Japan and Schooling

(that grass is growing out of the rain gutter at the outdoor pool building) As I have commented to Sebastian, we have started schooling and I am shamed that the disorganized side of me has laid waste to my time. Fortunately, the more "civilized" side of me is emerging, and time is becoming a better companion to me. We have been humming along quite well, despite my chaotic ways; we have our entire downstairs looking like we have lived here all along--complete with pictures on the wall and carpets on the floor—Yea!!! What have you all been up to during these last weeks of summer? Did you actually get a chance to enjoy your summer? The pictures throughout this post are of the Splash'n Dash Youth Biathlon, Eldest Unfortunate and our friend BondGirl participated in. The other pictures are of our day of Henna. The Eldest has been sporting henna'd hair since she was 5 years old. We went on a little hiatus from henna, but now we are back in the paste! Between the two girls, there was only enough paste for hair, not skin this time... I going to do up some henna for Mehindi art soon.

A few questions have been asked of me regarding living here in Japan and Homeschooling too. So I am going to try to give a remotely intelligible reply concerning both topics.

Living in Japan.
After 10 years of marriage to SailorStudman and the Navy, we have lived in Japan for nearly four and a half years. Nearly one and a half years of that was living off base--out in the economy, with no other military personnel. The rest of that has been on base, surrounded by others who are DOD personnel. Which do I prefer; living off base. We chose to come to Japan; to live in Japan and experience it all... and let me tell you we did. As to living on base, it is all about convenience; I will not lie, if your life revolves around base activities that take up over 6hrs of the day, and/or/at weird hours of the day and 5-7days a week; living on base or so damn close, is the way to go. For kids; making friends off base is hard. Japanese children seem to stick only to school and club mates--and I know this from experience. Playing outside and picking up some friends is highly improbable. Throwing your kid into something is the best way, but it is going to cost you; however if you have more than one child, and bills, you begin to look to the cost effective ways to do business—enter,

on base activities: MWR and Community Center. When the chance came to live on base around six months before we changed our duty station, we sat on saying yea or nay till the last hour of our (then) 48hr time-limit. I was the Ombudsman for SailorMan's command (loved it!). It is a very involved volunteer job, being on call and available 24 hours a day 7 days a week. With Navy her being permanently forward deployed (always gone), just throw in a foreign country, toss in people with a good smattering of everyday and not exactly everyday problems... you got yourself disgruntled, scared, angry, sad, overwhelmed, depressed, libido driven, deviant... and all the other good things people can be, stewing around and those are your charges who give a new outlook on life in the military. Being on base was MUCH easier.

So, do I feel culturally enriched living on base? Not really. Don't get me wrong, this base is a cultural all-within itself; even though Japanese aspects of life are always around you, it isn't in your face and in full force as living out in town.
Besides what exactly is cultural enrichment? Regardless of living on or off base, you get into a routine and begin to ignore what is constant and get annoyed with whatever disrupts the constant, not mater if it is Japanese or American. I have met folks who live out in town and are just as clueless of the Japanese culture as a 12th generation American who lives in small town USofA. It is what you make of it, getting off the proverbial ass, and out and about—now that is where it's at!





When we first got here to Japan, the Eldest Unfortunate was only 2.5 years old and there was nothing for us here on base, she wasn't old enough for anything and I had no qualms regarding getting out and about town. I could go days and days, without stepping foot on base. Had no reason real reason besides acquiring things that cost too much to buy out on the economy... chocolates, movies and cds for example. Later we moved on base, Eldest started kindergarten at the DoDDS school on base, I became a DoDDS substitute teacher for the high school and found a whole host of Japanese students to teach English too since I lived on base.

The Crazy Unfortunate came along, not too long after that, then we moved back to the States. Now we are back and on base, this time with out any living on the economy like I was secretly hoping for. In the end it was the best chance and decision for us. I will just be candid about this; financially we really couldn't take the hit that living off base would have gave. We couldn't immediately afford the out of pocket expense of moving out on the economy and would have had to take the loan from the government to do so. This would have hurt, a lot. A new twist to our lives here was our Greyhound, a.k.a. SuicideGirl, of whom still had a quarantine sentence that was required to be carried out on base at a home or in the kennel, or off base at a kennel. On base is far more cost effective especially given her size. 38 days in the kennel cost $698. We took her out on June 6, her quarantine is till September 11, do the math and it's not pretty.

Homeschooling.
Yes, we are a homeschooling family. This is our second year into it and this time the CrazyOne has joined the fray. Moving to a new place, literally--nearly half a world away, made socializing (that all consuming question people first ask) finding some playmates a priority. The mission: get outside and play!

All summer long I threw their butts into the neighborhood to play and into activities base sponsored activities such as: summer sessions of swimming, ballet, homeschool group; add more activities like violin, piano, swim team and Kumon; the Unfortunates are getting pretty sweet on the social level. We have found a few other homeschooling families and have met up for just unwinding a few times already— I like the parents and their kids and the Unfortunates agree too.

Our day starts between 8-9am and we are throughly finished around lunch time. So what to do with all that spare time? Art, reading, crafting, board games, all of this together or individually, or homework--blah. Sometimes, we do a short review of something that will prepare for the next day or reinforce something—that is mostly the homework. As of late, we get outside and take SuicideGirl with us to enjoy the outdoors before rainy winter sets in. We are going to work on double dutch jumping rope as soon as we get to Homes (a fantastic everything but the grocery Japanese store) for our second rope, right now we are just getting the CrazyOne learning how to jump rope. This isn't as easy a task as you'd believe; it really takes some maturity of motor-skills, which for her seems to be kicking in at last. In the mail is also our book of skipping rope rhymes along with our hop balls http://www.hippityhopball.com/ for us all! I am so excited, I am having a hard time keeping the hop balls a secret from the girls—Hallelujah Internet! I will let you know how grand the balls are and if they really hold up to 53kg person... then we shall see how they do with StudMan This is going to be fun, good thing he got skinny!

Our curriculum is this:
Math—Singapore Math with the addition of cooking, budgeting, building stuff (i.e. awesome Lego creations), and Math sheets for drills http://themathworksheetsite.com/.
History/Geography—A Little History of The World, by EH Gombrich. We use this book as a guiding light so to speak, for us to go and discover for ourselves through research of other books and a bit of internet thrown in there, since the library here is not that big. There are only so many books StudMan can handle me buying.
Grammar/Composition/Reading—Eldest is doing Shurley English; Homeschooling, Level 4. CrazyOne is just learning to read and write, so she has Handwriting Without Tears Kindergarten. I bought the block and lined paper for her level. The eldest has the same except its 4th grade and I also purchased the lined paper that goes with it. She uses that paper for all writing assignments. Using this book for her cursive has helped with keeping her handwriting neat and clean. We do a lot of copy, dictation, note taking and memory work using excerpts, quotes, poetry, and paraphrasing.
Science—Eldest Unfortunate picked out chemistry for this year and we purchased Noeo Science's Chemistry (I forget which level); when we actually use it I will let you know what we think. We are covering geology and biology from our history study of prehistory. We will eventually come around to chemistry... just not right now, 'cause it doesn't fit.

Homeschooling has ups and downs, but all in all; its for us.
I must bid you farewell, and theoretically... as long as I keep to a schedule, you will once again see 1-3 posts every week. I look forward to hearing from you!