Monday, March 1st 2010
Every morning I wake up and I make instant coffee. Actually I make two cups. One with sugar and milk, one just milk, and then I rouse Tetsuya for yet another day of work at the restaurant. I check my cell phone for the weather report, and then I ignore it, opening the window to consult another more reliable source. I gaze across the street and eye the old housewife's balcony. Should there be fresh linens wafting in the morning breeze, I know there won't be rain today. I go ahead and throw our bedding over the window for aeration. If there's no laundry to be seen across the way, even if the sun is shining, I know to keep things in.
I didn't always take these helpful hints from the housewives in the neighborhood. Sometimes I'd think haughtily, Hah! Got my laundry out before you! Only to later watch the clouds roll in and the drops start to fall. Other times my cell phone would boast an 80 percent chance of precipitation and there the old lady's linens would be, drying merrily outside. Sure enough, no rain that day.
Day by day I watched the housewife as she went along her business and I took careful, mental notes. On a cold winter's day, she'll close the heavy metal strom windows to keep in the heat. She always has her linens out as soon as the sun comes over the rooftops. I began mimicking her. I even started doing laundry at night so I could simply hang it as soon as I awoke. Yes, housework in Japan was starting to make more sense.
Then there is the local green grocer. This is another key location for study. They say the early bird catches the worm, but here, the late catch the deals. If you arrive early, you'll certainly get all that you need, but you'll never have made it before those housewives and obaachans. So you'll stand behind a line of them, all eyeing the produce critically. Don't make a list. No one has a list here. It'll soon be modified anyway, by some daily deal or lack of an item that was snatched up within hours of opening. I'll weave my way through the crowd to check, oh please, let there be just one cheap milk left... and there it goes. Tucked into some old lady's basket. So much for creamer tomorrow morning.
I don't know how Japanese housewives know all of these magical things that the rest of us somehow have no consciousness of, but I certainly respect them for it. Take for example, the mothers of the children at English school. You won't realize their devotion, ingenuity and knowhow until lunchtime when every child opens his carefully wrapped lunchbox. There, you'll find tightly packed rice balls with the faces of the child's favorite cartoon characters, shaped from dried seaweed and sesame seeds. Anpanman, Pikachu and quite a few I can't name, all making a guest appearance for little three-year-old Osuke's lunchtime extravaganza. I think back to the days when I'd find an Oscar Meyer's Lunchable in my bag. America just doesn't know how to do lunch, I guess.
The other thing you'll notice about the kids is that they always smell like fresh laundry. In reference to what I said before about predicting the weather by watching the neighbor's laundry, I'm sure you realized a slight flaw in the system. So what if there is no laundry today? Well, fortunately, every day is laundry day to a Japanese housewife. When we visited Tetsuya's parents' house in the summer I'd brought along at least seven or eight pairs of underwear. I honestly only wore two pairs the entire three weeks we were there. As soon as I'd toss one in the wash it was clean and ready the next morning. Tetsuya's mom told me sometimes she'd do two loads in one day. I can't imagine just filling a washer in less than a few days.
So, by means of trial and error and careful observation I've struggled my way through Japanese housewifedom. It still boggles my mind when I try to think about how exactly I ended up here. Of course the underlying reason is that Tetsuya and I are applying for greencard. But that's not really how I got here. Seven years earlier I made an unconscious decision to commit myself to this lifestyle, at least for a time, when I sighed up for Japanese in high school. It's amazing how one decision as a fifteen-year-old is coming to bite me in the ass at twenty-two.
Every morning I wake up and I make instant coffee. Actually I make two cups. One with sugar and milk, one just milk, and then I rouse Tetsuya for yet another day of work at the restaurant. I check my cell phone for the weather report, and then I ignore it, opening the window to consult another more reliable source. I gaze across the street and eye the old housewife's balcony. Should there be fresh linens wafting in the morning breeze, I know there won't be rain today. I go ahead and throw our bedding over the window for aeration. If there's no laundry to be seen across the way, even if the sun is shining, I know to keep things in.
I didn't always take these helpful hints from the housewives in the neighborhood. Sometimes I'd think haughtily, Hah! Got my laundry out before you! Only to later watch the clouds roll in and the drops start to fall. Other times my cell phone would boast an 80 percent chance of precipitation and there the old lady's linens would be, drying merrily outside. Sure enough, no rain that day.
Day by day I watched the housewife as she went along her business and I took careful, mental notes. On a cold winter's day, she'll close the heavy metal strom windows to keep in the heat. She always has her linens out as soon as the sun comes over the rooftops. I began mimicking her. I even started doing laundry at night so I could simply hang it as soon as I awoke. Yes, housework in Japan was starting to make more sense.
Then there is the local green grocer. This is another key location for study. They say the early bird catches the worm, but here, the late catch the deals. If you arrive early, you'll certainly get all that you need, but you'll never have made it before those housewives and obaachans. So you'll stand behind a line of them, all eyeing the produce critically. Don't make a list. No one has a list here. It'll soon be modified anyway, by some daily deal or lack of an item that was snatched up within hours of opening. I'll weave my way through the crowd to check, oh please, let there be just one cheap milk left... and there it goes. Tucked into some old lady's basket. So much for creamer tomorrow morning.
I don't know how Japanese housewives know all of these magical things that the rest of us somehow have no consciousness of, but I certainly respect them for it. Take for example, the mothers of the children at English school. You won't realize their devotion, ingenuity and knowhow until lunchtime when every child opens his carefully wrapped lunchbox. There, you'll find tightly packed rice balls with the faces of the child's favorite cartoon characters, shaped from dried seaweed and sesame seeds. Anpanman, Pikachu and quite a few I can't name, all making a guest appearance for little three-year-old Osuke's lunchtime extravaganza. I think back to the days when I'd find an Oscar Meyer's Lunchable in my bag. America just doesn't know how to do lunch, I guess.
The other thing you'll notice about the kids is that they always smell like fresh laundry. In reference to what I said before about predicting the weather by watching the neighbor's laundry, I'm sure you realized a slight flaw in the system. So what if there is no laundry today? Well, fortunately, every day is laundry day to a Japanese housewife. When we visited Tetsuya's parents' house in the summer I'd brought along at least seven or eight pairs of underwear. I honestly only wore two pairs the entire three weeks we were there. As soon as I'd toss one in the wash it was clean and ready the next morning. Tetsuya's mom told me sometimes she'd do two loads in one day. I can't imagine just filling a washer in less than a few days.
So, by means of trial and error and careful observation I've struggled my way through Japanese housewifedom. It still boggles my mind when I try to think about how exactly I ended up here. Of course the underlying reason is that Tetsuya and I are applying for greencard. But that's not really how I got here. Seven years earlier I made an unconscious decision to commit myself to this lifestyle, at least for a time, when I sighed up for Japanese in high school. It's amazing how one decision as a fifteen-year-old is coming to bite me in the ass at twenty-two.
