Is Anpanman Going to Be Ok?

I worry about Anpanman a lot these days. Anpanman is a popular show for children that we get on the TV Japan channel and I get to see a lot of it because my son is currently a fan. All I can say is that Japanese children’s television is deeply concerning.

With Anpanman, my concerns are largely metaphysical. Anpanman is a bit like Superman, if Superman had a removable head made of pastries and sweet bean filling. Anpanman can fly, he is incredibly strong and he goes around helping people and punching out bad guys. This is all great stuff. I hope that Aito grows up incredibly strong with the ability to fly, help people and punch out bad guys, so there are many lessons that he can pick up from Anpanman.

Unfortunately, like Superman and kryptonite, Anpanman has a weakness - the fact that his head is basically dough and sweet beans. If his head gets dented, dirty, wet, or fed to hungry animals (as sometimes happens), Anpanman’s power wanes. The solution for Anpanman is to replace his head with an entirely new head. This brings him back to full power and allows him to “An-punch” his enemies so hard that they disappear over the horizon.

What I wonder, though, is whether or not Anpanman is actually Anpanman anymore after switching heads. Sure, we think that Anpanman is the same person because he does and says the same things, but isn’t it also possible that Jam Ojisan, Anpanman’s creator, is baking a new individual with each head? Could we be seeing the death of a hero every time Anpanman’s head gets changed?

Besides the existentially terrifying question of the disposable hero heads, there is the change that would have on the show itself. If each head is a different hero, then Anpanman’s nemesis, Baikinman, doesn’t actually fail each episode. In fact, he’s slowly working his way through all of the potential Anpanmans until the day when Jam Ojisan runs out of sweet beans and flour.

Of course, it would be easy to chalk up my worries about Anpanman to Japanese cartoons being quirky, but I’ve realized that it has nothing to do with Japan. Thomas the Tank Engine, another of my son’s favorites, also contains some big questions. Sir Topham Hat can’t go one episode without mentioning that all the train’s should be “really useful engines.” In fact, most of the episodes are about the trains competing to be more useful or agonizing about not being useful enough. The question I have is what exactly are the engines so scared of? What did Sir Topham Hat do to inspire that kind of fear? What happens to the engines that don’t measure up?

Now, you might say I am reading too much into both these shows - and you’d be right. I have a lot of spare time to think while watching these shows. Anpanman and Thomas tend to be a bit formulaic in the plot department. It’s almost like they were written for kids. As a person in an international marriage, I am all for understanding and appreciation between cultures. And one thing I think we can agree on is that children’s shows are crazy in any culture.

The Things You Forget: Japan Five Years Later

Recently I had the opportunity to visit Japan. I lived and worked in Japan as an ESL teacher from 2003-2009, but since then we (I met my wife in Japan) hadn’t returned. From the time we touched down in Narita, it felt like we were enacting the Japanese folktale, Urashima Taro. In the folktale, Urashima Taro returns from the ocean to find decades passed while he partied in the undersea kingdom and the world moved on. It really felt like decades passed while we were away rather than a few years, but I think it is just the things you forget when you aren’t in a country day in and day out.

For sure, some things are different. For example, Tokyo station has touch panel vending machines now, street lights have gotten slimmer and you can finally pay with a credit card in most large stores. However, there are all sorts of things that must have once been familiar and now seem strange and new. The counters and tables all felt a few inches too low, the airport and bullet trains were unbelievably clean, and the average combini (convenience store, but so different from Canada’s version) held all the products a person could possibly need in their daily lives. Even the cars were surprising as there seemed to be an endless selection of makes, models and colors.

One thing I was shocked to have forgotten was the natural beauty of Japan. It is easy to think of Tokyo as being Japan concentrated down into a single city of skyscrapers and concrete, but outside of Tokyo Japan is a country of mountains, oceans, fields and rivers. In Alberta, we can drive 600 kilometers in any direction without a huge change in the countryside. In Japan, 600 kilometers takes you from Ueno station in Tokyo to the snow covered forests of Aomori. For such a small country, Japan packs in a lot of scenery.

There were many other moments of rediscovery, including the quality of the food, the high-level of service, the mild weather, and the weight of history and culture in Japan. There are many things I wish I could bring back with me to Canada, and also some things I wish I could export to Japan. I wish my Japanese friends took more of a Canadian approach to work and took all the holidays they were entitled too. I wish Canadian restaurants could offer the service and food quality you get in Japan.

I guess I really wish I could live in a Canadianized Japan or Japanized Canada, but that’s not how the world works. That said, every time we travel to Japan or a Japanese person comes to Canada, you can’t help but take a piece of that culture with you. Piece by piece, the connection is built between both cultures. Sure, you can forget the little things like the spotless bathrooms and the talking ATMs, but the truly important things like respect and appreciation of nature stay with you forever.

The Challenges of Flying With Children: Babies Are Just As Bad As Pipebombs

When you have a child, you become part of a tribe of sorts. There are things that you discuss only with other parents – and usually only after the two beers you can fit in after your children's bedtime at 8pm and your own at 9:45pm (wild times, I know). These are things that seem frankly criminal when you write them down, like how sleepless nights you fantasized about leaving your screaming and crying child on a stranger's porch (I am not a monster - I would have at least rang the doorbell.). I've now added another story to this cache of dark humor: air travel.

Flying with a child of any age is challenging. Hell, flying as an adult is no great shakes. It seems like planes are being designed to pack the maximum amount of people in the minimum amount of comfort. The economics of airlines dictates that planes are not airworthy until passengers are skin-to-skin with the strangers sitting next to them. This type of thing, plus the fact that a plane is really a metal tube held up by a suspension of belief in gravity, used to make me dread flying.

Now, I have so many more things dread as a parent flying with my child. The first major change between your old travel habits and your family travel habits is the amount of baggage you require. Aito is around 20 pounds and, if packed properly, fits on my lap. Despite the relatively compact nature of my son, he requires another 80 pounds of luggage, not including the baby carry on with diapers, wipes, snacks and clothes, as well as the significant portion of our own carry on given over to his books, toys and eating utensils. My wife and I must have looked like especially put upon pack animals pushing the six check in bags, the three carry on, and our son through the airport.

Thankfully, we were able to check everything and then quickly breeze through security riding on the backs of understanding unicorns. I am, of course, joking. The Edmonton Airport Security – the alert and tireless force that let a passenger fly after taking away his pipe bomb in 2014  – were very concerned about the baby bag. As well they should be.

After all, how could they be sure that the baby we had with us was in fact ours? More importantly, did he pack that bag himself? So the stalwarts of airport security had my wife – who I suspect has radicalized over the course of our marriage – rummage through the bag to pull out the suspicious object. This was, of course, wipes. After opening the potentially lethal package for the security officer, we were allowed to keep our wipes. We cackled manically. Our plan worked. We were now free to commit acts of extreme hygiene at 30,000 feet.

Although we did not, in fact, have a bomb or any act of terror planned for the long flight to Japan, we did feel like terrorists. People boarding the plane flinched at the sight of an infant, anticipating 10 hours of uninterrupted crying. It was my first time flying with a child and, aside from the metric ton of luggage, I had prepared as I usually did – I brought a book.

....

Sorry, I had to take a moment there to let the laughter pass. As you more experienced parents will know, a book is a bit ambitious for in-flight entertainment. I did not do enough reading on the plane to finish a postcard, let alone a book. What was I doing for 10 hours? My wife and I were both providing non-stop entertainment, snacks and soothing to the volatile and sleepless infant we had smuggled aboard. In retrospect, I owe an apology to the Edmonton airport security. They should have tasered us at the check-in counter.

Birthdays: We Mastered Babies, But Now We Have A Toddler

Although I’ve never quite grasped the physics of it, some very intelligent people have declared that time is relative. And I think they are onto something.

To me, it feels like a month, maybe two at most have passed since the arrival of our son. There is, however, some pretty compelling evidence that it has in fact been well over a year. This evidence is, of course, my son himself. At some point – I am guessing it was a Tuesday afternoon – he doubled in size, started walking, sprouted teeth, and mastered iOS8.

This was unfortunate news for us, his parents, as we were just starting to feel confident in our ability to take care of a baby. Now, we no longer have a baby. We have a toddler. What I am trying to say is that, when it was just my wife and I, we were two adults aging gradually enough that it was hard to notice a change year to year, let alone month to month.

Sure, my waistline has been expanded faster than the Russian border with the Ukraine, but that is at least a predictable rate of expansion. With a child as part of our lives, it seems like time is jerking backwards and forwards, much like the PVR does when he gets a hold of the remote.

My son is now over one year old. From now on, we can refer to his age in years rather than just months, although I notice a lot of parents hold onto the months (“he’s 16 months”) perhaps thinking that they can slow down the calendar that way or just not ready to admit that the leap between one year and two or three or sixteen seems a lot smaller than it did at eleven months. I’ve decided to take the opposite approach and start relatively aging myself at my son's rate, so I should be going through a midlife crisis sometime next week and starting to perfect my shuffle table and bridge game for retirement at Christmas 2018.

My thinly veiled fear of mortality aside, the last year and change has been as intense and rewarding as any I can remember. I imagine veteran parents chuckling to themselves as my wife and I struggle to express how incredibly weird and satisfying it is watching a baby go from a 7 pound mass of need and bowel movements to a 20 pound mass of need and bowel movements that also walks.

Parenting is full of milestones besides bowel movements, but it is always the bowel movements that we seem to track most carefully. That said, we did break out in applause when he mastered sitting up and I thought we would be receiving parent of the year awards as he learned to stand on his own.

We have videos and photos (so many photos) of all these important milestones from the first haircut to the first time crawling up the stairs. It is without shame - because really, what shame do I have left? - that I admit we are borderline stalkers when it comes to parenting. My son will never wonder about his childhood because he'll be able to search the metadata in the shared photo library and watch a minute by minute slideshow set to "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

One of the highlights in that photo library will be his first birthday. By a conservative estimate, we put the same amount of time into planning and preparing for his birthday as went into the completion of the Panama Canal. Like many parents, my favorite part of his birthday was the twelve hours of sleep that immediately followed it.

That's not to say it wasn't worth it. We did get a great picture -which we will digitally alter for the next five years to give us time to recover enough to plan another birthday party for him.

An Awkward But Enlightening Afternoon of Photography

This month I had the opportunity to attend a digital photography course through Learn Photography, and it was an experience that’s worth sharing for anyone with even a remote interest in photography. For the course, you need to bring or rent a digital Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera – basically one of those fancier, bulky cameras that come with all sorts of lenses, tripods and so on.

I packed the office camera and met my instructor, James, in front of the Alberta Legislature. For the first 20 minutes James familiarized me with the camera, explaining concepts like shutter time, aperture and ISO. It turns out that these three elements make all the difference when taking a photo. Using them in combination, you can make plated food look like its glowing, capture the aurora borealis, catch a perfect shot of a car moving at speed and much more.

Since we didn’t have plated food, the aurora borealis or speeding cars in the Legislature grounds, I mostly took pictures of trees, statues and James leaping, posing and running. Oddly enough, spending an afternoon photographing an Asian man is a lot more fun and educational than you might think. James took me through the camera modes and menus and showed me how even a point and click camera has the ability to take better photos. Among the neat tips James supplied were:

Photograph people by zooming in from farther away. The more space you create between your subject and the lens, the flatter the picture will be and the more flattering to your subject (simply put, it makes your subject look thinner). On the flipside, many point and clicks add weight due to a curving effect when little or no zoom is used.

Increase your shutter speed at sporting events – but not too much. If you’ve taken a photo of someone running, you’ve likely noticed how their arms and legs turn into windmills of light – much like the road runner hitting his stride. To minimize this effect, you can increase the shutter speed. Increase it too much and the subject is frozen in space with no sense of motion. The magic is to get a slight blur like a national geographic spread with lions on the hunt. I found that 1/60 or one-sixtieth of a second worked for most people-in-motion shots.

Decrease your shutter speed to photograph in low light. If you are taking pictures in shade or dark, using your flash can distort the image – producing halos, glowing eyes and the like. If you slow down your shutter speed to a second or longer, this gives the camera more time to collect the light needed to get the picture. You can also get neat effects, such as a comet trail of light when cars pass in front of the camera. All of these changes can be made on most digital camera settings menus.

There were many more useful tips and I would encourage anyone with an interest to check out classes through http://cameracourses.ca/. They offer group classes on the weekends so that you’ll have more subjects to choose from than just James. And that will probably cut down on the strange looks you’ll get from the construction workers fixing the fountains.

It's the End of the World as We Know It

Alas, for those of you caught up in hanging Christmas lights and buying presents, it turns out that the world is going to end on December 21, 2012 according to the Mayan Calendar.

Yes, some may question why people living in the age of quantum physics and the Internet should worry about the scheduling habits of a people who pulled ropes with thorns through their tongues and genitals to commune with the gods, but those people clearly do not spend enough time on the Internet.

If you do a little searching – and ignore NASA’s page of lies about how the world is definitely not ending, you will find some very interesting people readying themselves for the apocalypse. There seems to be some consensus on remote villages in various parts of Europe being the only safe havens in the coming storm. So this is either the real thing or a savvy ancient Mayan marketing campaign for European vacations.

Like any reasonable person, I like to hedge my bets. That is why I have been stocking up on rifles, ammo, canned goods, generators and ropes with thorns. If the world ends on schedule, please know that it has been a pleasure sharing this earth with you - and I will shoot you if you try to steal my canned tuna.

If, however - in some wild and improbable trick of fate - the earth does not become a post-apocalyptic wasteland on the twenty-first, I’d like to wish you all a merry Christmas and assure you that I would never shoot such wonderful people over canned tuna. Cans of Stagg Chilli, maybe, but never tuna. Merry Christmas!

Working and Living in Japan: Joining Private Club Activities

Previously we looked at how to join a school club in Japan. Now we’ll look at how to join a private club – a club where you can practice and compete with adults as well as receive instruction from qualified club teachers.

Finding a Club

The process of finding an adult club can be a little more complicated. If you are absolutely new to your town of city, the first step is to find the community center (kouminkan) in your area. These will usually have a registry of the clubs that use rooms there as well as an events calendar listing tournaments that the clubs compete it. Even ikebana (flower arranging) has annual competitions. As with school clubs, it is possible to do the research just by staking out the club areas. Simply, hang around a baseball diamond after working hours to find an adult baseball club or go to the martial arts center (shidoukan or budoukan) to find a kendo club.

There are also job-related clubs - for example, a high school teacher’s soccer team - that may be easier to join than a fully private club. Teachers’ clubs generally have a lighter practice schedule because of the heavy workload Japanese take on. The usual time for people to view and join clubs is in the spring when the Japanese year traditionally begins. As many people are shuffled around in both the public and private sector at this time, it means clubs lose members and are searching for new ones. It is fine to check out clubs at any time, but just keep in mind that some may not be looking for new members right when you’re ready to join.

Before Joining Up

It is important to know your limitations when joining a private club. Sports and martial arts clubs usually have several levels to choose from. When a Japanese member joins, he or she is assessed by the teachers/coaches/management and placed at the appropriate level. With foreigners, however, the people in charge are occasionally too timid and let the foreigner decide their own level. If you play soccer at a beginners level, it’ll be difficult for you to fit into an A-class club because people in that class have played competitive soccer for six years or more. Similarly, if you play hockey at a university level, but join a C-class team, the other teams you play will be understandably upset.

What if the club nearest to you doesn’t have an appropriate level? There may be a practice-only option. This is an option that doesn’t exist for most Japanese people, but many clubs will make an exception for a foreigner in the name of international friendship. You can usually practice with a club even if you won’t be allowed to enter competition with them. This is something you will have to discuss directly with the club managers as it may affect your club fees.

Paying Your Dues

Joining a private club involves a financial commitment along with the time commitment. Many private clubs in Japan are run like small-market sports teams, complete with team managers and coaching staff that are paid by the club. The costs of joining a club vary according to the type and the level. For example, a kimono club starts cheap (not including the cost of buying a kimono), but as you progress in levels your lessons increase in price.

The same is true of sports club. C-class hockey clubs practice the same amount as A-class clubs, but they enter less tournaments in a year, and that is reflected in the membership price. On top of the initial fee, you may need to pay out-of-pocket for special events or travel expenses. Also, there will be instances where you will be expected to give money as a gift. The hat is passed around whenever a member gets married, has a child, or someone in their immediate family dies. Usually this amounts to a maximum 5000 yen per person, and it’d be bad taste to opt out.

Getting Out

The same methods used for school clubs – direct, excuse, rotational – work for privates clubs, but you may not be able to get your club fees returned. If you are considering coming back after awhile or going on a rotational basis, you may have to pay the entire club fee for the year even if you only go occasionally. This is standard for Japanese club members and, although they may give you special consideration as a foreigner, don’t expect it. Generally speaking, the unused portion of your club fees is considered apology money for quitting the club.

Conclusion

Private clubs are an excellent way to meet people in your area with similar interests. They are also one of the best places to increase your Japanese ability. It is important to remember that Japanese people take clubs very seriously, so you should do your due diligence in finding a club that you’ll be happy staying with for awhile. That said, don’t let caution stop you from using clubs as a gateway into your community and Japanese culture as a whole.