English language books

Our son E loves to read but it is hard to keep him in books. We brought some with us, but those went fast. So we had to find new ones. We live close to the central library, which is good for rainy days too. They have English versions of the Harry Potter books and selections from the classics: Treasure Island, Arabian Nights, King Arthur and oddly, Roald Dahl's BFG. They can also order other English books from other branches. There are also several bookstores that have good English selections. Junkudo in BAL on Kawaramachi just south of Sanjo has perhaps the best selection, but the other big stores have several English books as well. We have also been to the bookstore in Aeon Mall south of the station. As always Amazon is a good option too. We got some good "One Piece" mangas via Amazon.
There are some used choices as well-the YWCA (west of the palace) has a book exchange that has some young adult books. We've also trawled Green eBooks (on Marutamachi east of the Kamogawa) for the few young adult novels they had. Their inventory changes and they might have more on other occasions.
Finally a good option is to exchange among friends. We do this with our friends and it multiplies the number of books each of us have.

Kid friendly restaurants- Cafe Frosch

This month's "Leaf" (May 2011) has a special issue on kid friendly activities and cafes etc in Kyoto and Shiga. "Leaf" is a good resource for Kyoto restaurants and so forth, and it is nice to have one focused on kids. One find in there was Cafe Frosch. This cafe near Kitano Tenmangu is in an old Machiya, so the ambiance is great- plus it has an indoor play area (best for under elementary school age). The food is cafe style but very nicely done. We had curry and sandwiches, but the pasta looks delicious too. On our way out we bought whole wheat bread and a bagel. The bread was wonderful and the bagel was the best I have had in Japan.

Open everyday but Monday. Wednesday night is English night. On Saturdays they do international brunches with a different theme each week: Mexican, Cuban, German, etc. The proprietor is extremely nice and speaks perfect English, German and a bit of Chinese. Free Wifi

Osaka Aquarium- Kaiyukan

Now to catch up on some posts I've been meaning to do for a while.
One of the best day trips to make with kids from Kyoto is to the Osaka Aquarium. It is a full day but a lot of fun. I recommend getting the day pass from the Keihan or Hankyu lines. These are available at the information counters in the respective stations. Keihan: Demachiyanagi, Sanjo, Gion Shijo. Hankyu: Kawaramachi and Katsura. They are 2800Y for adults 1400Y for elementary school and include transportation on one of these lines, all subways in Osaka and entrance to the Kaiyukan- you don't even need to wait in line to buy the tickets. Just going to there and back saves you about 500Y but the deal gets better the more you do in Osaka. The tickets get you discounts at other attractions as well.

We went on a weekend. I don't recommend doing that if you can help it. Even though we had the passes, we had to wait in line for about an hour just to get in. Once in it was really crowded for the first few floors. On crowded days I would suggest going down to the bottom and going back to the top later.

When we went we also had dinner at the Turkish restaurant in the Tempozan mall right next door. It is another all-you-can-eat place. Great food and Turkish ice cream for dessert. They even had belly-dancer. J really liked that.
Adults:1680Y, ages 6 and up 890Y. Kids under 5 eat free. Kosher and Halal.

The Great Tohoku Kanto Earthquake Disaster

My heart goes out to all who were injured, became homeless or lost loved ones in this recent disaster. We are so far from the devastated area here, and that is a relief, but the images we see (along with the rest of the world) are very sobering.

This post is merely to give some options for information on the disaster and especially information on the nuclear disaster. Right now a lot of the media in the west is very alarmist at times and there are nasty rumors circulating on twitter and via email.

Here are a few good articles and blog posts to help:

English language news sources:
○Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet

http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/index-e.html

○NHK World

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/index.html


Disaster related vocab for watching the news in Japanese:
http://www.japannewbie.com/2011/03/13/japanese-news-earthquake-vocabulary/

Some perspective from someone close to Nagoya:
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/03/13/some-perspective-on-the-japan-earthquake/

An op ed in the Wall Street Journal about why there will not be another Chernobyl
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576198421680697248.html

a good blog post with info about the radiation
http://www.mutantfrog.com/2011/03/15/radiation-safety-update/

From the nuclear power industry:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/
(not the most reliable necessarily, but technically useful)

http://ansnuclearcafe.org/
perhaps more reliable- from scientists


The image above was drawn by my wife and posted on her blog.

Cooking Japanese Food

I've been talking a bit here about places to go out to eat with kids, but what about eating at home. Yes, there is curry and spaghetti, but we also like to eat Japanese food every now and then. It is easy to get the ingredients and it is pretty tasty. We have a cookbook that we got when we were here before: Kodansha's bilingual *100 Recipes from Japanese Cooking.* It is a good cookbook for homestyle cooking and we have a few favorites. We particularly like Kinpira gobo, Gyudon, simmered kabocha, and a few others. We usually avoid the fried stuff, but have done tenpura on occasion. Of course another good way to get recipes is from the web- there are a lot out of good sites out there as any good search will show. Kikkoman.com, the soy sauce maker, has a good selection. Here is a particularly interesting site. In this blog a Japanese woman gives her entire daily menu with several recipes. It offers some insight into what things people eat and gives good menu ideas.
Update: I just found this blog with recipes by someone making food with Japanese ingredients in Nagano. It looks pretty useful. you can also check out this blog, and do a search for "Gaijin Chef." The blogger basically just made an off shoot blog for food, but there are still good posts in the archive of the old one.
Here is a list of food related blogs published by Surviving in Japan.

Toy Stores in Kyoto- Yodobashi Camera

Where do you go for toys when there is no ToysRus in town? Well, this was a question we faced when we first had a birthday in the family. At that time we found something on Amazon.co.jp, but for Christmas we wanted something else. The first place we found was Vivre on the Kita Oji bus terminal. They also have toys at Kyoto Family Aeon Mall on Shijo and Aeon Mall Kyoto Hana Jusco on Shijo. (But there is a serious shortage of toys at the Kyoto Sakura Aeon Mall south of the station.) The best thing we found though is the new Yodobashi Camera north of the station on Karasuma- just north of Kyoto tower. The west half of the third floor has everything you could want- at decent prices too. They have Ultraman figures, Kamen-Ranger, Legos, Pokemon, Anpanman, Bey-blades, Barbie, and other dolls whose names I forget. Part of the floor is also devoted to Gundam models and the like. They also have a video game section and the largest selection of gacha balls (plastic ball vending machines) I have seen. Last time we were there we checked out the new Nintendo 3DS- pretty neat.
PS- Amazon.co.jp is pretty great too. Most things are free shipping (anything over 1500Y). It is possible to pay via credit card, but also through payment centers in convenience stores- the red ones in Lawson for example. We have bought books, legos, an office chair, a heater and more through Amazon. Usually even with the free shipping it arrived the day after we paid at the convenience store.

When kids have to be hospitalized

Okay- so no blog post for a while, I guess February was not so great on the blog updates. I'll try to catch up a bit, but frankly we haven't been doing much. One big exciting thing from last month was a hospital ordeal: 3yr old S swallowed a lego. We didn't see it happen, but could tell he was having a little difficulty breathing. He told us that a lego went down and that legos made him burp. He quickly regained mostly normal breathing and so no need to call an ambulance. I took him on my bike first to a nearby hospital and they recommended that I go to one of the big ones because they didn't really have a pediatric specialist. They suggested Second Red Cross (Just west of the imperial palace and just north of Marutamachi) or the Prefectural Medical School hospital (on Kawaramachi just south of Imadegawa). I chose the latter. (Next time- I think I'll just go there first- though I am profusely knocking on wood so that there is no next time). We went to the emergency room and they took some X-rays and MRIs, found what they thought was the lego down the bronchial tube. This meant S had to go under to get it out and that meant he had to be hospitalized. So after a long wait to make sure he had digested his breakfast-they put him under and stuck a tube down his throat and got that pesky lego out. They doctors and nurses all did a stellar job with everything. Afterward we had to stay for two nights. (One night in the ICU and then one in a regular ward in the children's hospital-this may be the only hospital with a building dedicated for kids, but I'm not sure.) I guess they wanted to make sure everything thing was ok. This was tough-he had IVs in and wanted to take them off. He was confined to his bed and wanted to get out, couldn't run around etc. The first night made sense, but I thought the second was a little excessive.
Anyway- here is some information for those of you who might have to deal with this (heaven forbid). They have a pamphlet about it in Japanese, but I didn't read it until later. Main points:
You need to bring a cup and utensils for the meals (I wasn't expecting this), as well as changes of clothes, toiletries, diapers, towels, etc.
They ask that you limit toys to two, plus a favorite stuffed animal etc for comfort.
They have shared tatami rooms (separated by gender) for parents to sleep in at night, but you need to have your own sheets and pillows- they have blankets. I slept for part of the first night there, but night 2 I shared S's tiny bed.
There is a shared bath in the ward- like a sento, but we didn't use it.
We still haven't received the bill yet, but it won't end up being over 3,000Y because S is under elementary age.
All in all, I thought the hospital did a great job and a follow up visit showed no secondary issues- all good! Thank you nationalized health care!