Death Traps

Japan really has some amazing ways of collecting, draining, and channeling water. Considering the amount of water that pours out of the sky during the rainy season or a typhoon, it is necessary to be a little inventive when it comes to water control within the city. Nearly every street has an open concrete ditch running beside it which can be anywhere from 40 cm wide and fairly shallow to a meter or more in width and depth. When you go into the countryside, the canal systems get even more elaborate so that farmers can divert water from reservoirs, rivers, or lakes to flood their rice fields.

Judging by all the little rice fields tucked here and there between houses and buildings, I always get the feeling that Fukuyama is just a country town that happened to get big. Houses in the older central neighbourhoods like ours seem to be built around the existing channels bringing water from the Ashida River to farmer's fields. There just happen to be way less of those fields now! 

How do these ditches have any influence on our daily lives, you might ask? Well, firstly you must always pay attention to them when you are biking, especially when Theo is riding his bike. I have visions of him flying over the edge of one of the deeper, wetter ones and breaking his bike and landing himself in the hospital while he's at it. Theo has skinned his knee and lost two water bottles to the ditches on his way home from school. The streets in our neighbourhood are notoriously badly lit at night and I am surprised I haven't walked or ridden into one accidentally myself. With streets so insanely narrow, virtually no shoulder, and a 50 cm drop off on either side of the road, can you blame me for being a little hesitant about driving a car in Japan? 

Secondly, the little piece of the street and the ditch that wraps around our house is considered our responsibility to keep clean and free of debris. I feel like every high schooler passing by decides this is the prime place to throw their empty drink boxes and ice cream wrappers and every smoker seems to think our ditch looks like an ideal ashtray. I also have to clean up leaves and toys that the boys throw over the fence, but I just don't have the same animosity toward our children as I do strangers littering in front of our house. Lowering myself down into a narrow, mossy, slick ditch to scrape up leaves, mud, and cigarette butts is very rarely my idea of a good time. Maybe that is why our ditch doesn't look as sparklingly clean and pristine as most of the obaasan's do? 

Lastly, the deeper ditches that have at least some water all year long are wonderful for watering plants. You don't need to waste water or money by filling up watering cans with a hose when you can just collect some of the water from the ditch next door. The water is not contaminated in any way, I wouldn't exactly brush my teeth with it, but it is more than okay to use it for plant watering. Since it is mostly rain and river water I think it is probably better for your plants than using the treated water from our taps. I was lucky enough to find and old but useable long handled dipper in the space underneath our house which came in really handy when we still had our community garden plot! 

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.