth it: that spinach will be the happiest, most nourishing, spiritually balanced and tastiest spinach I've ever grown.

But it was a rarer treasure to watch the twins in those natural moments, of the patient and caring kind that only free-range kids seem able to embody in this fast-forward world; all the more precious to the lucky elder nearby who has to go far back in his own museum to get hold of anything that real anymore, the way real used to be, that now seems to live mainly in fading recollection... 

The pure breath of life, these little girls, who still wear the aura of the eternity whence they came, still live in a when where each new thing is impeccably new, infinite with possibilities and deserving of tenderest care without embarrassment, up to a point; I was a boy, myself...

While there Was Light

The Trio of Brio - Kaya (12), Mitsuki (10), Miasa (10) - came over for a visit on Sunday, and when in the afternoon I came downstairs from my editing work in the loft for a break to investigate the unusual silence I noted that while Miasa was doing the intimidating mound of dirty dishes generated by the youthful hunger crew, her sisters were nowhere around. I asked her about that, and she said - with no sign of solo-dishwashing rancor - that they were outside somewhere, playing.

In the continuing oddness, despite all the open doors and windows I couldn't hear a single kidsound from outside, a rare situation with the Trio around, so I went outside barefoot - just gonna be out there a minute - and found Kaya hunkered down on the suntoasted evening road with the big binoculars at her eyes, trying to focus on Mitsuki who 100 yards or so down the mountain was jumping up and down and side to side, I guess trying to make herself more interesting or harder to see.

While the two went on with their optical gravity visualization experiment (I didn't ask, knowing I wouldn't understand the response; anyway you don't bother focused experimenters) I just stood there and looked around-- the whole blue sky up there like a big robin egg shell lit up from the outside, the mountain arms around reaching out, shadowed and unshadowed, in the rays of the sun now behind the peaks; the darkening blue lake smooth as the sky, sparkling with boats; the big island beginning to glimmer with fisherman house lights and the same beyond, disappearing into the mainland; behind me the sheets of last clouds turning from pale gold to mango before the dark and the stars; about then the girls gave up on the binocs and grabbed the garden hose, began watering themselves and the locality...

I just stood there turning and turning, bare feet cooling in the flowing water, while there was light.

QUAKE UPDATES Day 11 +++

Had the trio stay over Sunday-Monday, on Sunday took them for lunch to Hot Station, where we ate outside in a field of nanohana with (nanohana in our bento!) beneath the snowy mountains, then went to get some spring water - which the girls love to do - then back home to our very own mountains of private snow that have arisen from the multiple shovelings of the deck over the ages of this winter, so the ladyettes could make snow men and in Kaya's case (quite the little artist) a snow rabbit. In mid-task she asked if we had some red berries, we had none; I thought a minute and gave her a small dried red pepper from a bunch hanging on the wall and her face lit up; I went out later to see what she had made and it was a wee snow rabbit with its wee snowfriend. Fun till bed, when they made a nest for themselves in an upstairs room, settled in under the big blankets, yawned and were asleep.

I did the same. Woke to laughter of Echo and the girls downstairs at breakfast... how quickly the young recover... giggles are a major gift of nature, good for every ill... and what bright energy the girls are now, for these moment untroubled and happy, with fun to be had... Kasumi was better by Monday and came to join us for the day, which was when we took the photo.

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Started to order some stuff from the US via the internet the other day and at checkout was told: "Shipments to Japan will be delayed indefinitely." Apparently, all cargo transport is being commandeered for aid etc. for an indeterminate time, which is fully ok with me, but it was something of a shock to discover that sources abroad are cut off 'indefinitely.' Saw no news about that in the media; or when private shipments will be restored...

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"Now I just feel hatred towards TEPCO," he says. "It is very difficult for me to say this since I have worked for them for 18 years. But I just think they should come clean with all the information they have."

Company's Handling Of Nuclear Crisis Sparks Anger

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One positive aspect to these catastrophic events, and historically perhaps the most remarkable, judging from what I've experienced here and in these past few days, is that because of the media revolution the world has just had its first genuine experience of The Global Community, its first real full-spectrum sense of how we are all in this together.

Japan's harrowing disaster, in all its horrible reality, was borne at the speed of light directly to the eyes and hearts of different cultures all around the world, whose people could right now see and be with and among the victims of quake, tsunami, radiation accidents; they could share the plight of countless of their fellow humans as never before in history-- oceans different from seeing in the morning paper over coffee a photo of some buildings fallen yesterday somewhere else in the world with another Thousands Die headline, then heading off to work...

In this new instant, the world became Japan and Japan the world. For the first time in history, we all felt it: we are all in this together. This was not politics, this was not spin, this was life - our life - all of us, here on this small blue spaceship. I believe that this will go down in history as a major turning point in the hopeful advance of civilization... If we can maintain our native integrity, keep our minds clear and learn to learn what we are being taught...

QUAKE UPDATES Day 10

 A photo at last! 

Finally we got together for a photo at one of those purikura (Print Club) photo booths in the game center at the super where we did some shopping. Clearly experienced at this are Kasumi on the right, Kaya in the middle, the twins at the bottom (Mitsuki on the right, Miasa on the left) and Echo on the left; then there's that puzzled and suspicious fellow at the top trying to find out where the hell it is I'm supposed to look within 0.3 seconds.

ALPHABET

Yesterday when the grandies came and I was to babysit for a few hours, Kaya (9) and one of the twins (Mitsuki, 6) set immediately to playing with the toys, while the other twin (Miasa, also 6) sat quietly at the kitchen table, hunched over a notebook, drawing-- or so I thought.

When I happened to walk by and glanced at what she was doing, at first it looked like English words... But that couldn't be of course, since she doesn't speak English - though she has expressed a desire to learn English... Besides, she's only 6, and 6-year-olds often say things... But they WERE English words, beautifully printed and she was printing them! Beautifully! Huh?

One of her sisters was jumping rope and the other was rolling around the room on the big red ball, which are essential activities in themselves, but have the addictive quality of being fun. In stark contrast, Miasa had, before coming to visit, made ruled lines in her blank notebook, asked someone to print an English word on the left of each line and was now intently copying each printed word carefully and in surprisingly expert fashion, over and over till she reached the end of the line, when she would start on the next line and word. She wasn't having fun or showing off, she was just doing it, and had started doing it the moment she'd arrived. While her sisters were playing noisily, she was quietly studying English!

I... I... I was speechless. I just stood there. I... I had never seen a 6-year-old focus with that much intensity, for that long, on a real grownup study task. I... I waited till she had finished the whole two pages (without looking up even once!), when she ruled fresh lines on the next two pages and held it up to me, asking me to print some new English words on the left. I... I... I said: This is fantastic! You are amazing! You are ... This is... Wow... and so forth, at which the other two girls looked up to see what all the praise was about, and later after dinner, when they were about to watch the Wizard of Oz they insisted on watching it in English.

Later, when Kasumi came to pick them up and take them home across the Lake, they had fallen asleep... Out in the car Miasa lifted a sleepy hand and said "My notebook..." She'd left it by the warm wood stove, where she'd been ruling in more lines, just before falling asleep...

My English fails me...

SUPERVISITATION

Heard an odd sound outside yesterday afternoon, like a small mob of elves sneaking over a field of pink and green marshmallows as quietly as they could while dragging bags full of giggles, hoping to surprise an unsuspecting grandfatherly person who lives in a house on the side of a mountain in an oriental countryside, so I did what any such elderperson would do in similar circumstances: I put my ear to the door, the better to grasp the situation and make counter-surprise preparations, when the bell rang serially just as the door was pulled wide open and the entire living room filled up with squeals as I was engulfed in fresh cold air filled with six arms of three granddaughters who varoomed in through the doorway like a sixlegged yellstorm and whirled around me in the cutest smiling vortex I ever saw, hugging me all over and yelling Bobu-san! and caroming off to bounce around the big room, looking up and down and around to see what had changed and what was still there, while I spun a moment in the vestibule trying to slow my whirl so I could see and walk, talk and so forth. Then we got down to the intense part of the visit, where things happen really fast.

BRIGHTFACE AND FRIENDS

The trio of grandies Kaya, Miasa and Mitsuki arrived from across the Lake late yesterday afternoon in a big van full of themselves (driven by their lovely mother Kasumi) and amazed me with their growing and maturing-- living proof that miracles are perfectly natural.

They brought with them the usual bunch of puzzles that attend grandfathering a cluster of lightbeings, such as what to do first or is there a first-- but no problem in this case-- as always, I immediately took them out into the garden where they love to rummage (which they don't get to do in their pro tem city apartment), especially in summer when everything is green and the spicy air of late day is so rich with fragrances ("Let's walk up the road, too!" they yelled when we got outside).

Of course I right away had to show them the long green carpet of basil - they're basil fanatics - and over there was the opportunistic watermelon, growing meters and meters in length out of a seed left in the compost pile (on whose original bouncy heap of rustly autumn leaves the three girls had giggly danced just last autumn), they ooohd and aaaahd at the softball-sized green baby watermelon that looks so cute snuggling there in the grass where the vine climbs over the stacks of shiitake logs on its pale green way up into the cedars, then they sniffed the lemon verbena - there are ritual steps to the garden re-acclimation process - then into the garden proper with the towering tomatoes, green wall of goya and climbing green beans, gangly sunflowers, leftover turnips and amazing butternut squashes getting bigger and bigger but hiding under those huge leaves, the trio showing me where they've just gotten new mosquito bites, we picked some green beans, Morocco beans and tomatoes, checked out the goya flowers up close - the three LOVE goya!

Then they sniffed the ginger leaves, checked out the baby green peppers, which were "Cuuuuute!", tickled the tiny green feathers of the new carrots and got mad at the monkeys who stole the older carrots that they themselves could have picked right now; then we walked over and talked for a while with Brightface, the biggest Sunflower in the garden, who nodded to the girls and asked a few questions about being human and good and going to school, told them some nice stuff about being a flower and having fun even being so tall and thin and with no feet, here among all his vegetable friends, it was a grand life, following the sun. And it wasn't my hand moving the big blossom or my voice saying those words with a sunflowery accent. Pay no attention to that man beside the sunflower.

Didn't matter, the girls liked their conversation with Brightface. Lots of green and purple shiso frilling around too, they also love shiso. They love everything, I think. They squeally enjoyed diving into the high wide tomato bushes to get at the gemmy rednesses in there and putting them in the basket one by one with the bunch of beans, then we headed back up to the deck to plan the tent, which they'd been calling for all along but forgot as soon as there were snacks.

New minds move fast.

THE PAST, THE FUTURE AND ALL THAT STUFF

Another of the many and unexpectedly great funs of having grandies is the letters they now and then send like young bursts of life as they learn to write and want to communicate to us all the important events in the rush of their daily lives.

We just got a bright envelope full of little pages in all colors, shapes and sizes from Mitsuki, who appears to be quite the epistolarian: pages from little cartoony notebooks, kitty postits, pages with ice cream cone stickers stuck on them, bits of paper with drawings on them of grownups, kids, trees and animals, all scribed all over with kiddy thoughts meticulously wrangled out of a language's newlearned lettering... It's fun, intriguing and ultimately endearing to puzzle out the scripted elements of a cute new life learning about the world, the past, the future and all that stuff, just like you yourself did. And are doing, as you read.

One of Mitsuki's miniletters says she is well and asks are we also, the end, she seems to think that all her grandparents live together and intermingle all the time, she hasn't got that figured out yet like older sister Kaya has, without ever asking anybody about the facts of it all-- give Mitsuki and sister Miasa another year or two. It's astonishing each time you realize anew all the things kidlets have to learn - and do learn, without even trying - it all just falls into place in their heads and hearts, and they write about it now and then.

And in the inner sanctum of the cartoonly colored envelope bearing a cluster of interesting drawn-on stamps surrounding the genuine but uninteresting stamp, there is a treasurously small packet of paper wrapped and folded and wrapped some more that clearly contains something special and says on it Bob & Echo, and after unwrapping and unfolding and unwrapping all the layers that tiny hands love to take the time to place upon their treasures to keep them safe, there at the heart are four tiny glass beads of different colors: two for me and two for Echo.

This weekend I'll make a two-bead string necklace and wear it. Nothing like a bit of love around your neck.

THE FOOTHILLS OF REASON

Noticed this morning by the crunches underfoot, and in the clarity of sunlight, the impressive quantity of senbei chunks and nori flakes littering certain areas of the floor around the kitchen table, indicating that someone yesterday had been sitting at said table scarfing said items in some quantity-- in fact two someones, judging by the area of rampant and heedless chunkification - someones who were below the Age of Senbei, as I dubbed it during my own parenthood.

The Age of Senbei comes at about the same time as the old Catholic workhorse the Age of Reason, at which age one is qualified to go to hell. (Or heaven, the much less likely option in my case at the time-- and even now, I expect.) As you can see, I've based my age classification on more immediately useful parameters. The Age of Senbei comes a couple of years after the Age of Restaurantability-- the age at which you can take children to a restaurant without them grabbing all the condiments on the table for an essential series of physical tests.

At the Age of Senbei, which is about the age of 7, a child can eat senbei without leaving a physical record of the act all over the vicinity. If Hansel and Gretel had been pre-Senbei, they would have been found at once. Mitsuki and Miasa just turned 5, so that seat there and that seat there is where they sat, as you can easily see. Over there is where Kaya, who just turned 8, was sitting. It is clear by the floor that she is of an age.

If they were here right now, I'd have them clean it up, perhaps accelerate their growth a bit, but kids make great getaways, as the crumbs of yesterday attest. And though the trio is coming to visit in an hour or so, since this is the last day they'll be here - and anyway I trust that the twins will reach the Age of Senbei as certainly and fully as Kaya has - I will say nothing to them of the morning crunches underfoot, I'll just clean it up myself and let them be who they are at the moment, under a life system way older than history.

Which is not to say I won't eyeball M&M if they launch into any senbei-- I have reached the Foothills of Reason, after all.

THE BEST TO YOU

From Pure Land Mountain

SNOWLADIES

Well the grandees arrived yesterday afternoon and, having suffered one long child-year of deep snow deprivation, were unable to get out of the car without squealing and running straight to the snow mountains I'd made in front of the deck and climbing right up and down them over and over for immediate replenishment, in the fever of their delirium making snowballs to throw at anything at all until they came to the next level of their senses and ran en masse to the tool shed - filling their boots with snow at every step, but who cares about feet when there's food for the starving - to get any item at all that could hold snow, like shovels, trowels, buckets etc., then they fanned out into the garden and began to fill in holes and elevate hills and otherwise rearrange the snowscape to their frenzied liking when at some point I mentioned a nice big open snowy slope up in the forest where they might want to go and play, and with one voice of yes they flung their forgotten tools to the ground (where the tools still are, as I notice out the window on the garden) so we all walked upmountain into the forest - actually we adults walked and the kids ran - where we came to a nice clear slope of virgin snow and the three filled the forest with squeals at the sight, a sound most awesome yet somehow quite at home in the sylvan silence, as they ran up the hill arms waving, scarves flying, boots falling off, the hill would be perfect for tobogganning if we had a toboggan but they don't have toboggans in Japan so the snowcovered trio just used their bodies and ran up and slid, rolled, tumbled and galloomphed to the bottom then back up again, quickly exhausting the adults, who at last herded the snowsodden three back through the woods with their snowmelt mittens and icewater boots, I gave one my handwarmer to help her survive till we arrived back at the house with three little melting snowladies who right away gathered by the toasty woodstove and had some hot tea and opened their presents, all without the slightest bit of a fight it was great, we all sat around the low homemade wooden table in front of the stove and had homemade pizza before the kids all took turns wearing the moonmask. A typical first day of the snow cure.

YESTERDAY

Saturday being our last day with the grandies, we (Kasumi, Tatsuya Echo and I) took them to pick blueberries at the blueberry farm (and restaurant) Sora-no-ne, up north and inland from the Lake, where they each filled a container with excitement and blueberries, nibbling on the peak fruit all the while, we grownups enjoying their excitement and the blueberries, helping the trio find the biggest blueberries to pick among the millions of swelling dusky blue globes.

When each of the three had filled her container to the brim, we took them for picnicking, swimming and playing to a place not far from there, their favorite play place, called Kodomo-no-kuni (site link at the link) on the shore of Lake Biwa. It has a big and challenging playground, plus a beach, a pool, a stream, cars you can pedal along roads all around the grounds and lots of other stuff-- the trio love the place; and even better it’s free, except for a 500 yen parking fee. You pretty much have to have a car to get there, though, as far as I know.

When we returned home in the evening the kids went out into the garden, where they discovered the newly dug soil with the post holes around it and asked if they could go in there and walk on it, and go into the post holes - they just had to walk on that fluffy soil and go down into those deep holes - then they discovered the standing sheaf of reeds I had there for marking pole-to-pole distance, and right away turned them into swords and skyreachers and fishing poles, went fishing for imaginary fish in the post holes and caught a few large ones, had us remove the fish from their airhooks and assess their flavor.

Kaya gathered some rocks and made an imaginary fire with all her fish on it and got leaves for spicing and salad while Miasa made soba noodles and Mitsuki made udon noodles, then in the growing dimness one of the twins did what I guess is an instinctive thing for a new female— she pushed one tall reed into the ground and about a meter away pushed another reed into the ground, then stood there before them clicking two sticks together and chanting a song, the other twin soon joining in seamlessly, creating an enchanting and spontaneous song of apparently made-up words.

At the end of the long chant (chant > enchanting: interesting tacit understanding in us modern folk, of how deeply those words connect) she declared to her father and I, who stood at the edge of the garden watching this instantaneous succession of goings on, that this was now a special gateway, and that beyond it was a special room where they could go and do special things. She stood before the gateway and began clacking her sticks again in rhythm with her sister, preparing the room until it was all ready for use, then she went fishing in one of the post holes she hadn’t fished in yet.

Standing there watching in the dimness that gave an aura to their endless spring of imaginings, I couldn’t help but realize the deep and inborn magic that resides in those new spirits; we grownups tend to think it’s all "made up," but seeing the three do their untrained rituals there in the dark at the end of a day, still directly connected to their (and our) source, I was suddenly aware that it’s not made up at all, but is as ancient and true as the seeds of humanity. It wasn’t thought, which is new to each mind, but spiritual instinct, now living on in them—not to be erased or supplanted by education, if I can help it--


All in all, a heartfilling day.

STARSTRUCK

Yesterday, Kaya was taken by her other grandfather to see a planetarium. Mitsuki and Miasa were envious as double five-year-olds when they heard about Kaya's pending good time, but then they were told that they were coming to our house for the afternoon and evening, and their envy waned a bit; at least we have different toys, plus we live on a mountain.

When they got here we told them we were taking them to a concert. They'd apparently heard of the word, and seemed excited at the prospect. (What did 'concert' mean to them? What does a five-year old twin female expect from a ‘concert’? How do you ask such questions of a 5-year-old twin female?)

When all the travelly stuff was ready we took them down along the lake, around the mountain and into the beautiful narrow valley on the other side from us, where we drove the curving road in the deep shade along the lazy mountain stream until we found a good spot, went down to the stream bank and the twins went out of the hot day into the clear mountain water for a cool swim, enjoyed picking up larger and larger rocks from the bottom and tossing them further out, making the biggest splashes possible all over themselves and effecting their changes in the general layout of the universe, then after an hour or so of waterfun they toweled off and we went on to the concert, which was just down the road.

The ‘Haruya’ family, whom I've mentioned herein a few times, the most natural and simply living family I know in these parts (e.g., none of their three sons goes to school, they are home-schooled, extremely rare in Japan) (I have a lot of great stories about the family I should get to herein sometime). They live in a traditional Japanese village house in one of the small villages along that river. For their livelihood, in addition to occasionally serving excellent reservations-only meals in their home, restaurant-fashion, they travel around the country to various ecoevents where they sell delicious home-made organic ready-to-eat foods. As well, they are movers and shakers in a lot of the events that happen over in their valley neighborhood and elsewhere. They are also a rock/folk band, and were going to play the first set of the concert, starting at 4pm.

The twins knew none of these details, and seemed unusually quiet sitting right in the front row before a stage that was the deck of a rustic farmhouse up inside the edge of the woods. There were a lot of kids running around (almost all boys), but the twins stayed fascinated before the stage, watching the band set up; then the performance began. The Haruya band, Yamamoto 844 (mother on piano, father on lead guitar, sons on vocals and drums; another woman on bass, her two sons helping with the vocals). Five boys in total, from 5-8 years old, did the vocals in the first song. The Haruya folks’ three sons, 8, 5 and 2, took turns playing the drums during their set. Believe it or not, the 2-year-old did a responsibly credible job on the drums-- he stayed seated, pounding now and then, and finished with a big satisfying crash on the cymbals.

During the set, I was watching the twins now and then to see how they were taking all this; was it too noisy? Totally bizarre? Was it their first actual concert? They were too busy watching to answer silly questions; they never moved from the bench, sat there eating their snacks and drinking their cold tea, eyes locked on the performance.

After the first couple of songs, the oldest brother, 8, became the main vocalist and really belted out the tunes. During the closing song, Mitsuki kept pulling at Echo's sleeve and saying something, but Echo couldn't hear clearly because of the volume, so she just nodded. After the song ended, Mitsuki said Sonno hito wa kakkoii... Mitsuki sukii desu! Which situationally translates as: That guy is really cool... I like him! She wanted his autograph.

Echo went over and found him behind the stage with his friends, horsing around like an 8-year-old, and persuaded him to come and give his autograph to one of those cute twins over there (seems it was his first autograph, and he was uncharacteristically a bit shy about it). He came over in his Grateful Dead bear t-shirt, and in his immediate presence it was clear that Mitsuki, who had just turned five a few days ago, had a major crush on this guy nearly twice her age. He signed his name in normal-sized letters. Echo asked him to sign it BIG; he did. Mitsuki held the paper with just the tips of her fingers, like a basically untouchable treasure.

As the sun was setting and the featured group was setting up for its session late into the night, before leaving (we had to meet Kasumi at home around 7) we went over to where the Haruya family was now selling their foods, and told the boy's mother about what had happened. She said to her son, who was there helping out, why don't you draw her a picture of a samurai on the paper? (He loves drawing and Japanese history, so draws a lot of historic figures). He took the paper, M&M following, and went over to an outdoor worktable of plywood over sawhorses and began to draw. The twins watched in close fascination; he joked, they laughed. I took some pictures. His 5-year-old brother came over. Echo said That doesn't look like a samurai. The younger brother said It isn't a samurai; it's Napoleon. Napoleon? said Echo; It doesn't look like Napoleon, either. It’s Napoleon the third, said the home-schooled 5-year-old.

When we got home, Napoleon III in his own special folder, Mitsuki commandeered Echo to write a fan letter, inviting her crush to “come by Shinkansen and stay at my house and go to a restaurant where we can have spaghetti, pizza and dessert.” Echo asked who else would go on the date; Miasa said I'll go! Mitsuki said His mother, my mother, and Miasa.

Then she carefully colored his drawing of Napoleon III and gave it in its folder to Echo to keep for her, put a bunch of her own drawings and newly learned writings in the envelope with the letter for Echo to give to her one and only.

That's Mitsuki in the last photo, holding the paper...

Five years old...

BRIGHT MATTER

Had the three wee ones over yesterday afternoon and evening while their mother went off for an evening of rare comparative freedom to meet with some old friends from her younger days around here. It gets stranger each year how simply being in the presence of small impossibly cute beings like KMM (currently 7-6-6) can draw the energy right out of my body much faster and more thoroughly than hard labor. I could split firewood for hours, take a short break before some gardening, then take a long walk before lunch, but with these three, even if they are reading or quietly playing (they’re well behaved young ladies for the most part, and only rarely leave the galaxy), there is some other powerful cosmic force at play, which I hereby dub Bright Matter. Scientists haven’t discovered this aspect of reality yet, they’re so involved in proving the existence of Dark Matter; wait till they have granddaughters.

If, while (and only while) the three are at last quietly occupied I sneak upstairs to do a bit of editing (as fate will twist it, I'm swamped with work these days), within a minute or two one of the trio quietly comes up and sits on my knee, wants to watch, wants to try (it is the highest crime to discourage such wishes; anyway, granting them is infinitely more pleasant than work), then there are two, then three, and less and less of whatever I was doing. Soon the girls are learning how to use the mouse to color some pages on a kiddie website they ask me to find for them, and as they become absorbed in that I drift downstairs to ponder our new garden, which Mr. H (who has the big fruit tree nursery upmountain) over the weekend dug up with his power shovel and cleared out all the rocks (there's a big pile of them over in the garden corner), pulled out the stubborn stumps that were poking up here and there (the extent of the cherry tree roots was astonishing!) (there's a big pile of them over in another corner) and ripped up the deep bamboo roots (they're piled on top of the stumps), all to be dealt with at some point, when the Bright Matter index is lower.

Next we have to put up the monkey/deer/wild pig fence, which should be interesting, but plans evaporate in the presence of Bright Matter as here come the trio again, Watchadoin, so we do some fireworks, it's dusky enough, but the twins don't yet know about things like upwind/downwind (we have to learn that, too!), so while I'm sparkler-lighting for two sisters, the other sister's first sparkler sends all its smoke into her face and she has no idea what to do while holding a bright flame in her own hand, other than to quietly stand there and breathe/not breathe as best she can, so abruptly doesn't like fireworks anymore - every moment is HUGE at that age.

Then we feed the three and put them to bed; Echo goes into the bath and I go softly into the upstairs silence for some quiet reading until the three fall asleep, when I can at last raid the fridge to my own content, but my peace is interrupted as four small feet come pounding up the stairs, yelling Mitsuki's nose is bleeding! I go downstairs and Mitsuki is lying on the floor holding a softball of tissues to her bloody nose and looking very serious, so I assure her all is ok, take her to the bathroom sink (keep your head tilted back!) to wash off, tell her to lie down on her back and be still-- then Echo comes out of the bath and they're all up and excited to tell her about the whole bloody adventure from start to finish and then some. They’ll be awake for a while now; amidst the new and intense waves of Bright Matter I ponder having a large strong coffee so maybe I can make it all the way to bed.

BEAUTIFUL GIFTS

Well, with Keech still here for a last few days before heading back to Seattle, the dynamic trio Kaya, Mitsuki and Miasa came back into our lives on Monday with a triple-smiley burst of growth and energy, filling the house with giggles and running blurry circles around the big smooth cedar logs that rise to the roof from our living room floor. Pretty soon they were shinnying up those same logs and yelling from the ceiling. Keech hasn’t seen the twins since they were born nearly 5 years ago…

Yesterday, following our early afternoon's labor, when I came into the house a few minutes after Keech, the trio were walking all over their new uncle. Literally. Keech was lying on a futon on the living room floor with KMM walking on his back, legs and feet. They work as a massage team, among other helpful things.

Later, when Keech and I were outside moving mounds of firewood we'd cut earlier, the sound of our labors intrigued the triad, who came out like a swarm of bees to see what we were up to; before you could say "whatchadoin" three times, they pitched in (barehanded) and helped Keech and I (gloved) load and stack wheelbarrows of the stuff, and only got one scraped arm and a bumped forehead in the process.

For these and other especially helpful tasks around the house they earn 5 or 10 yen, which they put in their little money envelopes and carry around with them, the way Keech used to do; incipient financiers, only all smiles.

What beautiful gifts they are, that keep on growing!

OPERATING THE LOBSTER

To be perfectly honest, I've never even thought of operating a giant lobster-- who can perceive all the possibilities that life lays out before us? But when I saw that giant lobster sitting there, my inner child leaped at the prospect. Regrettably though, my outer adult was too big to fit into the crustacean. But then I've never thought about not fitting into a lobster either, so the disappointment was small one.

I'm speaking of the new Nephropida across the water, in that special section of the fantastic Lake Biwa Museum called the "Discovery Room," where kids can go unattendedly wacko while their parents collapse nearby.

Yes, in the Discovery Room there is now a giant lobster you can physically go inside of and, while looking out through the lobster's mouth, manipulate the levers in there to operate the giant claws and snap up a praying mantis bigger than my forearm, or a 20-pound pollywog - both at once, if you can swing it - those dainties are dangling temptingly right out there in front of your big bulbous eyes, just within reach of those long heavily jointed chitinous arms extending out from your spiny red carapace, deep in the imaginary sea where so much of the world's fun resides.

When we brought the grandgirls to the Museum on Sunday, Kaya headed straight for the lobster and got in line behind all the boys until at last she got to direct the beast, caught a loach or two and snagged a pollywog, but soon burned out on the deeper potential of the thing - sure it's cool, said her look, but lobster interest fades - she wandered off; then each of the twins had a go at the lobster, with about the same result. Of course they're totally children at this point in their lives, with quite a while to go before they begin to acquire their own outer adults and the restrictions/perspective that affords; still, their actions were a surprise to both of me.

Yes, the girls quickly gave up wielding those giant spiked arms with the gnarly grabbing claws at the ends!! They wandered off, stuck their heads up inside the fish tank and stuff like that, made some yarn pictures on the yarn boards, but their hearts weren't in those activities any more than they had been in the lobster.

As far as I could tell, their hearts kept pretty much out of it until they found, over in a far corner, the traditional Japanese kitchen of a hundred years or so ago, where they could do trad stuff like "slice" "daikon" and other "vegetables" etc. with a "hocho" (traditional Japanese kitchen knife) and put them in a big iron pot over a "fire" in an old-fashioned irori (fireplace) to make a nabe (stew type meal) for "dinner," and you couldn't tear the girls away from there, they made dinner over and over, fascinated at slicing not-even-real radishes with a not-even-real hocho, one twin at the edge of the girl-crowded space complaining initially to Kasumi that there was no room in the kitchen: “Mama, there's no room for me to make a nabe!”

While gazing upon that comfortingly homish scene, my outer adult couldn't help but be aware of his inner child's powerful desire to sneak away from this girl stuff and work that lobster big time.

Museums are there to teach us of the amazing aspects there are to the world and to ourselves. The lesson here appears to be that somewhere back in the history of girls there is warmth, there is comfort, there is nurturing; whereas somewhere back in the history of boys there is a giant lobster.

Which gets harder to operate as we get older.

THE JOYS OF THE RED SHOVEL

Now that the angelic trio has departed, things are sliding back to normal around here and I can set out to do a task without it turning into a carefully conducted -- and fun, but slooow -- lesson for brand new and vulnerable fingers etc., I was out in the garden yesterday tossing sectioned logs about, splitting cherry kindling and cleaning up the store the heavenly visitors had assembled under the deck with the wheelbarrow parked out front and now half-filled with rain, when I got at last to the Store inventory-- what they'd had on display in carefully arranged baskets.

During my audit I found (among many other things-- the catalog was large) that they had been offering to lucky buyers a selection of top quality leaves, superbly tinted with all-natural colors; a series of conveniently sized designer cedar twigs with cones attached, all fashioned in exquisite detail; a fragment of plastic detritus interestingly shaped by the forces of nature; a small but finely constructed whisk broom formerly owned by a grandfather who had been wondering where the hell it had gone; a small red metal shovel for cleaning gutters, ditto the grandfather-wonderment.

And there at the bottom of each basket was the key of the assembled collection: a variety of rocks, each uniquely crafted by the Big Crafter, in sizes and shapes ideal not only for purchase, but for ease of portability, enabling discerning buyers to take their new possessions wherever they wish (such convenience!), arrange them as they wish (decorative potential!) and subsequently move them about as life now and then requires, a need already anticipated by these brand-new mini-entrepreneurs regarding items not all that different from the things we grownups call televisions, refrigerators, kitchen sinks and what not, the rocks of modern life.

These were ancient commercial principles at work, as manifested in the act of setting forth and laying out the available goods at this early age, knowing as yet only vaguely (but truly) the basics of marketing (Think this rock is worth anything? Why?), making considered selections from out of the great mass of happenstance presented by the world at large, arranging the selected items appealingly in baskets among artistically positioned leaves and twigs, and offering all for sale to any grandfatherly passersby who might perhaps be eager to possess and enjoy the use of, say, a red shovel.

When by late afternoon all had been restored to its original utilitarian state, there wasn't a speck of fun in sight. I don't know what I was thinking of; I'll put some fun back tomorrow.

MANEUVERS

Yesterday was one big outflanking action as the kids advanced relentlessly through the day at our house. A blog entry would be like sitting down in a chair or something. Self-removal from the ongoing action is not permitted by the triumvirate of miniqueens, who divide the world equally among themselves, the way nations try in vain to do.

Echo was the designated cook and I was the designated dishwasher, table setter, all-purpose toy overseer and general kid handler, while parents Kasumi and Tatsuya went off into Kyoto to do something they haven't done in a long time: go shopping together for a few hours without the kids. Musta been weird.

After the kids were fed - they no longer take naps, a major setback in the grandparent counterinsurgency - we took the whole crew out for a nice tiring walk up through the woods, picking cloudberries and poking at mushrooms as we went, then out and across the mountain face of rice paddies where the three climbed and rolled and ran and had a satisfyingly exhausting afternoon in the rainy snow until dinner when we were back on full duty again...

Happy 2008!

From Kaya, Mitsuki and Miasa