by Anna Kunnecke

      Understandably, Tokyo residents are worried about fire.  Train stations have big billboards proclaiming its danger; kids are taught early to turn off the stove at the valve at the first tremor of an earthquake; our earnest building staff test the piercing fire alarms more often than I am convinced is strictly necessary.   When we went out for yakiniku, I remembered why.

      It had been a long week.  Two tired parents and one cranky girl--none of us were up for cooking.  We settled in at our table and they brought over the great tub o' fire.  This is literally a big iron bowl full of coals that fits neatly into the round hole in the center of the table.  Yakiniku with a grabby little kid is a special way for anxious parents to torture themselves, but even with lots of warnings and dire consequences foretold if she got too close to the glowing coals, it turned out that the fiery cairn itself was enough to inspire total respect in our little hoodlum.

      The plates of raw meat came fast and we did our dance with tongs and long chopsticks, draping, turning, dipping, and burning our mouths.  As the bits of meat got hot and sizzled, drops of fat would drip onto the coals, causing a little storm of sparks to erupt.  My daughter was mesmerized.  "Ooooh!  Sparks!" she would exclaim, each and every time.  It suddenly struck me that here we were, the archetypal family, huddled around fire, poking meat with sticks.  Sanitized, commercialized, and safety-fied as it may be, it seems to me that the yakiniku table is basically a modernized urban version of the campfire.

      Minus the songs.  And the marshmallows.  And the mosquitoes.  

      Not that I'm complaining.  This is just about as much fire as I can handle in my life.  And I liked that for my daughter it connected the word 'fire' to something more tangible than the candles we light.  All of our scary stories about candles and fire and terribleburningthings aren't nearly as effective as one evening spent around an intensely hot bowl of actual smoking burning stuff.  I'm happy for her to have a controlled version of fire to get some of that extremely useful and irreplaceable ouch-they-weren't-kidding-when-they-said-don't-touch biofeedback.

      Since so few four-year-olds are allowed to play with matches out on the street anymore (these crazy over-protective modern parents), there isn't much reality to those big red trucks their kindergarten teachers take them to see.  And so intense curiosity sometimes gets channeled into experiments like trying to light candles in your mother's closet or setting off firecrackers in the yard, leading to charred clothes and the wrath of the entire neighborhood.  (Really.  Both those things happened to a friend of mine within the course of a year.  It was quite a year.)

      So I have a suggestion.  Instead of those Hi-No-Yojin marches the neighborhood associations are always trying to guilt-trip people into joining, which involve marching and banging gongs and bells and chanting "let's be careful of fire," I think they should just take the whole ward out for yakiniku.  Let everybody grill up some tasty morsels, down a few icy jokki of beer, and at a crucial moment, stop, point at the coals and say, "People.  Just remember: it's very, very hot."  I think that should do the trick.

by Anna Kunnecke

Dear Makeup Artists,

     First, let me say that I know you are pros.  You know this business inside and out; you create beauty for fashion shows, photo shoots, TV shows, and more.  However there are a few details that I think might be useful for you to know when it comes to putting makeup on foreigners, we the pale-paced, we the big-nosed, we the gaijin. 
     First of all, the eyes.  It might be a delicate topic, but there are some basic physical differences here that we need to talk about.  Let us be brave and not flinch from facts.  The eyelids, they are different.  If you put bright blue eye-shadow along the lid of a Caucasian model, instead of sliding demurely out of sight the way it would on a proper Asian girl, it will instead remain in full view, blinding in its blueness.  This will not in fact enhance any eyes that are already blue; it will, instead, make them look dull, as well as casting a jaundiced pall over the entire face.  Moving on, the eyelid crease.  Against all instinct, I must beg you to darken the crease rather than using white frosted stuff on it.  The darker color  will create those lovely emaciated skull-hollows that the fashion magazines are so fond of.  In the same vein, if you put all the dark color down by the lashes, and then delicately blend up in one lovely seamless gradation all the way to the eyebrow, with the lightest colors on top, the upper lid will visually recede and the area under the brow will jump forward, giving your model puffy hangover eyes that appear to be swollen and uncomfortable.  Finally, eyeliner.  I am at a loss as to why you try to put it on the inner eyelid.  This is a look that was often seen in sixth-grade bathrooms in the eighties.  It really should not be seen anywhere else.
     Second, let's move on to the contours of the face.  You see, we have lots of them.  More, I respectfully submit, than our Asian counterparts.  In fact, when we speak, smile, and blink our eyes, these parts of our face move.  This causes creases.  I am in utter awe that this does not happen with Japanese actresses, but judging from the thick mask of foundation that seems to be the norm, I can only guess that their faces move not a whit.  Also, when you pop in during takes and layer powder over those creases that happen next to eyes, between the nose and cheeks, and forehead, that will not, I am sorry to say, make them go away.  No, in fact, it will simply increase the great hulking shadows that they cast. Might I suggest that you put that powder, instead, on the nose, cheeks, and forehead. 
     That brings me to our third topic, the concept of tomeikan, which I will loosely translate as transparency.  It appears to be the ultimate virtue in Japanese makeup, but like many mysteries of Japanese culture, it is confusingly and selectively applied.  This is why a model can find herself with inches of thick caked makeup around her eyes, where it will wrinkle and form crevices rivaling a desert canyon, while the bright red unfortunate blemish on her cheek is left completely uncovered to blink its bright red holiday message to the world.  It is perhaps one of our greatest cultural differences that foreigners do not, in general, find this to be attractive.  I know, it's very shocking.
     Finally, let us move on to those famed noses.  Shiny white pearlescent highlights are generally not appropriate here.  Nor, I might add, are they useful on the chin.  Generally these features are big enough already, and adding a layer of shine is pretty much exactly the opposite approach that is required. 
     In conclusion, it is also worth mentioning that Hana ga takai!  (Your nose is so tall!) and Kao ga chiisai! (your face is so small!) are generally not considered compliments.  I know that all of this is quite counterintuitive and goes quite against conventional industry wisdom, but I hope that you will take it in the spirit in which it is offered, which is one of mutual cooperation and edification.  Oh, and if your model should have curly hair...well, that's a book unto itself.

Respectfully yours,

Anna

by Anna Kunnecke

     I have been reading this great book on childrearing.  It's called Raising Your Spirited Child and it's written by a woman named Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, whose feet I would like to kiss.  My mother handed it to me a while back.  There was no offering, no suggesting, no 'perhaps you'd like to take a look at this.'  No.  My mother, grandmother of my daughter, handed this book to me with the words, "You're going to need this."  
'How did she know that?' you might ask.  Well.  
     Grandmothers just know things.
     This was the book, apparently, that helped me reach adulthood because it helped my parents not kill me.  The definition of a 'spirited' child is that they are a little bit more--more intense, more sensitive, more perceptive, more persistent.  What?  Who, me?
Yeah, yeah, and my daughter too.
     So I've been learning lots of very useful things about how my daughter's nervous system works.  Some kids really do seem to be wired a little bit differently.  Some kids really can feel the seam in their socks.  Some kids really do seem to soak up the emotions of those around them.  But the big surprise has been the ah-ha moments I've had about myself.  Specifically, how noisy, crowded places can trigger these ever-so-slightly-sensitive folks with a totally overwhelming flood of information and sensation.  
     I always assumed that everybody felt crazy and overwhelmed and frantic too, but they just handled it better than I did.  Hunh.    
     Because here is the thing.  I used to walk around Tokyo, this noisy, chaotic, pumping, streaming metropolis, in a pretty blissed-out state.  I liked the energy, I liked the rush, and the crowds didn't bother me that much.  That changed when I had my child.  
Now I know why.
     I used to travel this city in a bubble.  I bet that most Tokyo inhabitants do.  You have to, really, to survive.  You're pressed full-body against total strangers every morning in the train; your ears are assaulted with right-wing loudspeakers blaring hatred; you constantly, constantly, have to watch where you're going or you'll get run over by a steady stream of people, whether you're navigating the supermarket, a train station, or the wooded path by the river.  So you develop a zone.  A private space.  You tune out.  You filter.  You just have to.  Some people use books or video games or headphones and music to do it; others can just go to that happy place.  
     When you're trying to keep track of a bouncing, running, chattering, giggling, and totally-crying-her-eyes-out-because-she-wanted-chewing-gum toddler, you can't do that.  You can't zone out.  You can't drift.  Oh my god.  It's awful.
      I have to stay engaged with my daughter to keep her safe.  And I want to stay engaged, truthfully, because she says these hilarious and adorable things that I am biologically programmed to find enthralling.  But oh my lord, the noise in this town!  The trains are bad enough, but those big electronics stores that go up thirteen stories and have loudspeakers blaring at every step?  I get homicidal.  I want to throw a temper tantrum.  I want to go all toddler on their asses.
      So here is my plan: clear plexiglass bubbles.  We'll be bubble people.  It'll be the next big thing.  Sure, they might hamper our ability to walk, but then so do most shoes for women.  We'll develop a nice, blissed-out waddle.
Good plan, right?  

by Anna Kunnecke

    Last week I was at the city ward office.  It is time to renew some of the documents that allow me to live here, and I needed to collect papers to prove that I had paid my taxes.  This shouldn't have been hard, because I had in fact dutifully paid all my taxes and was already in possession of quite the stack of documents to prove it.  (In duplicate.  With official stamps on them.  That had already been filed once with the tax office.)  But what I required was a totally different set of papers that would prove it for the immigration bureau. 
    So I found the right section, grabbed my slip of paper from the little ticker-tape machine, and waited for the 17 people ahead of me to get served.  Then when my number was called, I went up, handed in my filled-out form, and took another number.  Twenty minutes later the kindly woman called me up.  My papers were there; I could see them on the counter; but there was a problem.  You see, it was my name.  It was too long.
    It was so long that when printed out on the fancy official city office stationary, the final three letters of my middle name, Elizabeth, were cut off.  Perhaps, I suggested, since the last, first, and majority of my middle name were intact, it would do just as it was?  Oh no. Perhaps they could simply do away with the middle name?  Heavens no.  But Japanese people usually don't even have middle names, so....  No no no no.  Okay, I sighed, could you just write it in Japanese instead of in romaji?  But I already knew the answer. 
    So I went up a floor to repeat the process. 
    Another number, another ten minutes, another set of forms.  Then I waited twenty more minutes for their big printers to spit out another official document that, yet again, named me as Kunnecke, Anna Elizab.  I longed to simply snatch them and run.  But since I'd like to continue living in this country, I didn't. 
    There was a lot of hemming and hawing.  This was a big problem. 
    Ever resourceful, however, they figured out a way to fix it that would not displease the document gods.  They took a black ballpoint pen and wrote the letters 'e' and 't' at the end of my name.  By hand.  They handed the papers over. 
    I looked at them for a long moment. 
    And then, in spite of all my smarter, savvier, better instincts, some obedient schoolgirl part of me felt compelled to point out that unfortunately there was still an 'h' missing. 
    WHY?!??? 
    I do not know.  I could have just written it in myself. 
    Instead, they took the papers away again and were gone for several days, weeks, and months that probably really lasted only ten minutes or so.  Then they brought them back.  The 'h' had been penned in.  I was free to go. 
    So, in this quest to continue doing exactly what I have been doing, which is live here and contribute to society, I have one government office down; four more to go.  It's going to be a long week. 

by Anna Kunnecke

    By late fall, the chrysanthemums are magnificent.  Earlier in the year it was all about showing off a prize dahlia or an iris in everything from Styrofoam boxes to antique china pots, but now the chrysanthemum is the new 'it' bag, smugly displayed on fashionable arms and front steps.  The flower's status as the national flower does not save it from the indignity of plastic sticks, fluorescent string, and bamboo rakes being required to hold it up, because it is as top-heavy as a burlesque dancer.  A very dignified and symmetrical burlesque dancer.

    When I worked in a Japanese flower-shop during college, I was puzzled by the identical bouquets you always saw in one rack: an upright lindo, some spray mums, and one or two big fluffy chrysanthemums.  They were there all year long, and the formula changed only a little as the seasons determined what sort of frilly filler would be added.  I once tried to group several of them together into a more substantial bouquet for a customer who wanted an armful of seasonal flowers, only to have the wrath of the shop owner descend upon me like a dry-cleaners bag.  A quiet, furious, deadly sheath of plastic.  If the customer hadn't been present, I think she would have happily whacked me over the head with those damned chrysanthemums.  You see, those bouquets are for decorating graves, and ONLY for decorating graves.  That little tip might have been a useful part of my store training, but oh well!  So just take it from me, if you want to take flowers to a party some time and you see these nifty pretty bouquets all pulled together, just the right size and price for a hostess gift--don't.  Just don't.    

    And then it gets cold, which is a relief after those itchy chrysanthemum days, with their stalks that must be broken by hand, not cut, and the resulting hives and scratches, and the piles of yellow pollen that make everyone sneezy and grouchy.

    And pretty soon before you know it everyone is cutting bamboo and twisting rice straw to make the traditional end-of-year decorations.  Stalks of pine, straw-wrapped casks, wreaths festooned with red berries and white sacred papers for good luck--it's hurry, hurry, hurry, because it's all about to end.

    Only of course it's just starting over.  The camellia trees have been yawning and  preening.  Their leaves go glossy in the crisp air and you can spot hard little knobs forming like secrets.  The buds are swelling, bursting, potent with new life.  And there we are, right back where we started, waiting for the petals.