Japan Recap, Part Two
The wife met me at the airport alone because it is inconveniently located about 2 hours from Tokyo and required a car ride and two trains to get there. Not a good situation if you have 8-month old, ...so the daughter stayed at my mother-in law's apartment for the day.The wife was so relieved to see me. She doesn't get along well with her father's wife, and after living in the US for 10 months, she realizes how tiresome life in Tokyo really is.
You cannot just drive anywhere you want to go, neither can you take a train everywhere you want to go. Every trip needs to be thought out in advance. Often you are forced to make consessions based on how convenient it is to travel there. Even if you are traveling somewhere relatively nearby, if there is no train station there, it can take an hour weaving through the alley-sized streets of Tokyo to get there.
After greeting each other and moving on to the currency exchange, I noticed an American guy who was on my plane being interviewed by a small group of Japanese reporters and cameramen. I guess he is some American baseball player signed by a Japanese squad. I didn't recognise him.
The two long train rides passed mostly uneventfully. On the second train we deliberately walked a long way to a different stop so that we could get on the train at it's starting point, assuring we would have a spot to sit. We did get a seat, but several older Japanese men gave me bad looks. You're supposed to let the old people have a seat when none is available, but I was tired, ...so screw them.
We arrived in Tachikawa later that evening and walked four blocks to the hotel where we would be staying for the next 4 days. Unfortunately for me, I chose the coldest week of the year to come to Japan. Temps were in the low 30's all week and windy.
After unloading, we got into our rental car and drove to her mother's house to pick my daughter. As most of you know, I was convinced that she would have forgotten about me in the 12 days we've been apart, but she remembered. Thank God, she remembered.
She looked different, though. Bigger. She looked less like a baby and more like a small child. Her mannerisms and attitude were different, too. Before, she would just sit and coo and play with whatever we gave her, ...now she moves, grabs everything, and expresses herself to you. If she grabs something she should not have, like an ashtray, and you take it away from her, she will bitch and cry and scream. This is new.
It's wonderful to see that she is developing, but I can't help but notice that soon she will be a toddling terror. This golden age where she's easy to deal with and easy to enjoy is about to be over.
While she is behind in some areas, she is ahead in others. She cannot crawl yet, but can stand if you provide balance for her. She does a lot of baby talk now, but has not tried to associate specific sounds with items or feelings.
She's never liked the peekabo game because she's always instinctively known that you didn't disappear. Put a washcloth up between yourself and her and she'll just move it aside.
She also understands some spatial reasoning, if that's the right term. She loves platic bags for the sounds they make when crushed. I didn't want her playing with a particular bag, so I rolled it up tightly and shoved it to the bottom of a decorative paper gift bag that was nearby. My daughter somehow knew how to retrieve the plastic bag. She leaned over, pulled the decorative bag closer to her, reached inside, and pulled out the plastic bag.
It doesn't seem like much, but I was suprised she knew that something could be inside something else without ever having manipulated those items before.
Anyway, she remembered me, and we drove back to the hotel for a nice, long sleep. For 12 days I had slept alone, ...no wife, no baby nearby. It was so nice to be back in the fold.
<< Home