You break, I cry
I cry, you buy



I believe you are all familiar with this "warning" as you bump into this sign in many department stores in Jakarta. Luckily, they don't say such thing in Akachan Honpo, a specialized store for kids, babies, and mothers. If they did: matilah awak!!!

Sunday, August 28, we went to Akachan Honpo to get a sling for Akira because I can't use the jarik for 5-kg baby anymore. My shoulders hurt and I can't move my hands freely while shopping.

Wisnu, as usual, was sooo excited. He touched every item he had never seen before. When we were in the raincoat's corner, Wisnu disappeared. I called out his name and voila... he carried two elmo cups and proudly said " ibu, minum" (mom, drink). Oh darling, you might break those glasses and we'll have to pay. Let's put them back.

Wisnu kept doing the same things for several times and I said the same thing over and over again until I started to raise my voice and .... "cling" the cup was slipping out of his hands. I was soo speechless and Wisnu was surprised. He stood there and looked tensed waiting for my reaction.

I heard the footsteps of the shopkeeper approaching us and I was trying to put all the pieces and find the tag price. At the same time I was praying that the cup would not cost a lot for me to pay. I was busy with my thought and trying to find what to say. The shopkeeper kneeled down and panickedly I said, "Gomenasai. I'm very very sorry. Where is the tag price, let me pay that". She friendly smiled to me and said something in Japanase but the tone was very comforting. I despertely said , "I'm sorry, I don't speak Japanese". She said the Japanese words again, but this time she pointed at the broken pieces and my son's feet. I guessed she was worried whether my son got injured because she checked my son's feet. I said again" Let me pay the cup first". She said"no,no, ok,ok". In my disbelief I asked again, " Are you sure?", she said "ok,ok".

She picked the broken pieces and took them away. I waited there. Unbelievable. I did not have to pay?? Really?

My husband approached us and asked what had happened. He was about to find out how much the cup costs to pay for that. When I told him that the lady said it was ok, he was frowning. I said, " I know, I can't believe that either, but that was what she said. She's more worried about wisnu than the broken cup".

That's it, Wisnu broke the cup, no body cried, I did not have to pay for the damage.







picture :www.holograms.bc.ca

Wisnu's b'day (2nd sequel)

We decided to go to Izu Peninsula, somehow. Hurray!!! It was not really a smooth trip, though.



The night before the departure, I could not sleep. Not that I was too anxious about this trip, it's just that I had planned to fume our room to kill the cockroaches while we were away for two days. I had to make sure that all the food will not contaminated by the fume, and I need to put all the clothes and kitchen utensils in sealed plastic bags.

The result is? We failed to get to Yokohama station by 7 o'clock. Hiroko said we missed the JR train which goes to Shibuya. It means we might miss the bus to Yumigahama. Somehow we tried to catch the bus. We ran !! I pushed akira's cart, and sandy pushed wisnu's stroller, while hiroko tried to make calls to other friends in the bus to to make the driver wait for us. Japanese won't wait. So, we missed the bus and went out of breath in Shibuya.

Hiroko said it costs 50,000 yen to go to Yumigahama by train. Then we said to her: we had to give up our hopes going to Yumigahama then. If there is a bus, it might cost cheaper. Hiroko made phone calls to the agent: they said they did not know about any bus going there.

Sandy said to me ' Perhaps we should not have planned for this trip at all'. Sigh. Still, Hiroko had to go there: she had the bus tickets and the receipt for the room with her. Our friends could not go into the room without her.

Hiroko decided to find information from the train station officer about the cheapest way to go there. We waited at the park outside the station-- Sandy sat hopelessly, Akira was sleeping peacefully in his cart, while I was trying to cheer myself up by feeding Wisnu and singing with him.

When Hiroko returned, she said it costs 4,500 per person by train from Yokohama to Shimoda station and from there we can take a bus to Yumigahama. To go or not to go? Not going means we would have to spend 30,000 for nothing and still we have to bear the responsibilities for Hiroko's expense to get there. To go means we have to spend more money. We did not have many choices.We did decide to go. Be it.

We went back of Yokohama and bought the ticket there. The train was full, so we got 'standing ticket' which is cheaper. Standing ticket means we should stand up if all the seats are taken.However, if there are some available, we can always take the seats. Lucky us! We got seats and paid cheaper tickets.

We managed to get to Yumigahama. After lunch, we went to the inn and get prepared to swim.

Looking at Wisnu's facial expression, we were happy that we decided to go anyway.

It was his first time--swimming at the sea. It was his 2nd birthday.
No birthday cake, only plain bread.
There were candles on the bread for breakfast and fireworks to celebrate.
Happy birthday,son!!!

Japanese wear


I guess you all heard about kimono. Right. The japanese traditional wear is called kimono.

This one is used for attending a party. Any party but for funeral you should wear dark colors: usually blue or black.
It's not easy to put this thing on since it consists of several layers and knots (no wonder the breasfeeding mothers were not allowed to go out --you can't breasfeed your baby in this outfit!)

For the wedding gown, it's even more complicated.

It's surely heavy !! You can barely walk!

Nevertheless, in summer you wear a different kind of kimono, they call it "yukata". It's cooler but still consists of two layers.

This is called "obi". There are lots of variations of tying this obi, but trust me none of them is easy to do. Have you ever wondered how to tie it at your back???

If you take a closer look, the hairdo is similar to the chinese one. Ehm!!

This one is yukata for the men. Cool!

I you think it's too hot to wear any yukata at all, you can wear this one: jimbe. Unfortunately jimbe is only for men.

We managed to take pictures together in front of our dorm :)

We proudly say : this is the Sanjaya family in the summer in Yokohama. Cheers!!!

Child language development


Did you know that :

• Young children between birth and 6 months learn the meanings and uses of up to 14,000 words, an average of five new words each day (Smith, 1926; Templin, 1957; Anglin, 1993).
• Children production of new words is usually seen towards the end of the second year (Benedict, 1979; Goldfield & Reznick, 1990).
• Early research into children's ability to rapidly form associations between words and their meanings therefore focused on children aged between two and five years, an age described by Carey (1978) as a period of "word-learning wizardry".
• Anecdotal evidence suggesting that preschoolers sometimes acquire new words at home after hearing their parents speak them only once.
  
  http://www.journals.cambridge.org/action/displayIssue?jid=JCL&volumeId=32&issueId=01#

Wait, wait, I am not trying to make another research on language development. I just begin to understand why my 24 month son labels these people "wawa".

First, Fauziah from Malaysia. We saw her for the first time when we had sushi lunch with all my husband's friends. She came with a goodie bag for my son and instead of saying "thank you" to her, my son murmured "Wawa, wawa, wawa" . I thought those words are meaningless, but then I observed that my son consistently repeating the word in every encounter with Fauziah.

The second one, when we first met Azrina, a Malaysian, in front of our dorm Gumyoji, my son unhesitantly shook her hands and said ,'wawa'. ???.

Could it be that my son called everyone from Malaysia : wawa? No, no, no. Absolutely no. I mean, I forgot to tell you that I have a dear friend, Fia. She did not see us very often, but everytime we met ,I always introduced her to my son as ,"wawa'. The word actually stems from the word "ua" which means aunty in my mother tongue. It happens so that Fia's niece calls her 'wawa' and I guess it is easier to remember than 'aunty fia'. Want to have a look at her?

To Wisnu, the word 'wawa' represents a woman -- not necesarily from Malaysia--with a veil and gives him goody bag :p

Perhaps I should conduct one research on Psycholinguistics to explain this phenomena scientifically. :p:p .

Now I'm puzzled by the frequent use of word 'bis'. Whenever he saw a bus, he would say 'bis'. That does not worry me, as in Bahasa Indonesia we call bus 'bis'. However, if Wisnu saw a train, subway train or JR train, he would call it 'bis'. In addition to that, in Brainy Baby movie , he calls the string alphabet sets moving as 'bis'. Moreover, whenever he meets someone new, and the person tries to make a conversation with him, he would say 'bis' instead of looking at the person and responding to the greeting. Not only that, if he sits on his toy or any object but the chair, he will wave at me and shout,' ibu, bis, dadah..!'.

I am not a psycholinguist, but these things tickle me. Any comment?

Yokohama Science Center

Many times, my husband mentioned his desire of taking out two- year son to the planetarium. I was worried that he was too young to go to the dark planetarium and might be terrified by the idea of looking at the stars above. However, in this summer holiday, I thought, I should give him a shot.

We checked the website that the science museum does not cost so much; 400 yen for the entrance fee and 600 for the planetarium. The train, from Gumyoji to Yokohama station I only have to pay 260 yen since my husband has his prepaid card, and from Yokohama to Yokodai station by JR train (negishi line) it only costs 210 yen. Here we go.

Wisnu had lunch at home and took his cough medicine as well as allergy syrup for his skin rash. He stayed awake in the train but then fell asleep when we were about to reach Yokodai. We bought Mc Donald across the station and walked for 5 minutes.

When we stepped into the museum, Wisnu was still sleeping so we spent sometime in the resting area (B1 floor) to eat the burgers. We could see the children joining various workshops on the B2 floor. As soon as wisnu was up, we started the exploration.

The museum was not too crowded, but many children were there. We started at 4 o'clock from the top floor: optical telescope , space communication. We skipped the rest, because we had to rush down to the planetarium at 4.40.

However, on the 3rd floor, there is a planet gym where Wisnu can climb on the stairs and slide down the tunnel.
It turned out that he did not have the guts to try it on himself, so my husband had to go with him into the tunnel. Maybe it's the first time in his life to see a giant tunnel with many kids screaming and running around. (What a wishful thinking).

Then we went down to the 1st floor, the planetarium and took some pictures while waiting for the gate to open.



We did get into the planetarium. Fun? It was supposed to be. Wisnu sat restlessly and said, "udah, udah, uang, guap" (that's it, let's go home, it's dark in here). So he suffered for 40 minutes. Another thing, the show was in Japanese--of course because we are in Japan. I guess we were the only non-Japanese. I took it for granted they would provide the English subtitle, but they did not, it was supposed to be provided upon request.

Once we're out of the museum, wisnu saw a playground right next to it. He ran there ethusiastically. He had a good time there!!



I think he likes the playground better than the science center -- for the time being.

On his seventh week

Akira will be two months old next week. Time does fly, doesn't it?
It felt just like yesterday I carried him in my womb. It was just like a dream away when I screamed out to my last breath in my effort of delivering him.



He began to show his first social smiles a few days ago to my husband. At that time I thought it was not really a smile-- just somekind of muscle movement around his mouth and look like a smile. Because I felt it was unfair to have my husband to be the one who found this out. I breastfeed him many times a day, watched him carefully, how come he did not let me to be the first person? But life is unfair, my friend Susan always says. Indeed.


Anyway, his smiles brighten up my days evenmore. I feel I am connected to him. He responds to me.

I'm on the seventh heaven!!!

Count my blessing : being a homemaker in Yokohama


In my previous post I moaned about being away from my home country, deprived from my favorite corners in Jakarta, leaving some good and nice people, etc. Today, I swear I will live for today ; meaning that there are things I should cherish.

Let's start from our dorm.

Foreign Student House at Gumyoji (Gumyojino Ryuugakusei Kaikan) belongs to Yokohama National University.







We live in a family room-- two bedrooms connected by rolling door, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom.

We can sleep on the bed (don't laugh, because if you live in "real" Japanese apato, you will have to live on the futton on the floor), put our clothes in the cupboard with hangers and shelves (this should not be funny as original Japanese is actually a big compartment to put everything in: clothes, bags, futton-- like doraemon's bag, everything is there!)


a bathroom which has a tiny Japanese bathtub, washtafel, w.c and shower (this is also essential as in ordinary Japanese apato, the bathroom is separated from the w.c which is actually not really child-friendly for you have to use toilet paper not water and soap to wipe your children's rear part after using the toilet)





a living room with dining table and chairs plus an office desk (why? Japanese have a very short table on the floor and we have to sit crossed leg and our feet get numb all the time).Not fancy, but suits our needs.





We also have a kitchen.
Not big, but having two pit stoves is essential to me!! Kitchen sink, kitchen cabinets, refrigerator, microwave, magic jar, electrical thermos,toaster... hmm..life is not that hard!



In our dorm, we have public washing machines and driers.
When my children are taking a nap, I usually sneak out to put the clothes in the washing machine for 30 minutes (100 yen) and another 20 minutes (100 yen) for the drier. By the time my children are awake, voila... All the clothes are clean. I don't have to iron the clothes, that's also a good thing. My clients never complain.

There is a green garden behind our room. Wisnu can play the swing and run around chasing the butterfly or scream to let off the steam.








Across our dorm, there is a community center (chiku senta). On the second floor, there is a library. Eventhough the books are in Japanese, but they surely have many good children books. At least I can show Wisnu the pictures and tell the story in our own words. On the third floor, there is an airconditioned play room with many toys -- we can take our children to play there for free. There is also a big hall where many children can play with abundant and various toys for free twice a month.
The community center has lots of programs: Japanese cooking class for foreigners, pilates, activities for senior citizens like table tennis, Japanese chess, cooking, etc the program you join din, they usually provide volunteers to take care of your children for free so you can have a good time there.


Another good thing in Yokohama : public transportation.
First, subway.
They have a special car for women only for 07.00-09.00 when the train is very crowded. They also have special seats for senior citizens, pregnant women, people with children. They are, of course, on time. No pickpocket. No musicians. Children are free of charge. There are lifts/escalators in almost every station, so you can push your stroller and carry your baby in your arms--like me.


Second, buses.
Only 210 wherever you go. Children are free of charge.On time, always. Safe and comfortable, like the subway.




Another good point is your welfare is guaranteed. Some stuffs are expensive here, but the ward office give us financial aids.
1. Child allowance ; 5,000 yen a month per child
2. Vaccination is for free, too.
3. Delivering a baby: since we are no-income citizen, I was exempted from the delivery expenses which the actual cost is 380,000 yen.
Ward office has a special program once a month for foreign ladies. Last month, we learned how to wear yukata and this month was about making a paper craft--not origami--I forgot the name.

I should also mention the public facilities here. If you need to go to the public toilet, usually they have a child seat for your child to sit while you are using the toilet. (I'll upload the photo as soon as I can get one).

From the book I'm reading now, I will have to agree with the statement:

Life is difficult.
Once we truly know, understand and
accept that life is difficult,
then life is no longer difficult.
(M. Scott Peck, M.D)

Coz we are pals

It does not matter
if we are misundersood
or our good intentions
are considered misleading

we do not hurt each other
or say things we'll regret
or things we do not mean

still, we live our own lives,
choose our own paths,
whatever it takes

though it hurts
sometimes it's better
to say it straight
than leave it unsaid


for my dearest friends who are in dispute :)

A point to ponder: TAP WATER-- should we drink it ?



"The tap water in Yokohama is purified so that it is safe to drink".

That was what we could read in the Yokohama City Guide website or book. I believed it. (Why shouldn't I?). So I never boil the water from the tap but drink it directly (but of course I still use the glass). Therefore I let my son swallow the water whenever he takes a shower and pretends to brush his teeth but actually only tries his new skills of drinking from the flowing tap water.

But then I begin to question the safety of the water. (if you happen to be Japanese living in Yokohama and read this, perhaps you can at least put down your comment). If it is so safe that we can drink it, why would not the Japanese themselves drink the water?

I have some Japanese friends who sometimes come to give us a visit. First, my husband's tutor* , Kazu. As a foreigner student, my husband is given a tutor to help him with the language and culture of Japan. When he visited us , I served the tap water in a glass. He said thank you but he did not even touch the glass.Eventhough I also served him some food to eat and I'm sure he needs something to drink after the meal, he did not drink the water. I could not make him do it.

Second, Hiroko, one of my husband's friend in aikido club. After the dinner I served, she did not drink the water. I'm pretty sure she needs to drink after the hot fried rice I served. She just smiled friendly saying," thank you" but not drinking the water. I said "dozo" many times, still I could not make her do it.

Third, my student, Chie. The student of mine is actually the wife of my husband's thesis advisor. She comes to my house to learn English once a week at the day time. You probably can imagine how hot it is the day time during the summer. The temperature ranges from 34-37 degree celcius. For the energy and cost saving reason, I don't turn on the aircon much. I just leave the windows and door open hoping that the wind will blow and reduce the temperature (in fact there is no wind at all). Chie would only drink juice or any drink from the carton pack I served but not the tap water. I tried different strategies. First, I let her see that I pour the water from the tap directly. It did not work. Secondly, I already put the water in a glass before she came. Then I served her the drink. Know what happen? She would rather suffer from her thirst rather than drinking it by saying , " Thank you". She still does not drink the water.

I know I need more people as respondents to claim that JAPANESE DON'T DRINK TAP WATER. So far, those evidence I have become a heated up discussion topic between my husband and me. To him, I should learn the conduct of serving drink in Japanese culture-- perhaps I need to put the water in a jug or the visitors relationship with the hosts also affects it for whaterever it means. The way I see it, that must be something wrong with the tap water or Japanese just drink ocha or other liquids but not tap water.

If you were in my shoes, what would you do?

*The tutor is usually also a student of Yokohama University from the same department and his/her resposibilitiy is to help the foreign student understand the procedures, regulation and all the knick-knack of living in Japan. He/she could be asked to accompany the foreign student to go to the government office or other places to deal with other Japanaese whose majority are not speaking English