Back to Japan amid Flu fears!! (AND new photos at the bottom!)

I flew back to Japan for a couple weeks of work and visiting kids.

(Oh, that's not me all dressed up- just some of the fellows on their way to checking us out!)

I've been trying to find a photo of the infrared cameras they used on our plane.

At least twenty smocked, masked AND goggled clad beings boarded our flight just after we landed in Narita, Japan. Oh, and the guys with infrared cameras also wore those serious gas masks! Not the women who collected our health information sheets though.(I wonder why)

Only after those ominous beings started checking all of us THEN the flight attendants proceeded to pass out cloth masks to us passengers, though they had offered them at the beginning of the trip. (It took an hour to complete checking all of us)

I had taken my own masks (I've BEEN stocked!). Here's an older photo of me with one on. I was having serious asthma attackings so... that's why I care to wear them.

In Japan people wear them without second thought pretty much.

Hayfever is one big reason. Also if someone has a cold, they don't want to pass it on, or don't want to catch one from others.

It's just common knowledge that it helps. You get used to seeing people wear them here.

It helps against dust and cat hair (in my house) so I wear them regularly now.

Check this out this link below of cool and interestingly decorated masks Japanese have created. I always wanted to get my daughter Sheon to draw cool designs on my masks!

Swine Flu Fashion Heats Up With Cool Surgical Masks

http://inventorspot.com/articles/eight_surgical_masks_survive_swine_flu_style_27297

I like this Kitty-chan mask I wore on one of my flights:

Ok, enough of that!

Once off the flight here's where I went to the john/loo/lavatory whatever~ then I was really able to place where I was, by the TOIKETS- back in "my" good ol' country of Japan. I've flown back and forth from the States to Japan and back again about ten round-trip trips in the past two years? ( I think some of me doesn't always land when I physically do- at least for a time anyway)

So, to the first buisness at hand in Japan:

Either the squat toilet, which makes for not having to make seat contact, or waste seat paper.

One other positive aspect is that it's good stretching for the legs- you know: knee bends!

And the other choice is:

Our Japanese high tech toilet at it's best (actually the ones which open and close by themselves, sensing our presence, are one step higher- no need to touch that germy seat!).

There is english is small type if you can look closely.

You can max the volume of the "bidet" spray- I guess you say. Or the pressure... you can even have "flushing sound" to cover your bodily noises of relieving itself.

Oh, and higher tech toilets have buttons to make change the temperature of the seat and water.

I have one good story.

When I first went to Japan in '86 and used one of these johns. I had a year old baby with me. In those days English was written by the buttons. My little girl pressed some of those buttons while I was doing my duty, finished actually but still sitting there, and suddenly a spray came spraying my derriere~bottom. I sprang up from that toilet bowl, slamming down the cover at once! I thought it was a cleanser for cleaning the toilet bowl, not my butt!

I've never been a user of it- but once, in my twenty two years there, to try it properly. Well, maybe properly? I can't say to tell you the truth!

Next stop, a JAPANESE convenience store! In my opinion, a MUCH larger, healthier variety of "fast food" and drink. A biggie we miss in the States.

ONIGIRI "rice balls" that are triangular and etc. Also BENTOS of a sort, "lunchboxes" in plastic

Snacks usually to accompany alcoholic beverages.

The alcoholic beverages, beer, sweet mixed canned drnks...

next to that sake, and other traditional liquor...

and it looks like for after the alcohol, the ENERGY drinks!

The TEAS!!! Almost NONE of them are, thank god, NOT sweetened!

Or for the sweetened drinks, most canned coffees are such. Also "milk teas" which you can also buy from another location hot.

Oh, I didn't get a shot of the variety of potato chips, rice/fish crackers (SENBEI)...candy...another day!

Grandmom's 90th Birthday May 9th, born 1919

Don't you wonder what she wished for?!



Zen was actually dressed up for a PROM he took off for a little bit later.

Below, I gave a present to Grandmom in this random, eye-candy bag which Grandmom seemed to enjoy as much as the present inside!

(Remember you can click on the photos to enlarge them)




Uncle Lynn and Taka with Grandmom (Thanks to Lorraine for all the fantastic photos too!!)


Grandmom held a martini and a bouquet, and we were doing the Queen's wave in her place for Our Birthday Queen Grandmom!

My Japanese~American Men!!

Zen does his time at school, comes home after basketball training, relaxes a tad with music, then hits the books to do his homework.


These days I don't much ask Zen to pose for photos. But he did for the nice outfit he's going to wear to the prom tomorrow night! Looks slick, eh?! My " baby"almost 17 year now! Got invited to the High School prom (with a friend) and they'll go to San Francisco- out on a yacht- dancing in the cold moonlight~ if the fog doesn't come it (unlikely!!!)
More photos to come!

We're a one car family here. Taka's taken to riding a bike to work. From our new place here, work is only a 10 minute bike ride away.

We're living up here on the second floor with this little park outside our front door. We don't have the sounds or smell of ocean like at the first apartment. But California earthy wafts of grass and green is so good too.

End of April '09 News

Taka talked me into joining him in one more tennis tournament.
Mixed doubles.
I didn't want to play in a tournament again. In Japan I was in many tournaments, and finally acknowledged that I just don't practice seriously enough to warrant entry.
In the States, there's the WTA and you have to be a paying member to take part in tournaments. You also have to register your LEVEL.
Well, Taka is Level 4 and he thinks I'm 3.5
In any case. the mixed doubles group we played with, there were only four pairs.
And to make a sort of long story short, we won second place, and these nice bottles of wine.
I still don't want to play in a tournament again!
If you'd like to hear the longer story, leave a comment for it. I'd love to "bore" you! xoxoxo


Here's a recent photo of the front of Zen's High School.
We've been having some difficulties, and considering whether to have Zen change schools.
It's been complicated.
But "ON THE SURFACE" it looks lovely, doesn't it? Zen doesn't really want to transfer~ but things are still up in the air.

Complicated.
I'm tired!!

BJ!!!! and David and Dylan visited!

BJ, my dear Santa Cruzian friend from our old college days!
BJ who lived and worked for my english school New Age Connection in Japan for half a year or so almost twenty years ago!















We went by the ocean~
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I love all those cosmic circles on this one photo around Dylan

















Grandmom was so cute, when I showed her how my computer can photograph with the Photo Booth, and
3...2...1 our shot was taken!

Zen's Basketball in Oakland CA. 4/3-4/4/09

With the camera I have, I can set it to take three shots in a row. Nice, but sometimes I miss the final basket!















These three shots, not nicely focused but....

















I really liked all the arms and legs in here! ; )




























Zen's playing on a "new" team. He was invited to join an AAU team, called the Cagers, that has some nice players from other schools.




















































Ah, and very good Coaching by the Coach!













































































This was my favorite photo from this tournament.
Click on the picture for a close up, Zen's sneakers are all shiny and cosmic looking!
And his 'mate Mitch has this cool spirit circle following him on his ankle~~

My old teacher and friend came by!! MISA!!! (remember Misa? She taught at NAC what year?)

Misa came and visted, from Burlingame where her mom's living!

Well, came from Ashiya Japan, for just a week or so.

Oh, yes, Zen IS that tall! He's not standing on anything other than his own two feet!

We got to hang out on the last day she was here, and she and I went out on the wharf for lunch.

Check out the well posed Seagulls on the the frame!

There are still funky cars around, not like in the "old" days- One I didn't get a photo of was a car with bumper stickers ALL over the car saying OBAMA.
But this van was outside the bank I was in.


REMEMBER- click on the photo- you can see a close up.
Now is that Japanese or Chinese written on there?!
What does it say?! (no of course I can't read it- even after 22 years in Japan!!)