A View from the Station

Theo absolutely adores babies. When he is not playing with William, whom he refers to lovingly as "Chubby Bubby", he is pretending that his teddy bear is a baby. Lately when we go out, he asks if he can carry his "baby" around in a carrier like William. So, I fashion him one out of a shawl. He has certainly gotten some interesting looks from people when he has it on!

Theo, helpin' a brother out.

Dustin and Theo waiting for the train with their babies.

On a train related note, did you know that Fukuyama is the only city in Japan where you can see the castle directly from the train platform? The shinkansen platform is one level up from the regular train platform, so I am sure the view of the castle is a bit better, but seeing as we're too cheap to ride the shinkansen, this better view will have to wait.  

Here are the castle walls and smaller out buildings of the castle as seen from the train platform. It does make a nice view while waiting for your train to arrive. 

Also, a few days ago Theo and I stepped off the train on our way to an appointment with his doctor and saw an Anpanman themed train waiting on another track. Cute!

Big Tom

A bit camera shy, Big Tom decided to not to stick around
for a photo shoot 

Our neighbourhood is the undisputed territory of a large, threatening orange cat that I like to think of as Big Tom. If he is not caterwauling from the neighbour's empty lot for hours on end or having yowly, hissing fights with any cat unlucky enough to take a stroll through his turf, he is sitting perched high on the roof of a rusty, ramshackle shed across the street. He spends hours surveying his domain from a face crisscrossed with scars and eyes nearly squinted shut from some crusty infection. I am fairly sure that he was born with a bobtail, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find out that he lost it in some ultra violent run in with a dog, car, or lawn mower.

He is one tough looking bruiser of a cat and I would hate to find myself accidentally in a small enclosed space with him. I am pretty sure he would come out with the upper hand.

A Blessing and a Curse

On Friday, as I waited for Theo's kindergarten bus to arrive, I noticed some men removing all of the tatami from a fifth floor apartment across the street. It was really neat to watch them lower each mat down  on a rope with a hook at the end from the balcony. While enjoying this new sight, I was able to reflect for a few minutes on how common tatami has become in my life in the last six months.

For those who don't live in Japan or have never visited, tatami is a thick mat of rice fiber and woven straw that is used as flooring in at least one of the rooms of a typical Japanese apartment or house. Each mat is about 2.5 - 5.5 cm thick and is usually 90 cm wide by 180 cm long. Since tatami size is fairly uniform, often people will tell you the size of a room or house by how many tatami are in it. In our apartment, the small kitchen and bathroom have wood flooring, but all of the other living space has tatami.

I still remember the feeling of stepping onto our tatami for the first time. It was firmer and denser than I expected, but still had a bit of give and springiness to it. Unfortunately, I was a bit dazed after traveling with the children and not sleeping in over 36 hours, so I wasn't able to properly savour the moment.

This is not our apartment; our tatami has never looked
this good!

In some ways, having tatami in our apartment is great. It is soft and silky smooth under your feet and Theo and William can play directly on it without needing a rug or play mat to cushion them. In the winter it does not get cold like the wood flooring in our kitchen and doesn't heat up too much in the summer. We are able to sleep on futons on the floor without needing tons of padding or losing too much heat to the floor. It also has a really nice, almost sweet, grassy smell that reminds me of fresh hay or straw. I also think that the shimmery green and gold cloth that binds the sides of each mat is quite pretty.

In saying this, I have come to loathe tatami, at least in this phase of my life. It would be fabulous in a bedroom, but we have it everywhere. This means every little mess our kids make, every piece of food dropped, every drooly patch from William, and worse lands straight on the highly absorbent, easily stained, and incredibly difficult to clean floor. We have put an area rug underneath our table to protect the tatami from inevitable foods spills each meal, but it still doesn't protect it from the occasional glass of water, juice, or even worse, milk, that gets tipped over by the elbows of our clumsy son. So far I have had the pleasure of cleaning all forms of food and drink, vomit, urine, and poop from our tatami. The only uncharted territory for me is blood and wine, but it is only a matter of time. I have become insanely jumpy about anything spilling on it, but short of trading our children in for robots, I can't think of any way of preventing the occasional unforeseen accident or emergency.

Our own little tatami model showing off the silky soft
qualities of our floor.

I have developed a sort of science when it comes to cleaning, disinfecting, deodorizing, and removing stains from our tatami. It seems to be working for the most part, or at least our tatami looks no worse than it did when we arrived. The good news is that the tatami was fairly old and worn when we arrived, so I am not quite as neurotic about it as I could be. I really wonder how other moms with babies and young children handle life with tatami? Any advice?

For anyone interested in the tatami making industry, and how and how often mats are changed, I found this photo essay by Keith Graff very interesting and informative.

A pox on us all

So, in the last week we have all managed to get some form of sinus cold or infection and while we are mostly on the mend it has seriously affected our blogging schedule... for that I apologize. So while this post may not be as riveting as it could be, I assure you that there are in fact several posts in the works that will be significantly better this one. That being said, here is what I offer you today:

Several weeks ago on on one of my runs, I stopped by the largest Shinto shrine in Fukuyama

 

to test out our new camera in some slightly more difficult lighting situations, namely the dark. The result was some rather interesting photos, that without sounding too self congratulatory, actually turned quite well.

Torii Gate lead up to the shrine itself.

One of the out buildings.

Same out building with a little extra lighting

This is probably my favorite photo. 60 sec. exposure with
the moon in the background.

Finally the entrance to the complex itself with some selective coloring.

Kinkan

I have discovered that Japan is all about its seasonal fruits. A few months ago, persimmons and figs were hanging ripe on countless dozens of trees in our neighbourhood and could be found for great prices at every grocery store. Now, it is difficult to find them but the time of the citrus fruit is at hand. Yuzu, a sour citrus fruit that is a bit like a cross between a mandarin orange and a lemon, are everywhere and all sorts of drinks and sweets flavoured with yuzu can be found. We are being given mikan, or as Canadians love to call them, Christmas oranges, by the the bagful from friends with trees. Last week, Dustin's Japanese teacher gave us a bag of kinkan, or kumquats, from the tree on their yard. I had never tried one before and always assumed that they taste similar to loquats, which grow everywhere in the area of Mexico where my dad lives. I was terribly wrong, since really nothing about them, other than their size and the "quat" in the name, is similar to a loquat. The rind is sweet and tastes just like eating an orange peel but slightly less intense. The inside is lemony sour. You eat the fruit rind and all, and together the taste is almost like popping a spoonful of deliciously tart and intensely flavourful marmalade into your mouth. I have become fascinated with the flavour of these little beauties and managed to eat the whole bag were given in just a few days. It is a good thing that they are in season now and can be found just about everywhere. I better enjoy them while they are still around though, since I will have to wait a whole year once they are no longer in season.

Mushroom Logs

For my birthday a few weeks ago, Dustin got me the coolest present: two shiitake growing kits! I absolutely love mushrooms, to eat and just in general, so I was pretty excited to get them growing.

Contents of the kit

The kits included a log about 40 cm long that has been seeded with spores, a plastic bin for storing it in while the mushrooms are growing, a plastic bag for keeping in moisture, a plastic wedge for standing up the log, and instructions. The log has circular spots cut out of it in regular intervals where the mushrooms are supposed to sprout from.

First, the log was soaked in ~16° water for 24 hours until it was completely water logged. I then drained the water and propped it up in the white plastic bin and wrapped the whole thing up in a plastic bag to keep in all of the moisture and humidity. It has to be kept at a temperature range between 14° and 22° while the mushrooms are growing. Our bedroom and living room are the only places we heat in our apartment, and outside is far too cold, so I opted for sticking it in our bedroom closet.

After a few days of forgetting about it, I noticed a few little white bumps emerging from some of the circular grooves. In no time at all, they have been swelling to lovely little mushrooms. It should take another week or so before they reach the perfect size, but I amazed at how fast they have been growing!

Mushroom log before soaking

Circular spot "seeded" with spores

Incubator bag

About to sprout

Baby mushrooms!

The great thing about these logs is that mushrooms can be produced multiple times before you have to throw the log away. After each two week mushroom growing cycle, you allow the log to dry out and "rest" for about a month and a half. Then you can soak it again and start over. You can also buy super large 2 meter logs that have been seeded with spores but I am not sure if Dustin would be too happy with me shoving those into our closet!

Milestones

It may not be readily obvious all the time, but I do actually try to limit the number of posts I write that center exclusively on our kids. I recognize that children and their antics are always much more interesting to the parents and don't want to bore too many people. I know that unavoidably our blog will be pegged as a mommy blog, but for those who couldn't care less about how cute our kids are, I try to capture the goings on of our life on a broader scale. After that disclaimer, here is a whole post about what the kids have been up to lately:

For Theo's birthday, our crafty neighbours made a really cool Mario pinata. Theo had a great time bashing at it but eventually we gave up on the blind fold as his swings became more and more wild. William seemed just as enthusiastic as Theo did when candy started to spill from the hole he bashed in Mario's head (wow, I didn't realize how vicious this whole thing was!).  The next day, we were able to have more fun by turning the pinata into a helmet/mask. It's fantastic to have good neighbours!

William was pretty absorbed in checking out all of the fallen goodies

"It's-a me, Mario!"

Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper by Theo

Theo's new favorite past-time has been drawing in his sketch book. I absolutely love this new focus of his because every afternoon he happily doodles away for an hour or two instead of bounding around, destructing the apartment, and making his brother upset. I am always happy when my children develop skills that make them more independent and less demanding of my one on one attention. I think the reason he is so interested in drawing is that he has recently hit a big milestone in fine motor skills and hand eye coordination. All of a sudden he has been able to draw fairly accurate shapes, pictures that are more or less distinguishable for what he says they are (even though the cats have eight legs and resemble spiders with tails), most letters, and even a few hiragana. He seems to have entered into a very sensitive period for learning to write letters and numbers, so I am more than happy to indulge his interest. He has also taken to labeling things in the house, like his brother.

I'm not quite sure what his label is supposed to mean, but William didn't seem to mind it one bit.

Also, despite the chilly temperatures and wind, we have been able to get out on the weekends and discover a few of the nice parks in our area and fly our kite. Once the weather warms up a bit more, I would like to get Theo a little pole so he can learn to fish. Most of the parks in our area are along the river, so it would be easy to teach him at one of these.

Flying the kite from the wind free comfort of the play tube

Making sure that the park pandas get enough bamboo

Meanwhile, William has grown a few more teeth and is able to cruise his way along all of our furniture to dismantle and bite anything he can get his grubby little hands on. He has a remarkably driven curiosity and Theo is always a willing accomplice in his most destructively mischievous acts. Here are a few recent shots of wee Wills:

Pretending to be mild mannered and innocent

Now showing his true personality and his four new sharp teeth

His favorite scrunch faced grin

Samurai in training

...and that is what has been going on in our children's lives in the past couple of weeks.  

Rodents of Unusual Size

One critter that we see fairly often on our bike rides is the nutria, or coypu (Myocastor coypus). They seem to be everywhere in the canals and in the Ashida River that flows through the city. As you can see from this shot of one I took this weekend, they are a semi-aquatic rodent are about the same size as a beaver but with a long, rat-like tail.

I am surprised this one let me get so close

Originally from South America, they have been introduced to every continent except for Antarctica and Australia for their fur. Nutria were introduced to Japan in 1910 and the military promoted small fur farms to raise nutria. When the price of the pelts dropped, many nutria were released into the wild where they happily procreated, due to a lack of natural predators and lots of prime habitat. Since 1963, nutria have been hunted in Japan to control their ballooning population. When looking for population counts in Japan, I discovered that Okayama has the highest number of nutria in the country. It is about 9.5 kilometers from our apartment to the border of Okayama Prefecture, so it makes sense that I see them so often.

Super cute baby nutria

The foraging and nesting habits of the nutria have an incredibly detrimental effect on the health of wetlands and water systems in the countries in which they are introduced. They destroy nesting habitat for native species and cause massive soil erosion by eating marsh plants and burrowing through root systems. Places like Louisiana (are you surprised?) have created a 5$ bounty for every nutria shot in an attempt to decrease their population. Some countries are even trying to popularize the sale of nutria meat for human consumption. The meat has euphemistically been named "ragondin", the French word for nutria, and has been found to be much leaner, higher in protein, and lower in harmful microorganisms compared with farmed conventional meats. If you ever manage to get your hands on some ragondin, there are lots of recipes out there that will help you make the most of it.

Shooting them for fur, meat, or even a 5$ bounty may seem cruel, but in many of the countries to which they have been introduced, humans are the only predator able to lower their populations. The wetlands they are destroying are incredibly complex and fragile habitats which play a critical role in maintaining water quality and species richness. In many countries, hunting, whether done by individuals or the government, is one of the few viable options for controlling their population. I say, if you are going to shoot it anyway, why let it go to waste?

Mystery Bottles

Water bottle garden fence?

I had not been in Fukuyama for very long before I noticed a number of clear, 2 litre, plastic drink bottles, filled with water and placed in a row on someones front steps. I thought it was odd that the bottles were placed out almost decoratively, but the only thing I could think of was that they were warming up water for their plants. I am not sure if other people have ever done this, but the well water in Canada is absolutely frigid, so we usually warmed it up in the sunshine before dousing the garden.

Fly scaring bag

As soon as I became aware of them, I noticed the plastic bottles of water everywhere. They were lining people's fences, surrounding gardens, along walkways, and just about everywhere else. I kept an eye on a few of them and saw that they were never refilled or moved, so they were obviously not being used for watering plants. My next best guess was that they were to keep flies away. Where my dad lives in Mexico, they keep plastic bags filled with water in the window to ward off flies. Perhaps the bottles were a form of fly repellant? I hadn't noticed a single fly since arriving in Japan, so either they were doing a fantastic job of scaring them away, or they were not for flies after all.

Making friends with a not so feral neighbourhood cat

After a few more weeks of speculation, I finally asked a Japanese friend of ours about the bottles and found out that they are to scare away cats. Apparently the glinting of sunlight off of water tricks the cats into thinking there is a body of water that they want to avoid. There are quite a few stray cats in our neighbourhood, and it is apparently a serious problem in Japan as a whole, so I can see why people would want to keep them from using their gardens as a litter box, their sheds as a place to have their kittens, or tearing apart their trash. I am really curious about how well these bottles actually work. It seems to me that cats are intelligent enough and have good enough eye sight to figure out that the water is contained inside a bottle. If we ever have a problem with cats lurking around I will have to test its effectiveness myself.

To demonstrate how common these bottles are, all three photos were taken within 100 meters of each other by the canal in our neighbourhood. 

Universal Soft Expert

USE: Universal Soft Expert

We have a friend in Canada who disagrees with the concept of "soft". He believes that everything is merely a different degree of hardness. I don't exactly agree with him and in case I ever want to back up my side of the argument, I have found an expert on the subject. Dustin and I found the office of the "Universal Soft Expert" tucked in a small side street beside a factory. I am pretty sure they don't see much business due to their out of the way location and inexplicable job title.