On Facebook, I just saw the name “Prithee Lux”. Really. I can’t decide if it sounds like a name from a bad bodice-ripper romance novel or a porn movie.

Right now I just have too much on my plate, and I literally don’t have any free days -even weekends – until the 27th of December of this year, which is when I plan to go on a week-long spa blitz.  Catch up with you guys next year!

Recently I’ve re-established contact with an old acquaintance.  She and I first got to know each other when I first moved to Japan, and on the surface we had so much in common (born in the same month of the same year, for starters) that we were sure that we were destined to be friends.  However, I was never really able to allow myself to get close to her, for the simple reason that she is truly one of life’s favourites, a child of fortune.  For example, her parents (mum Japanese and dad Australian) really loved each other, and they loved their children.  Furthermore, they were wealthy – she was educated in the best schools in Japan and Europe.  She never wanted for a thing, either emotionally or physically.  She remembers her childhood as an idyllic, near-perfect time.  Even now she counts her parents as her best friends, and relies on them for everything. 

Well, I’m not on speaking terms with either of my parents.  And all I can remember is feeling miserable as a child, dividing my time between two unwelcoming households and two resentful parents, and wondering why neither of them wanted me around (I can even remember hearing them arguing about who didn’t get me for the summer holidays, amongst various other things).  Both remarried – to people who didn’t especially welcome my presence - and my mother’s remarriage was especially disturbing because her husband was violent.  I honestly cannot remember one single carefree day in my childhood, because of all the unhappiness and confusion that was constantly swirling about me.  In hindsight I can see that my parents, and even my step-parents, were doing the best that they knew how, but at the time the constant rejection hurt so much.  Whatever did I do to them, to deserve such treatment?  Just the act of being born, I guess.

I can’t help feeling envious of my old friend.  She’s beautiful and looks at least 10 years younger than me.  Everything has been handed to her on a plate; she married well to a corporate lawyer, and lived the luxurious expat life in several countries before returning to Kobe.  Her two blonde-haired children have been placed in the same school that the Sonbeam currently works in.  She plans to settle in this city and raise a happy family, just as her parents before her.  It has never seriously occurred to her that life could ever be different, because things have always been this way as far as she is concerned.

As for me, I’ve always had to fight my corner by myself.  Nothing has been easy for me, nothing.  Why?  I don’t know, but it’s just not fair. 

Every time I meet her and see her smile, I feel a knife going through my heart.  It’s pure jealousy I know, but I just can’t help it.

I won’t be watching this.  What good would it do for those poor critters, my bawling my eyes out?

A few days ago one of my first-graders came to me, puzzled, and said, “Miss, I told my mother that you said you were 21, and she laughed and laughed for a long time.”  And yesterday, another youngster came and asked me if it were really true that I know Santa’s phone number … because according to his father, nobody knows how to get in touch with Santa, and anybody who says that they can is lying.

Fucking idiot parents!  What’s wrong with them?  Why can’t they corroborate my shit?

Earlier this year my friend decided to end her marriage and relinquish custody of her two children to their father.  However, because of financial constraints, the couple have decided to continue living together under one roof for the time being.  To this ends they recently moved into a split-level apartment: my friend lives on the ground floor, and her ex-husband and their children live upstairs.  Every single time I’ve been to visit them since the move, they’ve been doing something domestic together, such as folding the kids’ clothes, cooking dinner, composing PTA newsletters, and entertaining houseguests like me.  Needless to say, the children are benefitting immensely from this arrangement, but they are not the only ones:  this morning my friend confided in me “I see more of him now than when were were married … and we get along great.”  They are even planning a family trip to Australia at the end of the year!

I never ask any prying questions, but I can’t help but wonder … why on earth did they bother divorcing in the first place?  Might as well have stayed together.

All of my private students are interesting to me, but some more than others.  One of them, a woman around 65 years of age, utterly fascinates me.  She is married to an oncologist and they live in a huge Western-style house in a part of town known as “the Beverly Hills of Japan” because so many celebrities choose to make their homes there.   She does charcoal ink painting for a hobby, and is rather good at it.  She goes to Paris every year just for fun.  She collects Leonard Foujita prints.  She loves Italian food, and is planning to spend next summer in Tuscany at a cooking school.   She assures me that she likes cats, albeit ”from a distance.”

She is also one of the most ruthlessly self-centred people I have ever met in my life, who thinks of nothing but her own happiness, and doesn’t understand why anyone would want to do otherwise. 

For all these reasons, she is interesting to me.  But the reason I’m most fascinated with her is that she doesn’t dye her grey hairs black, or any other colour.  Unlike most Japanese women, she has let herself go naturally silver, and it’s a good look on her, in fact it’s very striking.   (Of course, it helps that she flies to Tokyo every six weeks to have her hair cut and styled by one of Japan’s best, but still it’s a very unusual decision for a Japanese woman of her age to let nature take its course, and choosing to do so is really swimming against the tide.)  I’m still trying to pluck up the courage to ask her about her hair – what made her decide to leave it be?  Why is she content to look her age, and not younger?  Whatever the case, she looks exactly like what she is: an extremely happy and beautifully turned-out 65-year-old woman, who is extremely happy to be 65 and not 35. 

Needless to say, I’ve added her to my list of role models, which gets longer all the time!

Stories like this are utterly baffling to me.  How can someone be a bad parent for being the wrong size?  I’m sure that there’s more to the story than this.  And if it’s any consolation, the chances are that the kids would’ve been removed from an anorexic mother too. 

This reminds me of the only obese Japanese mother that I know, who is incidentally one of the loveliest people that I know.  She originally showed up at a Little Piggies open house, and although the other mothers were extremely kind and welcoming as always, she was discouraged by their sleek figures and perfectly made-up faces (she’s one of those rare woman who believes that it’s more important to be a mother than to look like a screen siren).  So, she asked me to give her private English lessons at her home in a mountainside town in Kobe, and I’ve been going there every two weeks.  I really like her, and through interacting with her and her little boy, it’s obvious to me what a wonderful mother she is.  The thought that the government would ever take her baby away because of her weight, just breaks my heart.  Fortunately such a thing would never happen in Japan.  But give it time.

A few days ago, one of my male JJs told me about the changes that have taken place in his life, since his wife was laid up with a broken ankle (tennis!).  It’s too much to bear: first the poor man has to get up before anyone in the household, and go through the wretched ordeal of making his own breakfast.  Then he does the laundry under the supervision of his wife, using a fully automatic washing machine/dryer.  Then he goes to work at his teaching job for three hours (being retired, he only works for the pocket money and the social contact).  He takes lunch in a fast food joint.  On his way home, he picks up groceries for dinner, which actually his eldest daughter – a mother of two infants – comes over to cook for him every evening.  And after dinner, he walks the dog for half an hour.  This punishing regimen ensures that he falls into bed, exhausted, by 10 PM, and is presently in danger of collapsing from nervous exhaustion.  I shudder to think of what would happen if he had a full-time job/elderly parents/small children to care for. 

When he recited all these shocking details to me, he was fairly quivering with indignation …. and frankly, I was fairly quivering with suppressed laughter.  Please God, let his wife recover soon (although she sure does seem to be taking her sweet time!).  And in the meantime, please give me the strength not to laugh in that dear man’s face!

Affecting your life?  It’s running rampant over here.  My kids are toppling one after another like dominoes, and yesterday one of my junior high students told me that 20 of her classmates were felled at the same time!  Whole grades are being shut down for days on end.  It seems to be affecting mostly children and people who work with children.  I am taking the usual precautions, such as frequent handwashing, etc.  I’m not too worried.  I certainly am not going to bother with this!