Year of the Ox

Happy New Year!

January 1 and its eve have been pretty somber here.  We used to gather with my husband’s mother and sister and nieces, but now the girls are pretty much grown and have their own things to do and places to be.  Last night, my husband, kids, and I watched the Red and White Song Contest, in which popular male and female singers battle it out on the stage.  The highlight for me was seeing one of the singers in the Okinawan band Speed doing a little sign language.  Her daughter is deaf, so I figure she was sending a special, intimate message to her child via national TV.

The special foreign guest was Enya.  “Kids!” I said, “This is what I wanted to be listening to while I was giving birth!”  My twins arrived before all the details were ironed out, and as it turned out, there was no music in the delivery room, but Enya’s music reminds me of their birth  all the same.

Also, I thought Jero’s shirt was pretty funny.  Jero is a biracial (multiracial?) American who grew up singing enka with his Japanese granny.    He’s really good at it, too.  Anyway, he had his grandmother’s face screen-printed on his shirt.

Winter “Vacation”

We are now well into winter vacation.  I believe that my kids were looking forward to two and a half weeks of slovenliness, but Daddy made a schedule for them.   The schedule includes three study sessions per day (up to four hours), a slot of end-of-the-year cleaning, and an hour or two of play time.  I think it’s a bit much, but then again, I am from that country that always lags behind in math and science performance and general child development.  I suppose this is what it takes.

Yesterday evening, I lobbied for Monopoly, thus getting my kids (and me!) out of their third study session of the day and also a seven p.m. cleaning session.  It was husband’s first time to play Monopoly.  Predictably, he won.  We were so into the game that the kids were an hour and a half late getting to bed.

And the Free Book Goes to…

Okay, I’m sorry for being so slack about the book giveaway.  I had some kind of tummy bug last week, and I fell behind in many areas.  Since I promised to give away a book a week till Christmas, and it’s already been two weeks, I had my son draw two names.  Chris Tower and Diane Nagatomo will be getting copies of Playing for Papa.  Congratulations!!

The next giveaway is for a copy of Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs.  You don’t have to be a parent with a disabled child to appreciate this book.  The stories, poems, and essays, by some of the finest writers I know of, hold up as literature.  I guarantee you will be moved, if not changed, by reading this book.  If you’d like to win your very own autographed copy, you know the drill - leave your name, and we’ll draw a name in a week or so.

The Best Place

I often complain about how Japanese mothers don’t buckle up their kids in the car, and the kerosene fumes permeating my daughter’s classroom, and the excessive homework and many other things pertaining to the raising of children in Japan.  But get this - according to a recent survey conducted by an organization called Save the Children, Japan is number one when it comes to child development.  Kids in Japan are better nourished, healthier, and better educated than kids in all of the other countries surveyed.  The United States came in at #23.  So I guess we’ll stay put.

Why Are All the Hapa Kids Sitting Together?

Last week Jeremy Adam Smith wrote an interesting  post  for Beacon Broadsides.

The Lover

The last two months have been pure craziness - a whirlwind of speeches, writing workshops, readings, and extra classes.  I had to revise an essay for an anthology, and also I was busy putting the finishing touches on my next book, another anthology, this one on mothering across cultures.  For the most part, my family has been patient with me, but although the kids adore the punk babysitter and their aunt and cousins, sleeping away from home no longer has the same thrill.  Housework has been sorely neglected, and I still haven’t gotten to the bottom of the pile o’ laundry.  Last weekend I was in Nagoya to present at a writer’s conference, and the day before yesterday I gave a speech in Japanese about mothering my deaf daughter  (actually, it was a translation of my essay in It’s a Girl!).  At any rate, I’m pretty tired and am looking forward to taking it easy for awhile and then getting back to my new novel.  Meanwhile, my mother-in-law thinks that I am having an affair.

Reading in Madrid

By the way, if you happen to be in Madrid on Saturday, December 13, check out the reading of Playing for Papa at the Libreria  Oriental.  British author Gwyneth Box will be reading the book in English, and my publisher Lucia Moreno will be reading it in Spanish.

More details:

Want to spend a great Saturday afternoon?

Meet Jio, a Japanese boy, in our story time.

 

Join us on Saturday, December 23th at Librería Oriental,

for stories, games and prices.

 

We will read Playing for Papa by Suzanne Kamata

in English and Spanish.

Both reading will be done by natives.

 

Jio lives in Japan. His father is Japanese and his mother is American. He loves to play baseball, specially with his papa, who coaches a baseball team. This year, Papa’s team has made it to the national finals. Jio wants Papa’s team to win but, what if they lose?

 

Come have fun with us.

Do not miss it!

 

Librería Oriental is dedicated to the East, from Turkey to Japan.

It’s in C/ Mira el sol 14, 28005 Madrid
Phone: 91 528 67 26

Getting there:
- By Metro: Lavapiés, Puerta de Toledo o Embajadores
- By bus: 

 

The reading will start at 5 :30 pm. Entry is free.

 

Win a Free Book!!

Ho ho ho!  In the spirit of the season, I’ll be giving away a book a week up until Christmas.  This week’s giveaway is Playing for Papa, my brand new picture book, with illustrations by Yuka Hamano.

To read more about it, check out my publisher’s website.

If you’d like to win a free copy, leave your name here by December 12.

No Problem!

So my mother-in-law went to the doctor the other day with my sister-in-law and was tested for Alzheimer’s.  And guess what?  She passed.  She got 27 of 30 questions correct, which indicates that she doesn’t have Alzheimer’s Disease.  When I asked my husband about the check-up, he said, “No problem!”

His theory is that we have driven her into a paranoid state by complaining about the laundry and distribution of snacks to the grandchildren just before dinner.  (And for the record, I haven’t mentioned either in months.)

*sigh*

I was doing some non-scientific research on the Internet last night.  While perusing an entry about paranoid schizophrenia, I read that delusions are not considered abnormal in some societies.  Maybe Japan is one of them.

Being Japanese

Many Japanese people assume that just because I’m married to a Japanese national and have lived here for such a long time, I must have Japanese citizenship.  Most people have no idea how difficult it is to become Japanese.  There are many people who were born in Japan, who grew up here, speaking Japanese, who do not have Japanese passports.  I’m thinking of ethnic Koreans, but there are also a lot of kids born out of wedlock to foreign mothers and Japanese fathers who have not been granted citizenship. 

According to the law as it stands now, in order for such a child to be granted citizenship, a Japanese father must recognize paternity during the mother’s pregnancy.    If the father steps forward after the child’s already been born, it’s too late, unless he marries the mother before the kid turns 20. 

A revised Nationality Law is expected to clear the Diet this week.  This amendment would allow children born out of wedlock to Japanese men and foreign women to become Japanese citizens even if the father claims paternity after birth.  However, some lawmakers worry that this will create a black market in false paternity recognition.  Hello?  Has anyone heard of DNA testing??

One guy went so far as to say, “If a law like this is misused, what will happen to the Japanese identity?”

What is Japanese identity, anyway?  To me, it sounds as though Japanese nationality is meant to be an exclusive club, based on bloodlines and conformity.  To me, this comment reeks of xenophobia.  Perhaps Japanese identity should include a sense of responsibility for children sired out of wedlock, instead of a sense that foreign women are money-grubbing wanna-be-immigrant opportunists.

The expat Korean-American author Min Jin Lee put it well when she told the magazine Tokyo Families, ”The people here are very kind, polite, and really well intended.  But no one becomes Japanese. You can become an American. I think that’s a humongous difference.”