How Do You Translate 'Wa'?

I remember talking with Billy, a guy from Vancouver who married a Japanese girl and was living in Fukushima. His son was a few years older than mine, and had so far survived what concerned me now about my two-year-old speaking much more Japanese, at a higher level, than English. Yes, he was only two, but this was the kind of thing I’d rather tackle sooner than later.

‘Kids pick up on these things,’ he assured me. ‘The pronunciation, the details.’ But what he said next gave me pause. ‘They say a kid will keep developing that language base until he’s ten or twelve years old.’ Which made me wonder: first, what if all of a sudden I turn around and my son is a teenager and doesn’t have that solid English foundation? And second, are we still going to be living in Japan ten years down the road?

This was in October. In December I brought my family to the States for Christmas, and after four weeks my son returned to Japan speaking better English than Japanese. It didn’t take long for his Japanese to catch up again, and I redoubled my efforts to not only keep him speaking English but to constantly add new words and expressions to his repertoire. (After years of teaching English as a foreign language it is too easy to fall into the habit of slowing down, and dumbing down, one’s own speech.)

This Spring we spent three months in the US, and in September we moved here for good (for now). Naturally, ironically, my concerns have shifted from my son’s English capacity to his ability not just to hang on to his Japanese but to continue advancing it.

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Five Amorphous Question Marks

Some shallow impressions of the new America of 2010 before my declarative and non-declarative memories and American sense of etiquette are fully restored:

(1.) My mind meld with the Great Economic Spirit upon entering the country suggests things are back on track.  I now look forward to - instead of dreading - the opportunities for putting bread on the table when I come back here more permanently next summer. 

(2.) For all the hooplah and big stink about security theater and don't touch my junk and opt out day, this time was actually the easiest I've had it in the last five years, and I've been badmouthing the government and the TSA all over the Internets.  Even though our ESTA information was lost, we were not presumed to be terrorists, my children were not groped, and no one got his or her junk touched.  I attribute this entirely to the hooplah and big stink about security theater and don't touch my junk and opt out day.  

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Japan Hates Babies

The internets are divided on whether Albert Einstein or Benjamin Franklin said, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  Either way, Huffington Post reports on a batshit insane way Japanese researchers are trying to smite the infamously low birthrate of of that nation's citizens:

Can a robotic baby encourage couples to reproduce--and help Japan boost its low birth rate?

Researchers, who have created a cooing, crying, sneezing baby simulator named "Yotaro," hope so.

They hope that the infant-like machine will "trigger human emotions" that make couples "want to have their own baby," CNN reports.

In an effort to increase the birth rate, Japan's government is offering to pay families a monthly stipend per child, but the leaders of the Yotaro project believe the "robotic encouragement" may be more effective.

What's keeping Japan's birthrate so low is (1) the cancerous nature of its work culture, (2) the disdain with which employers treat employees who want to take time off to care for children, and (3) youth resentment fed by the government throwing money at any warm body that has a baby.  

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