ensoku & mamatomo
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Today was the day care's Olympics. Kenny represented the country of Scribbleonia.
Scribbleonia, if Kenny's flag is anything to go by, is a vibrant, sunny place with an exuberent culture and a no shortage of energy. It even has an athem:
Scribbleonia, a great place to live /
Scribbleonia, we smile all day long.
Scribbleonia, our flag is just great /
Scribbleonia, we like to run around.
We met at 09:30 (on a Saturday!) and I was assigned my props as "Asia-san" (Mr. Asia). I'd been volunteered to participate in the marathon. This was not a running competition fit for asthmatics who're pushing forty. Rather, I was a waypoint for the contestants, who were the children (children who have taken all of their parents' energy and are extra genki). When each child found me, I'd give them a sticker from my sheet. The boys liked rockets and apples, while the girls seemed to like flowers and butterflies.
I was "Asia-san" because they had four of us men and as the only foreigner I thought it was fair that I got to play the home team while the three Japanese gentlemen were "Mr. Europe", "Mr. Americas" and "Mr. Africa". My get-up consisted of a shirt painted with bamboo and a Chinese pattern on the sleeves. I had a tenugui head wrap, too. Mr. Americas had a US-spangled shirt and a head of clown's hair. Mr. Africa had a gilt crown and an elephant on the shirt. Mr. Europe had a crown pattern on the shirt and clown hair.
We were playing in a park, and were told to go find ourselves a corner of the park in which to be ready for the kids. I spotted a thing like monkeybars but made of rope and shaped like a tall tree. I thought, "ha, that'll be fun for the two year olds," and set myself an arm-breaking 1.5m up the thing. Eventually I realized that I was encouraging small children to climb to dangerous heights and came to ground level. But everyone agreed that it was a great spot for attracting children. I took a number of photos, one-handed; I'm looking forward to the results.
After the ensoku, we had a couple of hours to ourselves, and naturally tried to get some sleep (the most precious commodity of parents of small children).
Then the Masham and Kitazawa families came over and we had a fine afternoon. Keiko Masham is currently working and looking after the two kids solo while Sam is in Europe looking for an apartment in preparation for their move. She's bearing it all with high spirits and her usual (perplexing) energy. Ganbatte, Keiko-san. We called Sam via Skype at some point, and chatted briefly. Barcelona was sunny.
Everyone had a look at my new photo book, and Kitazawa-san in particular poured over it at length. He also confirmed that our new train book for Kenny (a gift from Mari's sister Maki-san) featured Shizuoka. Which by some chance I'd made up while "reading" the book to Kenny when it first arrived a few weeks before. Kitazawa-san could identify all of the train lines in the book, and could even tell the numbers of the engines! I'm impressed with both that level of fanaticism for trains and also the level of accuracy with the drawings.
The flag of Scribbleonia:
