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 友達の青木美由紀さんは最近本を出しました。美由紀さんは日本で一番優しい、そして一番たくましい女性だと私は思っています。彼女はNPO法人シェアで色々な国で仕事をしてきました。中には、南アフリカでエイズ患者のために働きました。（下の写真はジャイカのサイトと美由紀さんの活動日記より。）

その経験をもとに、本にしました。

この本は南アフリカの状況、親をなくした子供達のこと、エイズで病んでいる子供達のこと等、写真と情報がたくさんつまっています。

元サッカー日本代表北澤豪選手の南アフリカでの経験談も本の最初に載っています。本の売り上げの一部はNPO法人シェアによせられるそうですので、是非ご協力をよろしくお願いします。誰でも美由紀さんのような働きはできませんが、本を1冊買って、その働きに協力することはできます！

There are lots of Japanese words I just plain don’t like. Many of them are related to children and learning and schools, so I haven’t had as much contact with them workwise as mothering-wise. The end result being that I don’t think about them so much as rebel against (and complain about) them.

I recently had work-related contact with one of my least favorite phrases: 集団生活 shuudan seikatsu, literally “life in a group.”  Many mothers use it as a reason for putting their children into preschool as soon as they are eligible–they want the kids to get used to shuudan seikatsu early on.  (My daughters went to preschool the instant they were old enough, but it was because I wanted someone else to play with them for part of the day!)

Anyway, shuudan seikatsu has been stuck in my craw for years–and I never understood exactly why until a few days ago when the word came up in an editing job. The translator had written about the notion of a five-year-old being “adapted for communal life.” I checked the original Japanese, and sure enough, there it was–”able to deal with shuudan seikatsu.”  This was the aha moment!

I grew up in the 60s and 70s–during the glory days of, well, communal life in the United States. Although I never lived in a commune, I was on the fringes for several years and saw many people I loved and respected heading in that direction. Somehow, though, the notion of being unable to personally own anything was more than I could deal with. I had a good bike, a nice flute, the typewriter my dad took to college, and a few hundred dollars in the bank. The possibility of signing away even those was just too depressing.

So that was it!  My brain read shuudan seikatsu as “communal life,” and I was  terrified of the notion that my children, my only blood relatives on this side of the Pacific, would be ripped from my arms, and I would never see them except for short vacations in the summer or maybe at New Years. They would belong to someone else.

After years of living in the shadow of this menacing image, I could finally kill it off–and in plenty of time to apply it to any possible grandchildren. I carefully crossed out  “adapted for communal life” and wrote in “capable of participating fully in group activities.”

Done!

My husband was delighted (perhaps for my sake) to hear that “Bones” substituted “translation” for “murder” (see previous posting).  He said the Japanese sub-titles used the word henkan, which means a kind of transformation. And that makes much more sense, of course.

Pamela,  a fount of knowledge and intuition, has declared that the original script had certainly called for Booth to ask Brennan not to use the word “murder” at the funeral and replace it with the word “transition.” BUT during rehearsals, one of the actors–most likely David Boreanaz, who plays FBI Agent Seeley Booth, MUST have said “translation” instead of “transition,” at which point the entire cast collapsed in laughter and they decided to leave it in.

If this is the case, my philosophical questions have gone to waste. It’s a dark day for my honorable profession, but definitely a brighter one for script writers.

白人の女性が日本で生活する上で１つの大きな困りごとは赤ちゃんに泣かれることです。私に気づくとたんに赤ん坊や小さい子供はべそをかいて、涙がうるみはじめる。2〜3日前、３才ぐらいの男の子にまるでゴジラを発見したようなホラー映画にでてくるような表情をされてしまいました。急いで目をそらして、知らないふりをしました。

今朝、うちの教会で6ヶ月の赤ちゃんから何度も微笑み を受けてしまいました。幸せ！でもそれはその通りです。その子のグランパも「あちらの方」です。私を見ても何も変な印象を受けないわけです。半年前に生まれたばかりなのに、もう心が広いですね。日本はもう単一民族ではないとつくづく思いました。これからもたくさん微笑みをもらっちゃいたいです。

今日のオリンピック開会式で思い出したことがあります。カナダの国旗が大好きです。

テレビの解説によるとカナダがUKから独立できたのは１９６５年。私は小学生でした。思い出してみるとカナダの新しい国旗が発表した時、一目惚れしました。なぜなんだろうか。多分、その単純さが良かったでしょう。アメリカの国旗は色々意味があって、星の数（州が増えるごとにその数は増える、つまり固定してない）と縞の数（歴史的な事情）については必ず社会科のテストにでます。カナダの昔の国旗はＵＫの国旗が混ざり合った、また色々意味のあるものでした。しかし新しい国旗はなんと葉っぱです！テスト問題に国旗の意味はと聞かれたら「カナダによく見える葉っぱ」が答えじゃないか。なんてわかりやすい！なんて描きやすい！

国歌も同じです。アメリカの国歌は “The Star Spangled Banner”です。とても歌いにくいことをさておいても、中学生や高校生にならないとその意味が理解できません。学校で歌っても、野球の試合で歌っても、意味がわかりません。カナダの国歌は？　“O Canada”です。赤ちゃんでも理解できる明快かつ歌いやすい歌です。

2010年3月27日午後2時、日本キリスト教団前橋教会でフルートコンサートが開かれます。

演奏者はレベッカ・スチューア 、私の妹です。アメリカでの音楽活動が幅広く行われていますが、日本でのコンサートは初めてです。教会のリンクにクリックして、メニューから「チャペルコンサート２０１０のご案内」や「アクセス、地図」を選んで、教会への道など、細かいことが書いてありますので、是非ごらんになって下さい。

仕事があるけれど、やらない言い訳はいくらでも見つけられます。

その１：古いレタス水切り器の再利用

日頃、あまりものを捨てることに抵抗のない私ですが、もう水を切ってくれない 水切り器に別な使い道はないのかと数日間考えました。結果的には以下のものができました。サラダ用として働けないけれど、植物の水を切ることはできます。

その２：amazon.co.jpをチェックすること。

Google検索英文ライティング：色々なカテゴリーでトップ！

英語「なるほど」ライティング： 色々なカテゴリーでトップに近い！

その３：新しい趣味の必要性に考えさせられる。It’s time to get a life.

US Residents Fight for Right to Hang Laundry!  reads the headline. It seems that most Americans are not in favor of viewing their neighbors underwear drying in the sun. The “hangers,” on the other hand enjoy the experience and are saving money by not using clothes dryers.

Well, all in favor of sun-drying their laundry, come on over to Japan!

When I first came to this country, while riding in a bus on the way to the hotel from Haneda Airport (’way back when!) I was shocked to see laundry hanging from the apartment buildings. I was sure I’d arrived in the poorest nation on earth–laundry on the line was a sign of poverty as far as I knew.

Fast forward 30+ years and I’m a housewife who has never used a dryer that doesn’t take coins.  I’ve got my oven, we have air conditioning and heating, and I’m lobbying for a dishwasher. Amazingly, the clothes dryer is something I’ve never truly craved for.

Culturally,  lots of laundry out on the line is the sign of a diligent homemaker. My mother-in-law took pride in the rows of cloth diapers she had on display daily when my children were babies. When I cruised the neighborhood with the girls in strollers I was able to pinpoint homes with children of about the same age based on the clothes I saw waving in the wind.

Esthetically, I have my own methods. My mother-in-law taught me to shake out the wrinkles, and other than that I like to balance the clothes so the little hangers don’t tilt to one side. Heavy items in the middle,  with lighter items as you work outwards. Blouses and shirts on hangers on the balcony. Tablecloths and towels out in the yard where they get more sun.

Psychologically, there is something calming about hanging out the laundry. It’s usually the first thing I do after everyone leaves for the day; a few minutes to get my wits together before I do something more demanding.

Bringing it in, folding it, and putting it all away is not high on my list of favorite things, but then again you’ve got to do it whether you have a dryer or not!

According to Yahoo Real Estate, Tokyo is the second most expensive city in the world, following Luanda, Angola. So you might want to consider that when planning your next vacation. Movies are a little bit cheaper in Luanda, but lunch will set you back considerably.

Thanks to overvaluation of the yen in recent years, Tokyo remains a pricey place to live, followed by Nagoya, Yokohama and Kobe in third, fourth, and fifth places.

Remember the good old days when $1 was 360 yen? Not many people do. Back before the Great Depression, my mother-in-law’s parents immigrated to the US. They farmed in Southern California (Imperial Valley, as far as we can tell), made a little money, moved back to Japan where their funds were worth quite a bit more, and never had to work another day in their lives. (Come to think of it, my mother-in-law and her younger sister were born after their parents had effectively retired.)

Nowadays, I suppose I could dream of doing the opposite. Close up shop in Japan and move back to California; maybe buy a house that has lost half of its value in the past couple of years. I wonder if the Oakland A’s still have Dollar Wednesdays…

When we built our house many long years ago, we asked to have a bathroom (toilet and small sink) installed on the second floor–something very few people did then and an amenity not included in the housing company’s array of pre-designed plans. In exchange for the luxury of not having to go downstairs in the middle of the night to use the facilities, the extra plumbing required took up space that had been designated on the first floor for a washstand in the changing/laundry room outside the bath.

What we ended up with was a washstand that had a sink that was exactly two-feet-four inches high (standard at the time). In contrast, the mirror over it was  inaccessible because we had to arrange our toiletries  on the shelf in front of it. Only the wider versions came with a medicine cabinet and we had no width between  the plumbing and an unfortunately positioned window. The result was that we had to bend down to our knees to use the faucet and then stand on our toes to see our faces in the mirror.

Fast forward several decades. Everyone in the house brushes their teeth and washes their face in the kitchen–generally spitting and splashing when I’m trying to cook. With college  expenses done with (and not a penny yet saved) we went to an optimistically named place,  Joyful Honda, to look for a sink to replace the miniature affair in the house.

Our hunt revealed that the standard height these days has increased to a whopping two-feet-eight inches. The Joyful Honda people agreed not only to make a base for the washstand to bring the sink up to three feet, but also to cut off part of the window frame to create some extra width. We decided we could deal with a partially blocked window.  And as long as we were getting all that done, we chose a sink large enough to wash  hair in, and a medicine cabinet that becomes a three-way mirror.

The new sink was installed yesterday, and as each family member walked in to check it out, he or she let out a shout of amazement. It’s enormous! We turned the water on and off, washed our hands without leaning over, and gazed at ourselves in the mirror. We all agreed that it made us much more attractive than the old one had.