Kiddy toilets

Today I went to the kindergarten to tell the principal something and I found the whole place in an uproar for tomorrow's first day of kindergarten. Over the spring break (three weeks) major renovations have been taking place and things were still being moved and sorted and filed. And the biggest change of all was a brand new bathroom that had been built next to the classrooms.

Do I really want to show this? These are minuscule toilets for the little 3 and 4 year olds to use. The kids just tend to shed their clothes and underpants in the hall and no one seems to mind that everyone is looking on. The toilet on the left can be used normally or as a semi-squat style, sort of an inbetween from the Japanese potty chairs and a regular toilet. On the other side of the room there were all these cute little urinals too! And look at the toilet paper holders! Can you tell that they are little elephants and the toilet paper roll is the ear? So cute! Thankfully, there is a new adult size bathroom built right next to this facility and it has a bit more privacy. I'll use that one thank you.

The toilets were so tiny but alone I decided that you couldn't tell what size they were so I got the principal to snap my picture! The things I'll do for this blog!

Koinobori

Yesterday Tetsu Choco and I went out on a drive and we ended up at a fish museum which was interesting but I couldn't get too many pictures. It was a warm day and of course Choco wasn't allowed in the museum so we left her in the car with the windows part way down, and some of my picnic quilts thrown over the windshield and back window. Even so, I worried about her so we made a quick jaunt through the museum and I was ready to continue our drive when... we came across an arts and crafts room. I am a sucker for arts and crafts rooms and Tetsu knows it so he encouraged me to join the craft class and he'd take Choco for a walk, take a nap with her out on the grass, generally keep Choco company while I crafted something.

I had a great time. The class was targeted at elementary school age kids and every couple of hours a teacher was teaching a craft to anyone who might sign up. There were 10 of us and though some mothers worked alongside their kids I was the only childless adult in the room.

And what did we make? Koinobori! A flying carp decoration that honors Boy's Day which is on May 5th. And what are the little flying carp made of do you think? ...Silk worm cocoons! How cool is that! We were each given a packet with pre-dyed cocoons and bits of string, bamboo and beads and then we cut, glued, painted and tied until at the end of an hour we each had our own little Koinobori.

And, can I tell you a story about silk worms and their cocoons?

My mother was an elementary school teacher and she always taught a unit on Japan. Somewhere along the line she started a science project of raising silk worms so that the children could see the process of how the worms eat mulberry leaves, spin a cocoon, push out of the cocoon as moths and then lay eggs again for another generations of worms. This is amazing because my mother has always had a phobia about worms (the long earthworm variety) but she persevered and for many, many years she taught her school kids about the process of getting silk after boiling the cocoons and unraveling a thread. I'm sure it was very interesting for the kids, but at home the thing I remember most is going into the refrigerator looking for something to eat and quite often there would be a Tupperware container marked "DO NOT EAT. SILK WORM EGGS INSIDE!" Sort of kills one's appetite.

Of course, the unraveling thread process was only shown on one or two cocoons so every year my mother would have a nice box of cocoons left over and we never could figure out what to do with them so they'd eventually get tossed. How she would have loved to do this craft project yesterday!

I'm a little early in wishing everyone a happy Boy's Day, but I wanted to show a picture of my koinobori before the cats start playing with it and it falls apart! Anyway, the farmers are beginning to fly their koinobori in the fields so I guess I'm not rushing the season!

Wonky Word Love Flimsy

Okay my friends, Tonya's Lazy Gal quilt class quilt is now a flimsy!

According to Elaine's directions I spent the week putting piano key borders onto paper and I got those all made a couple days ago. Then I had to decide what to do about the corners and here's what I came up with. Was this going to work or not?

Once I'd cut everything to size the next problem was getting the paper off of the borders and I began wondering if the paper had been such a good idea. It made for lovely, straight, non-stretchy borders but the paper didn't rip off as easily as I'd hoped. I spent most of last night ripping paper and after breakfast started in again.

"I don't know how you can do that without going nuts!" said Tetsu, but those were just the words I needed to know I was doing something right! Many times people will see me hand piecing or quilting or see something I've completed or even see all the quilting I've done by machine and they'll say,

"I don't know how you can do that without driving yourself nuts!" and needless to say I've done all of it without going nuts or if I'm nuts, I'm happy with my condition, so the comment spurred me on. I guess Tetsu felt sorry for me because pretty soon he joined me and the last 15 minutes went quickly.

This evening I've been up in the sewing room sewing the borders onto the quilt and it is officially a flimsy! I really like the borders and I'm pleased with the way the corner squares bend the piano keys around the quilt. For anyone doing piano keys, the only advice I have is that stay stitching on both sides of the borders keeps the seams from ripping out when you try to maneuver the quilt. I learned this after a majority of my seams popped and I had to go back and resew them.

So. What shall I do about quilting? This is a very big quilt. Even though it looks like it would be great for my echo heart machine quilting I did last week I don't think this will all go under the sewing machine and besides this size would be very bad for the stiff shoulders I got last week. I don't have access to a longarm (though I'd love to try it!) I could hand stitch-in-the-ditch around all the colorful pieces... that really might drive me nuts. I could do wonky Baptist fans like I did last year with Leiya's Wonky Word quilt.

"Wow! You're done!" said Tetsu a few minutes ago when he saw the finished flimsy. Well, not if you count another 6 months of quilting if I decide to get out my quilting hoop!

Floor culture

The Calico Quilter asked me a simple question. "I am curious as to why so many tasks in life are done on the floor in Japanese culture: sitting, dining, sleeping, even work like ironing." I've been giving it thought, asking people's opinions and checking out Japanese traditions, but so far I'm not real satisfied with my answer. My Japanese friends and husband found it to be a very interesting question and prompted them to lots of thought and introspection.

Why do Japanese do so many activities on the floor? The obvious answer is because that is part of the culture. But why? I came up with three possible reasons but I can find flaws in my own conclusions and I haven't found anything that really backs me up on any of this.

Number one. Japan is a very small country, well, in land scale it may be average size but because of all the mountains, the usable area is limited. This means homes and houses and rooms and space in general is limited. You've heard me moan about my small sewing area and my minuscule kitchen. But actually, I live in a house so I have a lot more space than many people who live in apartments in the big cities. Because of the limited space, one room has to serve multiple purposes so the furniture has to be taken up and moved away so that the room can be used for something else. The bedding is portable and can be put away in a special closet. In it's place, a small table can be set in the same room and used for eating or studying and cushions are used on the floor instead of chairs and sofas. No furniture so people use the floor.

Cleo holding down the bedding that has been folded and put away in the special closet

Number two reason. The flooring in Japan is traditionally made of mats, so any room that has mats in it isn't going to have a lot of furniture in it because the scraping of chair legs would ruin the mats and the legs of tables would produce dents in the cushiony surface. Also because of the mat culture, people remove their shoes before stepping into a house with mats and remove their slippers before stepping onto the mat itself. The mats are thus kept clean and undamaged and are conducive to sitting on the floor (clean and slightly cushiony). I think other cultures where people stay close to the flooring (maybe India and tropical countries) use more of a reed-like matting surface than western cultures. Just spread out a mat and plop down.

The third reason I came up with is that the Japanese people are traditionally very humble. The lower one bows their head, the more humble one appears, the lower you sit on the ground, the more obvious your position in the household, in the company, in the village. Even on Japanese TV programs, when someone has committed some horrendous faux pas they will throw themselves onto the ground with their knees tucked under them and their foreheads touching the ground and apologize profusely. It used to be that the proper Japanese wife would greet all visitors to her household by placing herself on her knees at the high step of the entryway just so that her head wouldn't be above the guest's who are standing on the lower threshold. The lower you go, the more humble you are and this probably stems from some Buddhist teaching that I don't know about.

If I get any more information about the origins of the customs I'll let you know.

My home is very western because we have wooden floors and as of last summer we no longer have a Japanese room with tatami mats. The living room has sofas and chairs and the dining room has a dining room table. Even so, we take off our shoes when we enter the house, sleep on bedding laid out on the carpet and I do activities like teaching English sitting close to the floor. My knees are slowly giving out though and so last month I bought myself a nifty little low stool so that I can sit on it close to the floor without putting my full weight (too much!) on my knees.

Diane asked about what we sleep on. Here is our bedding spread out on the floor and Patora enjoying the thick futons

Velvet keeping my low stool warm for me

And until I made my own sewing room I used to sit on the floor and control the sewing machine with my knee! Even my Japanese friends were amazed at this hidden talent. These days my knees are grateful that I'm up off the floor when I sew!

Takumi and reminiscing

Yesterday I spent nearly an hour chatting with Takumi over the phone. He sounds good.

"So, Tanya-san (he calls me by name) how are you?"

"Well, if you've visited my blog, you'd know I'm pretty fine and keeping busy."

"I don't look at it very often but some of my friends do. They thought it was hilarious when you wrote about me and the college Center test . They also liked seeing the pictures of me dressed in kimono when I was five."

So, to give Takumi's friends another laugh, I'm posting about some of the headaches Takumi has given us over the years.

When Takumi was in jr. high he was a handful. I think I told someone last week that I don't have a lot of patience with attitude issues in jr. high kids and my own son wore me thin. He was always thinking up things that could be borderline rebellious (like he tried taking a weight-lifting 20 lb. dumbbell on his school trip. Why?) When Takumi was in the second year of jr. high he decided to break a couple rules (like natural laws!) and try flying off of the second story of his school! The laws of nature prevailed and he landed on his head.

As I heard it, Takumi picked him off from between the school flower bed and the steps and profusely bleeding tried to convince the first teacher he ran into that he'd slipped in the hallway. He looked pretty bad so the school called me (I wasn't answering our phone because I was teaching) and then called Tetsu and told him they were taking Takumi to the hospital because he'd hurt his head. Talk about panic for Tetsu! He rushed to the hospital and there was Takumi with his face looking not unlike a mummy.

I can remember being so surprised when Tetsu walked into the house in the middle of the day looking very angry and in the next instant noticing mummified Takumi behind him! The ladies whom I was teaching quickly left. As I recall, Tetsu got angry at the hospital and we took Takumi back the next day because we realized that no one had taken any head X-rays .

"Your son is fine. It will cost you $90 to take an X-ray. Why bother?"

"TAKE THE DUMB X-RAY! The kid fell from the second floor onto his head!"

I guess the hospital was right because X-rays revealed no major damages and I think Takumi returned to school the next day. As I recall he wrote the principal a letter apologizing for the inconveniences he'd given the school and promising not to repeat such foolish behavior.

Takumi's rebellious issues continued in the home until his second year of high school when one day he cornered me in the kitchen and said,

"I just thought you'd like to know, my rebellious stage is over." and he gave me a hug.

Carpet cleaning

Tetsu has a recent daily activity that seems odd to me but I'm not complaining. He cleans the carpet. Daily.

We have a western style living room with wood flooring. In the winter the floor gets icy cold so we always put down a large carpet that covers most of the floor. In May we will take it up again so that the floor is cool to the bare feet in the summer.

A few years ago we bought a in-expensive carpet after our old one wore out. Maybe the problem is that it was inexpensive, maybe it is just that our animal population increased. Whatever, it gets very dirty! It is a light colored carpet (that was a mistake to begin with) and no matter how much I vacuum, I cannot get the animal fur off of it. I think Choco is the worse though she has very short fur!

For awhile I thought the problem was the in-expensive vacuum cleaner that we had (can you tell that I am a bit miserly?) I have looked longingly at the European vacuum cleaners that run nearly $1000 apiece, but if I had a $1000 I'd surely rather spend it on a sewing machine, not a vacuum cleaner and I don't know how much joy I'd get pushing an expensive vacuum cleaner daily anyway. I bought attachments for my current vacuum cleaner. Brushes that are supposed to collect lint and fur and have magical powers. Not much difference.

Tetsu has a little gadget that is very popular in Japan (I think it was once rated as being one of the top 5 handy goods sold in Japan) that I don't much like but he loves. It is a roller that is fitted with sticky paper. You can roll this over your clothes or carpet and all the lint, fur, threads (my contribution to the carpet mess) etc. stick on the roller. The paper can then be ripped off on the perforated line and a new sticky surface is ready for use. I dislike touching the dirty paper but I guess it's better on the paper than on the floor.

While we drink our coffee in the morning and after Tetsu reads the paper, he crawls around on the carpet with the roller and cleans while listening to the morning news. I watch him do his business and thank him but I'm not down there helping him. After about 10 minutes he has about 20 dirty pages of paper and the carpet looks great. Every morning he makes the same comment that he can't believe all this stuff is coming off of the floor when he just did it the day before. And yes, I do vacuum during the day.

Sorry for the gross pictures of used sticky paper but I'm trying to illustrate my post and you saw flowers and quilts this week so please remember that not all of the things in life are photogenic.

And yes, we've tried just using the roller on the animals to save us the extra step of floor crawling but they don't think it a fun game and disappear upstairs.

Scissors sharpened

Happy April Fools Day! I guess the joke's on me. I thought the next set of flower pictures I'd be taking would be cherry blossoms since spring is heading towards our part of Japan rapidly. Hah! Woke up this morning to snow! It hasn't snowed in April in our town in years and years! I guess that will hold the cherry blossoms off a couple more days.

Yesterday I finished little Luke's quilt and today will get a label on it and wash it once before delivering it. I'm amazed how fast it came together but that is thanks to Tonya's wonky quilt class last year since I did get a lot of practice making letters. Also thanks to Bonnie's leaders/enders I had a great supply of those on hand too. Ok. Back to other things.

Yesterday afternoon the doorbell rang and I found an older man standing on my doorstep. Ah, another salesman. We regularly get people coming by wanting me to get my house re-roofed or re-painted or re-something and I always politely decline. We also have many sales trucks slowly wandering around the community with speakers blaring announcing their services for hauling garbage, selling kerosene, collecting old newspapers or selling laundry poles. I don't pay too much attention to them either. Yesterday's old fellow handed me a piece of paper (which I could barely read) and I got the gist that he was a knife and scissor sharpener. Hmmm. Yes, I could send him on his way, but I do have scissors that get a hard workout daily and have never been sharpened. If I don't take advantage of this man's services they may never get sharpened so why not? I inquired about prices and it didn't seem unreasonable so I collected two of my scissors. He was so pleased and promised to have them back to me in 30 minutes.

After he left I decided I wanted a picture of this process so I got out my camera and went looking for him. He had waved his hand in the general direction of the neighborhood and there I found his small van and him diligently working on my scissors. He'd put out his sign and had a generator going and had a whetting stone ready. As he worked I chatted a bit and found that he also fixed shoes and umbrellas but that not many people bother to have those repaired nowadays so he mostly did sharpening. It seems to me that it would be a hard way to make a living since he charged a piddling and I seemed to be the only person in the neighborhood that was interested in having something sharpened.

I do feel that if anyone's scissors deserve to be sharpened and oiled then mine do, so they are now sharp and smooth and ready for more fabric!

Echo hearts

I spent most of yesterday quilting on Luke's quilt but have about one more hour's worth to do. What do any of you do about stiff shoulders? People often ask me if I get stiff shoulders when I hand quilt or knit but the only time I'm plagued by this inconvenience is when I've done machine quilting (not machine piecing or regular sewing). Of course the nearly 4 hours of machine quilting could be a cause don't you think!? By 7:00 last night I needed to give my right shoulder/neck a rest. There must be something I'm doing wrong...

Nevertheless, the quilting is coming out satisfactory. Since the Bible quote is from Song of Songs "His banner over me is love" I decided to use a heart quilting pattern though I'm not too sure that a little boy is going to be thrilled with hearts everywhere. Still it seemed appropriate. Mary has done some wonderful echo hearts on her quilts though I think she uses a longarm while I'm on my domestic machine, but I took the plunge and started in.

As with all practice, the more I sewed, the more uniform the hearts became, so the hearts at the bottom and the ones at the top are different. Ah well, this is going to be a practical quilt so as Calico Quilter so aptly put it,

"...quilts are useful objects in my world, not art. My line is always, "Use it and love it, and if you wear it out I'll make you another one!".

Hoping to finish the quilting today. Do you think I can even get binding on? Not if I'm sitting at this computer right?

A new Work In Progress (sigh)

Yesterday my plan was to go upstairs and make borders for my wonky quilt. So I spread the quilt out on the floor and tried to decide how many pieces of paper I needed to cover in strips in order to get enough for a border to go around. I covered one piece of paper. As I sewed strips I got to thinking that little Luke (see yesterday's post) needs a baby quilt.

"Tanya, are you starting something again? Heidi was so happy with the coat you and Masako-san gave her, she isn't expecting a quilt. You promised not to start something new until you finished this wonky quilt."

"Yeah, but aren't you always saying your time and efforts and quilts shouldn't just be used for yourself? You're making the wonky quilt for yourself AND the 365 challenge quilt for yourself. Tanya, this is what you do! You make quilts, that's one of your few talents so you need to use the time and talent for others so I think you should make a quilt for Luke."

(I talk to myself a lot. It may be a side effect of living in a country where no one understands me.)

To make a long conversation short, I sewed a wonky block that said LUKE and then wondered what I could do with it. At 9:00 at night I was still wondering but I'd pulled more scraps and leaders/enders together and I've gotten this far. I'm assuming that Heidi isn't going to have enough time to be visiting blogs for awhile so I'm showing this as a work in progress

This is not my idea of a heirloom. I think I can get this sewn together (those borders are just laying there) and machine quilted and then tell Heidi that all that light area is supposed to be decorated by Luke with spit up, diaper overflow, and maybe in the future, crayons and grass and fingerprints.

Doesn't the saying go "It's the thought that counts."?

Welcome to this world!

Yesterday I spent a few hours in the evening visiting my friend Heidi in the hospital. Heidi had her baby on Thursday morning just a few days past due date. A few complications so the baby is in an ICU unit but hourly he is getting better and hopefully he'll be able to go home in about 10 days. Welcome into your new world, little Luke!

Anyway, I went to the hospital expecting to have to give Heidi some extra support but she was actually in very high spirits and had bounced back from the delivery with energy to spare! Seems that running back and forth the the pediatrics ward to visit Luke (not to mention God's goodness) has given her spunk, spirit and a quick recovery. Of course, in the States, pregnancy and delivery aren't considered illnesses and I know new mothers in America are allowed to go home the day after the baby is born, but in Japan it has always been a week long hospital stay and special care for the new mother for the next month.

In my day, new Japanese mothers weren't allowed to touch water for the month which meant they either had their mother or mother-in-law come to take care of the them and the family the whole time, or more frequently, the mother-to-be would just go back to her family a month before the due date (sometimes on the other side of Japan) and stay until the baby was a month or two old. This meant the new dad had to be separated from his wife and new baby for a couple months though he would make the perfunctory hospital visit a few days after someone had phoned him that the baby had arrived. So much for family bonding.

Though the no touching water rule was great if the new mom wasn't up to washing dishes and clothes, I never thought it so wonderful because it also meant that she also couldn't take a shower or wash her hair. Eeww! Gross! Thankfully (especially for Heidi!) this superstition has been set to the wayside and I was interested to hear the nurse tell Heidi yesterday that she was already allowed to take a shower.

Heidi seems to be adjusting to hospital life and hopefully she'll be able to go home in a couple more days (I guess the week hospitalization rule has been changed too). She had been hoping for coffee and donuts for breakfast yesterday morning and was greeted with fermented beans and salty fish so I can see how she may get tired of hospital food pretty fast.

I wish I could show a picture of the new family in one shot but with little Luke still getting special care I only have a picture of mom and dad. You can tell Wataru-san (Heidi's husband) isn't a old fashioned Japanese husband (like Tetsu?) because he didn't mind posing for a quick pic and gave me the okay to post it on the blog!

Please join me in saying a prayer that the new family will all be together soon!

Stumpy the bear and his scarf

I didn't get much done yesterday but I don't know why.

Since the When-oh-When has been finished, I no longer have quilting hand work beside my chair so I've been busying myself with other things that I've always wanted to do but haven't found time for or felt too guilty to leave the When-oh-When to do it.

So my Unfinished Object that has been hidden away for months has been this weaving!

Weaving? Tanya doesn't do weaving. You're right. I don't. But my friend Mrs. Ide had this cute weaving frame that she showed us last fall. She had made a lovely little scarf with it and we all oohed and ahhed and she offered to set it up for the next person to try their hand. Mrs. Okusa went next and a couple of weeks went by and she too had a lovely scarf made by her own hand. My turn. Mrs. Ide set up the frame again and it was handed into my care, whereas I did a few rows. Whereas I put it back in it's box. Whereas it has been since the end of last year.

So finding myself quilt free I pulled out the box and went back to work on the weaving frame and it didn't take long to weave myself a lovely little scarf. Of course, this is no longer the scarf season so I guess it will go in the cupboard until the year's end but at least I did get another Work In Progress finished.

My scarf is slightly warped (one end is wider than the other) and the weave is tight is some places and loose in others but it was a learning project so I'll call it a success. It was fun to do but maybe not as satisfying as piecing and quilting. Maybe I like all the colors involved in quilting while this woven piece I chose to do is extremely simple and I never tried different colors of yarn. I can see doing more weaving if I tried a bit more challenging pattern but probably I'll continue to focus on patchwork and quilting.

To take a picture of my handiwork, I pulled out an old Teddy Bear that was sitting on my shelf to do the modeling honors. His name is Stumpy and he's been on the shelf since Takumi was in kindergarten. A wonderful bear because he is actually a puppet and one can put their hand into the back of him and make him have all sorts of expressions by just a tip of his head. A Teddy Bear with a lot of personality!

Unfortunately Stumpy is so old that he has lost his nose and was looking very moth eaten. I noticed that when I took the first picture so upstairs I went to find some black cloth and I fashioned Stumpy a new nose.

"Now hold still, I hate to stab your nose with this needle but it's for your own good."

And I would say a new nose does Stumpy wonders and he looks like a bear again!

6th grade last class

Yesterday was the last English class with my 6th graders. Two of them have been coming for 6 years and while I can't say that any of them turned out to be fluent in English, they have developed a very good "feel" for English, aren't afraid of unknown words and can put together the puzzle of language to grasp a situation without really knowing what exactly is being said. I don't know if that is enough to show for 6 years of studying but at least they don't have the English "allergy" which is often contracted by students when they start jr. high (the years when English is officially taught.)

For our final lesson we did about an hour of text work just because we were so close to finishing the book and then into the kitchen we went to cook dinner! This is the class that often comes early and ends up helping me cook my evening's dinner but they had never been able to sample their efforts so last night we arranged for them to have a longer class and we made potato soup and a casserole and then ate dinner together.

It sure is a good thing that this class is so small because more people wouldn't be able to fit in my kitchen and as it was, they were bumping into each other and stepping on toes.

First chop vegetables but basically used the food processor which made it easy. Even this simple machine, which Japanese housewives use too, was an adventure for my kids. I guess none of them spend too much time in the kitchen helping their mothers.

Next simmer ground meat and onions and one boy took over that job while the others added ingredients as I instructed.

"Okay. Someone open the can of white sauce."

"Yuck! We're putting white sauce in the meat?"

"Yep. Okay use the can opener and open the can of tomatoes."

"What is this thing?" (They had never seen a can opener and truly, most Japanese use the old style leverage can opener that leaves a rough jagged edge.) "Ooh! Cool! Let me try!" (Think of how they would have reacted if I'd had an electric can opener!)

"Add the tomatoes to the meat mixture."

"Gross! We're mixing tomatoes into this pot. It looks like (un unmentionable)."

"That is beside the point. It will taste good when it is finished. Okay, here is a jar of olives. Does anyone know what olives are?" (Nope. This is an unknown ingredient in Japan. I found them in the gourmet store in the next city over.) "Now, chop those up and add them to the pot. Please give them a taste so you know what they really taste like." (that suggestion may have been a mistake.)

"Sensei. I don't think I'm going to be able to eat this stuff. The olive is horrible! It's stuck in my throat!" (a sixteenth of an olive?) "Somebody give me some water!"

"You guys sound like some of the foreigners who come to Japan and gag over a pickled plum."

"Pickled plums are great. Olives aren't edible!"

"It will be all right when it's all cooked. Believe me. Okay, now add all this cold left-over rice and mix it up."

"That's going too far. It looks ever grosser!"

"Just pour it all in the casserole dish and sprinkle it with the cheese. Now it goes in the oven and after you clean up the kitchen we can play a game."

So we played CLUE which they enjoyed and then dinner was ready to serve and eat. It was the first time for any of them to eat casserole. The first time for them to have a paper napkin (instructed them to put it on their laps). The first time for them to have grace said before a meal. They didn't know what to do with the fork not because they'd never used a fork before, but since we'd put out spoons (for the soup) they were just using the spoon to eat both the soup and the casserole.

"Hey, this is good! I can't taste that horrible olive at all!"

"I think I can, but it doesn't taste that bad anymore."

"Can I have seconds?"

I had to remind them that they needed to save a portion for Tetsu's dinner later and poor Tetsu barely had enough to satisfy him. But I was so pleased that the kids seemed to like their American meal and enjoy the cooking and the cleaning up process. (I made them wash their dishes too!) They'd brought donuts for dessert so I was able to forgo the cookies I had also planned to make.

My 6th graders have been a great class and I'm going to miss them. I hope they'll remember their brush with American culture, with the English language and with me, fondly!

Conveyer belt sushi

Our family really likes sushi and Tetsu and I often go out to eat sushi for lunch. For those of you who don't know, sushi is vinegared rice (su-meaning vinegar and shi-meaning rice) with bits of raw fish or other tidbits on it. I think non-Japanese might recognize sushi as those little slabs of raw fish on a small block of sweet-vinegared rice, but sushi can also be long rolls of rice and fish wrapped in seaweed or even just be a bowl of sweet-vinegared rice with a sprinkling of sweet egg, boiled shrimp or grilled fish, sliced cucumbers etc.

We will sometimes go to the authentic sushi restaurants and get a wonderful assortment of sushi, but one of the fastest and cheapest ways to eat sushi are at the conveyor belt sushi restaurants that abound all over Japan. Instead of ordering sushi individually, the sushi is already made and served on little dishes that go around and around on a conveyor belt past customers. The customer will just watch the dishes go past until he finds one that appeals to him and then pull it off the belt. Sort of like a smorgasbord that comes to you! The little dishes can be different colored depending on the price and one can get a small dish for as little as a dollar a plate or pay more for the more expensive morsels. One can also order from the "chefs" that are standing around and some of these sushi bars have touch-top computer screens where you just touch the picture of the sushi you want and the order goes directly somewhere and in a little while your sushi comes out on the conveyor belt (on a numbered tray corresponding to your seat so that other customers won't take it before it gets to you).

I wouldn't say this is great cuisine but it is very reasonable costwise and unlike real sushi restaurants there are also "strange" sushi such as "salad sushi" or "hamburger sushi", "deep fried shrimp sushi" and "barbecue beef sushi". These are popular with the foreigners and other people not so fond of raw fish. It is no problem to take visiting foreigners to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant because they can usually find something there to eat. I noticed there were even dishes of french fried potatoes going past me and fried chicken.

And for dessert the pudding cups and the jello bowls and even chocolate cake float by so it is easy to eat to one's heart's content. When you've had your fill, the waitress will come by and count all the dishes that are stacked on your table and then hand you a tab to pay on your way out.

Japanese fast food at it's best!

Ironing board

Nothing too interesting to show you today so I guess I'll finally get around to showing you my ironing board as many bloggers were doing last week. I had originally told Michele that I was too embarrassed to show it but she encouraged me to be proud of my small space challenges so I am showing you my "challenge".

My sewing room is large enough for a bed and a table and one shelf. This only leaves a narrow space to walk in but this is a normal Japanese size bedroom. (We say it is a 6 tatami mat size room whether there are mats in it or not) Occasionally I rearrange things to try to make more space, but space is space and what is in there has to stay so the furniture arrangement of the room seems to make very little difference in how much space I have. I've contemplated throwing away the bed that is in there (it was Leiya's bed) but since it is the only bed in the house and the only place where I can try out bed quilts, it is there for now.)

Right now my arrangement isn't the best. Bed along one wall, desk, which is now my cutting table next to it, and the sewing machine on a pull out part of the desk. Squeezed between the bed and the cutting table is a plastic set of drawers that holds all of my fabric stash and on top of that is a very small rectangular Japanese ironing board.

This little ironing board has metal legs that unfold and is supposed to sit on the floor for the ironer to work on her clothes while she sits on her knees but I no longer like sitting on my knees for long periods of time so I've put the board on my drawer. If I had just a couple more inches of space I could have put the ironing board lengthwise across but it is butted up next to the wall and between the table and bed so there is NOT MUCH SPACE TO IRON ON! The only good thing about my ironing board is that I can roll back and forth from the sewing machine to the board without ever leaving my chair to iron short seams.

You can imagine though what happens when I want to iron a whole flimsy or backing or even binding around an unwieldy quilt. I either iron 12 inches at a time or .... I use the floor as an ironing board! Yes, I just spread the quilt or whatever on the carpet (in the other room which doesn't have a bed or table in it) and get down there and iron.

For this purpose I have an absolutely wonderful iron. It is cordless! Now some people will say that a cordless doesn't keep it's heat and won't press firmly but I've had no problems and I love that it can go anywhere on the floor with me. It sits in a cradle (which heats it) and I can move the cradle to a corner of the room or in a pinch, just bring the iron from the other room for a quick press. I don't know why other Japanese housewives need a cordless iron since the ironing space is so small but mine is wonderful and I've often thought my family in America should have one. I've looked at American electric stores but have yet to find one.

I learned this week that there are drawbacks to ironing on the carpet however. I was pressing the binding onto the When-oh-When and was thrilled with my ironing skills but when I picked the quilt up off the floor... "Wait a minute. What are those marks?" I guess I forgot that the carpet isn't cotton, probably has some nylon in it, and while I've never had to directly touch the iron to the carpet before (usually a flimsy or a backing between iron and carpet) this time the iron did a pressing job on the carpet too. I think I've melted some fiber because there are definite marks there! Oh well, this is an oldish house. The carpet hasn't been in good shape for years. The iron marks will always remind me of my time doing the When-oh-When so I'm not too upset.

So there you have it, the pitfalls of small space living in Japan!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! Actually our celebrations here in Japan yesterday were very low-keyed. Japan does not understand Easter yet and so there are no bunnies or eggs or chicks or baskets floating around (let alone Jesus and Halleluias!). Other originally western holidays have been adopted by the Japanese marketing world, but not Easter which is fine for my liking.

Christmas has overtaken Japan with decorations and Christmas cakes and some people ask me if Christians celebrate Christmas.

Valentine's day makes for a booming chocolate market and women and girls buy chocolate for any male friends or partners. There is a whole category of chocolate called "obligation chocolate", cheap and miniscule, for women who feel they have to buy chocolate for their co-workers, boss, classmates etc. even when there are no romantic feelings at all.

A completely Japanese holiday is White Day, celebrated March 14, and the males of Japan are roped into reciprocating the Valentine's day obligation chocolate with either canned cookies or white chocolate.

St. Patrick's Day gets overlooked as does April Fool's Day.

Mother's Day is a biggy and everyone is supposed to buy their mother carnations. Father's Day is just starting to catch on.

Of course no Independence Day or Thanksgiving Day or President's Day etc.

I guess that covers most of the western holidays celebrated in Japan. Of course there is a whole set of unique Japanese holidays, Girls' Day which was earlier this month and Boy's Day which is coming up in May.

Yesterday at church the children decorated Easter eggs (a first for most of the kids) and passed those out to the church members. No one really has a garden or even a yard for an Easter egg hunt and my English kids are always on spring break so I don't usually see them when Easter rolls around. One man was baptized during the church service and this is very common in the Japanese church. Baptisms are usually confined to the Christmas and Easter services. We had a simple luncheon after church and then a worship and praise service in the evening. A late dinner together which gave us a chance to get to know our new brother in Christ and his family.

And here is a picture of an Easter card that Marlene found at her church and gave to me. You may not think it very interesting but since the Christian population is still less than one percent in Japan, most Christian items are imported from elsewhere. Marlene and I both looked at this card and thought

"Wow! A Japanese looking Easter card! Will wonders never cease!"

Happy Easter to you all!

When-oh-When finished!

Well, the big news today is that I have finished the When-oh-When quilt!

You may have noticed that I haven't been posting about it much but there isn't too much to show in the last stages of hand quilting. After quilting criss-crosses in the pieced border there was a narrow border where I quilted a rope variation pattern and then I went back and added a few more quilting stitches on the inner part of the quilt. I suppose I could still find places to quilt if I wanted to but I think this is enough and I don't want to clutter it up.

The last step of course was the binding and I chose to use Sharon Schamber's method again using glue. Doesn't that sound terrifying!? It was much easier the second time around and I have to agree that it turns out a nice binding. Of course she recommends a certain type of glue and a applicator tip both of which I can't get easily so... I improvised. Daring of me don't you think? Listen to this. I used Japanese window papering glue, the kind Japanese use to put window shades on wooden frames! Sharon said her glue was water soluable so Japanese paper glue seemed the closest. No tip available so I found a light pull bobble, drilled a hole in the glue bottle, slipped the bobble in and Ta-Da! A glue applicator! I even washed the quilt yesterday and yes, the glue residue seems to wash away. Give Sharon's method a try!

The When-oh-When is actually from a pattern I found in the April 2000 issue of the Better Home and Gardens' American Patchwork and Quilting magazine. In the magazine it is called Sam's Quilt but I gave it my own name (and that's how you've heard about it) when I wondered when I'd ever get it done.

So, here is my When-oh-When! I still need to make a label but I am unveiling it anyway. I started in August of last year and have worked pretty steadily on it the whole time (well, you know me. Lots of small projects being undertaken at the same time.)

Isn't it interesting how a quilt that you've worked on for months becomes like a member of the family? I've grown to love talking to and working on the When-oh-When!

The living room

This week it is warming up a bit and I decided to welcome spring a little early by changing the living room around. I took off the dark, winter slip covers from the sofa and arm chair (where I sit and quilt in the evenings) and replaced them with some light colored ones. I see that even these are wearing out so I may go to have to get some new ones.

I also changed around the quilts on the walls so that brightens up the room considerably. Actually feels more like summer around here with that Hawaiian quilt up on the wall. I've written about all these quilts before so if you're interested you can find the story here. The quilt up in the entryway this month is one that I wish I could claim it as my work but it isn't. I won it in a quilt raffle a few years ago and it is beautiful!


I guess the rest of the living room isn't much to show but you get an idea of how I live and where I quilt.