japan, the finale (the japinale!)

Traveling abroad with a two-year-old is exhausting.

Just ask this two-year-old.

But, like anything else in parenting, it forces you to slow down a bit and look at things from your child’s perspective, which has its merits. It’s true that we didn’t pack our days doing and seeing things as we used to. Instead, we were hanging out more, playing together, and spending time with family. What a concept. We were together all day and all night for 15 days. We haven’t done that since right after Yuki was born, when we were in a cocoon as a new family, figuring things out. That seems a hundred years ago now.

Remember that ice cream at the zoo a hundred years ago? That was awesome. And a hundred years ago.

It is a tradition in Japan to take a bath with your kids. It’s a family bonding thing to take a bath with at least one parent and sing and talk and spend time together. And how old you were when you stopped doing that is often a topic of discussion. I was around 11, which is pretty typical. Japanese bathrooms are set up slightly differently from Western bathrooms in that you have an area with a shower that is open and tiled with a drain in the floor. That is where you wash your body. Right next to that is a deep tub where you soak after you wash.

Totally not Mimi's parent's bathroom, though the layout is similar.

And while you soak, which is believed to be the important and healthy part of the bath, you play and chat. Japanese people are often envious of a tub where one can make a bubble bath "like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman” but at the same time puzzled that Westerners soak where they wash their bodies or rather, that they wash their bodies while soaking and then continue to soak in their own filth. Also, we don’t just fill up the tub with hot water. We put cold water in it then it gets heated which takes a while, but the heat also lasts for a few people to take a bath, which is the idea. When you are done, you put a lid on it so it stays hot for the next person -- like a hot tub. Of course with modern technology mixed with this tradition ("new with the old" is the running theme in Japan), you now have a button you push in the kitchen which fills up the tub and heats it and beeps to let you know when it’s ready.

My parents have a very nice cedar tub, which smells delightful. But they don’t use it often. I think they got excited in remodeling phase but realized later that they actually prefer showers. So I like to do them a favor and use it for them when I get home. Taking advantage of the set up, every night, Yuki and I took a shower together and on one occasion took a bath. I did all the stuff you do (or I did) in a Japanese bath, like squirting water as far as you can using your hands (I’m pretty skilled at this), trapping air in your wash cloth and pull it under water and squeeze to make bubbles come out. If we were in a shower, we just played, filling up containers and dumping them out. Showerheads are removable so Yuki could hold it when she wanted. She was delighted, as was I.

Please enjoy some non-shower delight.

Then we would both come out with towel turbans (aka. "fancy hats") on our heads, which Yuki has never had since her towel at home has a hood (and ears). It is amazing that such a small thing can make a kid totally excited. I doubt towel turban will be so thrilling when she is 13.

Another Japanese thing is to sleep together as a family. In a traditional home, you have a futon (as in actual Japanese futon and not the American college furniture) on a tatami floor and you put the kid in the middle. In my parents’ house, which is very western otherwise, there is a Japanese guest room, but it is too small to fit all three of us.

Though there was plenty of room for some old-fashioned cousin wrasslin'.

So we put me and Yuki on futons and Philip on a bed in my father’s office just next door. Some nights we would switch if I didn’t get a good night's sleep the night before, but for the most part, this was the arrangement, which provided us with opportunities to talk and cuddle and fall asleep together. Rather than saying good night and leaving Yuki, we would all squeeze in together at her bedtime. Yuki wanted to hold our hands and pet our faces with her sticky toddler hands. We would all three lie down and read books and close our eyes until Yuki fell asleep, which often also led one or both of us to pass out next to her. In the middle of the night, this wide open set up allowed Yuki to roll from one corner of the room to the other, often under the night table, or in between two futons face down--like a drunk in a ditch. More than once, the parent on Yuki duty would walk into the room at their own bedtime and couldn’t find her because she has rolled so far from her original position. But then the bonus was when she woke up, she would tap us on the shoulder and whisper something that she wanted to do, (like "watch DVDVD" as she calls them or "play with puzzle") with a HUGE smile on her face. You just can’t NOT get up after that even if it was five in the morning. Then we would play or watch movies, cuddled under the blanket.

"I do my best puzzle work at 4 a.m."

This sleeping arrangement was peaceful and I think provided comfort to Yuki in a very foreign land, muddling through meeting new people everyday, seeing so many things, and not understanding why she was so tired at the oddest time of day. We didn’t care that we didn’t go anywhere in the afternoon. We were bonding -- napping, reading, watching Japanese TV, walking to the playground, and seeing the grandparents. There is something to be said for certain cultural traditions. Bath and sleep are where Japanese people check in and be together as family. And following this allowed me to go far, far away from the work stress and everyday responsibilities to just be in the presence of my own family, in the house where I was raised. It made me think of how I was raised, made me appreciate the parents that I have, feel deeply grateful for the husband I have and the child we received, and was renewed by thoughts about what kind of a mother (and a wife) I could be.

This was indeed a very special trip. I doubt Yuki will remember any of it but the rest of us will never forget it.

I'll remember! Wait, what was it again?