Klingsor's First Winter

I initially published the following on March 18, 2021 on this blog. I believe this was a time where I hadn’t shared the link of the blog to anyone, and even so, I likely made it private right away so no one could read it if the stumbled upon the link anyways. It’s a topic that I have been batting around my head a bit recently, and possibly something I want to build on in the future. Therefore dear reader, I am sharing it again. I am editing it a little bit, as I can’t stand anything I have written that is over 2 years old usually. Please understand.

Something I’ve always found peculiar in Japan is that I have always felt less barriers and more acceptance from Japanese people the less Westernized they are. The more Western a person is, (I’m defining this as has lived overseas, has placed importance on studying English, or just has a general interest in Western things) the more likely they will ask me the following questions or say the following things when meeting me:

“Your Japanese is very good.”

“When are you planning on going back to your country?”

“Why do you like Japan?”

Conversely, for the most part, Japanese people who have no specific interest in the West, do not like English, nor especially want to be internationalized themselves have always made statements more like this:

“Why haven’t you naturalized?”

“You should really be doing X”

I’ll start with an example of the latter:

I was visiting my ex-wife’s brother’s volunteer firefighter group 10 years ago. They wanted me to join, saying that it would be fun, and that I should really help out. I muttered how I’m not Japanese and therefore there’s probably a rule against it. 

Without missing a beat more than one were shocked that I hadn’t become Japanese, or that I didn’t want to become Japanese. 

“You plan on living here forever, right? Just become Japanese!”

Another time I was in a local festival with them, and two young representatives from a local company were there, one of them being a beautiful woman. It turned out I had mutual friends with her colleague, and from there I was chatting with her a little bit. 

From there 4 or 5 boisterous volenteer firefighters came out of nowhere happily saying:

“Talking to a cute girl, eh? You shouldn’t do that! We’ll tell your wife! Come on! Let’s go! Time for you to lift the mikoshi!”

Now an example of the former:

Just yesterday (note from now me: this would be March 17, 2021), my wife and I visited relatives of hers, and these people were some of the nicest people that I have ever met. I am really hoping that we can continue a close relationship with them. We were visiting my wife’s great-aunt, who is in her 90s, and my wife’s aunt- in her 60s was also there. Making conversation with someone in their 90s for those not used to it isn’t easy, and the aunt kept on leading the conversation from behind, making it easy to talk, but never talking too much. Her Japanese can only be described as beautiful, speaking in perfect manner that I thought only existed in textbooks. 

However, I was taken out of my surroundings with questions from her about when we would be moving back, how my wife must have amazing English and how Japanese is very hard (my wife doesn’t speak English yet), and despite the aunt being a very very nice woman, with these questions I suddenly felt much more distance with her than I did with the volunteer firefighters. 

To me the reason for this seems apparent, and it has nothing to do with racism, xenophobia, maliciousness or anything like that. She has had experience with westerners in her life, and most of them could not speak Japanese, if they were male with a wife, the wife spoke fluent English, and for the most part they did not want to stay in Japan longterm/had some sort of animosity towards Japan. In anticipating this, and allowing me to talk about things I would want to in ways I would want to, she asked the questions she asked, and talked the way she did. 

It’s all super interesting.

And now in hindsight dear reader, I do wonder if I missed something in my original analysis. What if it was merely the difference between a traditional working class/countryside attitude and a middle class attitude? Are middle class people more likely to have an interest in English and affinity to the West?

I’m not sure, and I’m not going to think of or find the answer on this lovely Sunday evening (please note again dear reader, this post script was written months ago from today in July 2025). I shall perhaps put this all back on the shelf to sit and stew, but on the semi-public shelf, where people who stumble upon this blog are privy to see it.

(This was written a few weeks ago)

I look at the apps and all to keep my options open.

I like what I have, but come on, we only live once and if I see something that makes me feel hot and bothered, I’m going to go look.

This stayed at this looking stage, but the other day I just couldn’t help myself, I had to reach out.

So I told my wife: there’s a house I found on the apps that just looks too good to not go and look at. We gotta go.

The back and forth with the realtor was kind of normal. It was a chain realtor I guess, so big with many shops, and I had to go through their call center first. I’m more of an email man myself, but after they called three times and didn’t send an email, I summoned the lifestyle of my forefathers and gave them a call. During the phone call I did say I’m a very busy man, and would prefer to talk via email from then on.

I wanted to go Friday and 2pm, they said Friday at 4pm, as the owner still lives there and we need to have a time that works for both. I assumed this meant the owner wouldn’t be home.

We got on our way. Son was sleeping. I was excited. I think my wife was down for the activity in the day.

When we get there we saw the realtor outside. She was a woman to our shock! Not that their aren’t female realtors, but you sort of just imagine a guy in his 50s that is a little overweight. She was young and had her nails done up. We then went in the house where the owner of the house was waiting for us.

She was a very nice older woman. She seemed in very good health and I imagine kept in good shape in a non-obsessive way. One thing that grabbed my attention about the house is the amount of bookshelves filled with books. These books were in Japanese, English and German. There were bookshelves in the living room, in the hallway, in the washroom, in the bedrooms and in a dedicated library.

She didn’t need the books and would just be throwing them away she said. In the “study” that was her late husband’s, there were a lot of books on German fairy tales. Her husband studied them. In what I assume were her son’s rooms, there were Dragon Quest manga from the 90’s. In the living room, there were Agatha Christie books in English.

Besides the books, the entire setup of the house was of a grandparent’s house, proud photos of the children and grandkids, artifacts decorating the place from a life well lived, and tasteful furniture.

She was moving into an apartment (manshon) because the place was too big for her. I assume closer to her children. She didn’t need any of the books so if we wanted them we could have them. Same with the grand piano that fit easily in the living and dining space along with a two couch living setup and large dining room table.

She asked my job, and I think hoping that I would say I was a teacher or professor teaching English, and really I wish I was then. She could then perhaps tell me of what her husband or she did, or what her kids do. However, I did I do HR at a foreign company, and I think I didn’t speak loud enough for her to fully hear (she was a little hard of hearing) and so she repeated that I was a company worker, and left the conversation at that.

She said a few times that the house was likely too big for just the three of us, hinting that we could have more kids. Her eyesight she said also wasn’t the best, and she probably didn’t realize we were already in our early 40’s. Another kid would be great, but it may not be realistic.

There was a window over the stairs that was too high to reach, and she opened and closed it with a long stick that I think are typically used for ensuring plants grow straight. There was also an old-style light that could only be changed with a ladder placed on the stairs. They got someone to come in and do it.

On the outside of the house, the windows that came out a bit from the house had this weird padding on all the corners. My wife asked why this was done, and she said she did it herself beside her grandkids run around outside, and she didn’t want them to hit their head on the sharp corners.

The garden was in two parts, which were both with lush green and big trees. One part was for where their dog lived. He was an outside dog and it was a lovely space. The second part was on the way to the entrance of the house. We would need to do something to the garden once a year to ensure bugs don’t get everywhere she said.

It was a house of so much memory with a woman living there that seemed so nice, so refined, and so educated. I’m romanticizing a stranger’s life, but it really added to everything.

This was exactly the kind of house I wanted to buy. I feel houses from 20-30 years ago are built differently, and this will sound stupid, but with more hope and love in them. Our current house built in 2020 feels like everything on cost and utility was carefully decided by a committee. This could just be a difference in tateuri– ready-made houses and chumon jutaku– custom made houses, but I feel even with the custom houses I have seen these days there is a difference. I also loved the space. The land was four times bigger than where we are living now. This means more property tax for sure, but if we can afford it, I think it is somewhere to splurge a little for sure.

So I am left with two different feelings. One of just being happy to have met this lovely person nearing the final chapters of life, and envisioning buying her home and ensuring to continue to make happy and loving memories continue in it.

To note, it is much further from a station than we are, and much further from supermarkets and convenience stores. It is super close to two rivers that are beautiful with lots of nature surrounding them. It would be definitely more “suburban” in living. We would use a car more often. We would stay in shape cycling to the station.

Anyways. It was a lovely experience. And while we likely won’t move there really, I am moving ahead to thoroughly see if it is possible. Can we sell our house as a decent price, etc. etc. etc.

I no longer feel as incredibly overwhelmed as I have been with childrearing, or babyrearing.

My wife is getting better. We only need to go to the hospital every one or two weeks for her. Her back is good enough that she can carry our son sometimes. Our son doesn’t seem to cry as much as he used to, now only when he’s hungry really, and sometimes in the evening. We’re probably getting used to each other.

It means that it is easier to be reflective of it all. The five weeks of my wife and son being at home, and the five weeks before when they were in the hospital, and the completely different live before that (despite my wife having been pregnant at the time, yes).

And so we can now look at the previous things I have written about being in the thick of it all as artifacts to be studied and scrutinized. We can be critical, but not too critical, as I have feelings.

And I will hopefully write here more and about more varied things.

Themes will stay similar I guess. I mean, you know.

I feel like writing as it is morning and everyone is sleep.

I haven’t thought about what I will write, which is beautiful for me, but probably not for the you, my dear reader.

Son is two months old. I dawned him in these Dragon Quest baby clothes I bought. The slime one with the Dragon Quest I background towel was cute. Trying to get him to dress up as the hero while singing the Dragon Quest theme in hindsight was a little weird. Will wait a few more months before I do that again. Some people dress their babies in sports jerseys. I do this…

We still don’t really have enough free time or mental headspace to make our place consistently clean. I think we need the boy to be a little more independent for that. By independent I mean can be put down for extended periods so that we have time to think and to do.

Whenever I lament these issues persisting, I remind myself that he is a great sleeper at night, getting up for feedings yes, but going right back to sleep, and so we can wait until these other things are good.

Work is getting intense. I’ve taken lots of time off over the last two months, but the amount of work I need to do hasn’t really decreased. I will be working unofficially a little today, and on the weekend to try and get a grasp on things. I am grateful for all the flexibility they gave me. My goal was really to not need to have someone replace me temporarily, as it would have been a massive hassle for everyone involved. Before I did this job they used an agency, and it wasn’t the best experience for anyone.

Assuming my wife’s back gets better, I will be going to Australia in August. In my head, I “ran away” from my home and culture of Canada to Japan at age 21, and whenever I work in a professional Western setting, I always feel I need to do a lot of catchup. I’m super happy to be able to work with the Australia team in my company. If I ever decided to move back to Canada, I think it would be an invaluable experience for finding a job there.

I would love to live in Victoria for a few years. I think I could live in Canada happily, but I would need more money than I need in Japan. In Japan just riding my bike to the supermarket in the morning gives me peace. I don’t think that would be the case in Canada.

Whenever I’m on the internet, I do worry about a stupifying of the world, and wonder if that is hitting the West harder than Japan. Perhaps I’m buying into online hype, and the kids are alright.

Anyways, I should ride my bike to the supermarket now.

My wife and son have been home now for about three weeks.

He was 5 weeks when he got here, and he’s now 8 weeks.

My wife’s back still hurts, which means she can’t pick up our son to console him when he’s crying. It’s hard on everyone.

Yesterday and today, after his 4am feeding, my wife has been able to get him back to sleep. For today, I’ve used this time to have my “me time”. I volunteer to sleep with my son at 8am, and my wife gets her me time at night.

I played Dragon Quest V for PS2, and now I am writing here while having some tea.

I cannot express how comfortable it is to play Dragon Quest V for PS2, and there would need to be so much background explained for our non-video game enthusiast readers, so I will need to ask you to take me at my word.

I haven’t read Narnia in a while, but I want to start again soon. I’m hoping the crying gets less in a few weeks, making it easier to do.

I recently also bought beautiful hardcover copies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I haven’t actually ever read them before, but I look forward to doing so after we finish Narnia. (I will have to start reading more than a page a day of Narnia.)

My wife and I realize just how much we are on our smart phones around our son, and we have such good intentions to stop that once he is a little older, and we’re not constantly waiting for the next cries to start. We want to read more in front of him when we are having our “adult time”.

We look forward to being able to play with him more. We now sometimes do exercises that it mentions online, or that the person from the Ward Office mentioned when she came over to visit. That visit was a good experience, and when I am clearer thinking, I would love to write something about this.

I have every intention to restart my podcast that I do in Japanese, Saitama Freeway. I would call it Saitama Freeway: Season 2, and it would be about more than video games this time. I feel there was something more I wanted to say about this, but I have forgotten it already.

I’m not sure what our plans are today, but perhaps when either of us (my wife and I) has time, we will continue cleaning up the house so that the entire house is clean. I would love to talk more seriously with my wife about moving and what sort of location is realistic and what sort of price we could do. I think I am in a stable position at my company, but I would still want to wait until next year to go ahead with it. Just planning for now.

That’s all really. I’ll post this now, and edit grammatical mistakes later.

It’s probably been a week since I last wrote.

Caring for a newborn has gotten easier in that I’ve gotten used to it, but I’m still super tired. Nothing deep to say about it just yet. I realized last night I needed me time and I took an hour or two of that today. (My wife has her me time too.)

Some online stuff says weeks 6-8 may be the hardest, and we’re in week 7 now. Who knows.

I’ll have a drastically reduced number of work days until the end of July, which is 12 weeks from birth, the end of what some online stuff calls “the fourth trimester”.

We have a night time routine, but we need to try and have a better routine for feeding. I’m just happy we’re able to feed him for now though.

Easy to think about life now, and how it’s changed, and how I try to not really show that it’s changed, because it hasn’t changed for others.

So this isn’t really anything to say, but more of a record to read in the future.

I wrote something, and then made it private, because it seemed a little more silly than usual. If the blog titled “Words” or something like that ever shows up, that is what I am referring to.

This last week I have been so stressed, so frazzled and so everything else like that.

My son slept through the night for the most part last night. I mean that he got up and was breastfed, but then he went back to bed right away. No drama.

He never really was good at sleeping through the day at home, but I was able to lay him down two hours ago, and he is still out. My wife took a turn watching over him, and I just checked, and she’s asleep too.

I now have a little leisure time to myself.

And in this time, I will ponder to myself about the hardships, and feel that I am happy in the end.

That’s all really.

There are many ideas bubbling in my head, but they need more time to stew.

I was worried over the last few weeks about my wife’s health and stressed about the uncertainty of it all.

Now that they’re home, this uncertainty has somewhat gone away. I mean, life is always uncertain and I’ll find reasons to be worried about everything, but we made it here.

There’s now a baby in my life that will forever be there, forever changing every aspect of my life forever.

I got this I think, but not really. I thought about my video game schedules. I thought about which drinking parties I could make. However, perhaps in the trenches of the first week, all I can think about is how to survive as a parent.

Lack of sleep was something you can hear about, but hearing about it and experiencing it are obviously different.

Having a baby cry uncontrollably and not knowing why is something you can picture for a few minutes, but when you realize it’s not going away ever, and it’s up to you to do the right thing, then it’s different.

In our baby bath styrofoam thing we have, you put some warm water where you rest the baby’s body. I did this first and then got the baby ready. When I put the baby in it, it was lukewarm and the scream the baby made was out of this world. My wife rushed from the living room that is up a floor. In a panic, all I can think is I have to make the situation better as soon as possible. Pick up baby. Hug baby. Warm baby. Don’t drop baby. Get new warm water. Put in styrofoam thing. Don’t drop baby. Ensure thing is warm. Put baby baby back while showering baby’s body. Do the above in three seconds.

I should mention how unprepared I was. I thought I was prepared, but I was wrong. It’s less about a place for things, and more about a mindful schedule for life. When to do what and why. It’s all not just shits and giggles. when he sleeps do laundry. Pay bills. Cook healthy food for wife (haven’t yet). Clean shit that gets everywhere. I couldn’t imagine any of it.

My wife’s back hurts a lot, and so she can only really breastfeed and even that hurts. She tries to do more because she feels bad, but that will just make her back hurt for longer.

There’s more to say, but first there’s this word jumble that’s trying to say that words don’t do this justice. I’m in the land of not words.

And this is obvious to all other parents. And I knew other parents. They’re everywhere.

My wife and son are set to come home tomorrow. Not 100% confirmed, but the last problem is now fine apparently.

It will have been a total of five weeks at a hospital.

The realization that I could’ve spent the time I had alone better becomes apparent now. It was already apparent, but now I have a very busy day today (in the office for the most part), and then tomorrow too. All that emotional wah wah things are tough really got in the way.

Feelings and love for my wife and child were super strong in the last month, and I’m sure they’ll stay strong, but now coupled with a potentially constantly crying baby, a postpartum wife who may be quick to snap, and a (hopefully not too much) bewildered me.

As my company’s HR, it came the week I need to calculate everyone’s raises, bonuses and confirm the amount of residence tax everyone needs to pay, so I will be doing a little working from home, but only the bare minimum.

So it is go time. This is not a test. Time to shine.

In British Columbia, where I’m from, you are able to get a license from age 16. Most of my friends did, but I never did.

Around 17 or 18, I did get a Learner’s Permit, but I had a huge mental block about driving. Like with other things (that were equally silly), I thought it was too late for me, and the buses and SkyTrains were good anyways, and hey, maybe something about the environment too? I never got my license, and then at 21 I moved to Japan, where the trains were even better.

However, in my first marriage when I lived in Chiba, I constantly relied on my wife to drive us everywhere. I just took this for granted. Sometimes she got frustrated about it, and I was sorry, but it’s not like I could afford going to driving school, or that an English one was nearby. If I was better with money I could have though. When I look back at my mistakes in this marriage, not having a license was definitely one of them.

However, despite it not really being on my mind for most of the duration of our marriage, once we separated, one of the first things I did was spend a lot of money to get a Japanese driver’s license. I was comfortable enough to do it in Japanese this time, and I even did it so I could drive manual transmission (do we say standard? I’m never sure). The driving part at the driving school was easy, which is another story for sure, and the driving test at the driving center I failed 3 times I believe. I refused to take it in English, because I’m stubborn like that sometimes. I suppose this is also another story.

After that, I drove around a few times in the first year. I even used the highway once! However, I then became a paper driver for 5 or 6 years. If that’s a Japanese expression, it means that I had a license to drive, but I did not feel confident or that I had the actual ability to do so.

Once my wife was pregnant, we decided that it would be good to have a car. I decided to practice driving with my brother-in-law, and sometimes alone. I panicked quite a bit driving alone, as sometimes I just didn’t know what I was supposed to do, and was worried that I was being a nuisance to those around me.

The most stressful part was my small driveway on my small road. The road is three meters wide. To open my door in the driveway, I need to be about 15cm from the left side of the driveway. Furthermore, there is a telephone pole just ahead of the left side of the driveway, meaning I need to come in at an angle.

I went online and found a guy. I paid him 15,000 yen, and we drove around my block five or six times and went over how to best park.

The reason I took this step is because when I winged getting out of my parking spot with a car share car, I scraped the side of my house. I was so focused on not hitting the pole, I didn’t notice I hit my house on the other side, and when I did, I panicked more and kept driving a little. The guy told me how silly and stupid this all was, and was very convincing about this.

I now have specific ways I get in and out of my driveway. Getting in sometimes is still hard, because it feels like I’m driving diagonally into the wall, and my car beeps away. It works though.

The actual thing I wanted to bring up, or perhaps complain about and say woe is me a little about, is that our new car arrived a week before my wife went into labor. I was still super nervous about driving, but there really wasn’t any time for that. We drove to the hospital. I stayed as late as I could. I drove home on dark unfamiliar roads. I did it again. My wife moved to a different hospital. The drive became an hour each way. I sometimes took the train, and I sometimes drove.

I had expected I would get used to driving with my wife in the car, and us doing fun little short drives. However, I got used to it with the great uncertainty of what was happening with my wife instead.

One incredibly silly part of me had a huge mental block on getting gas for the first time. I had never gotten gas, and the idea for whatever reason frightened me. In the end, I called a local friend, and we got gas together. I made a million mistakes doing it, but someone was there, so it was fine. Now I can get gas a million times and will never have any mental block about it.

So now I can drive, after not being able to drive really for the last 25 years. Better late than never. I got over all those weird mental obstacles in my head. I still have a few regarding driving though really. I need to drive on the highway again. I always rely on my navi for everything. Parking close to cars makes me a little nervous. However, I will get over all these silly things, as I have gotten over past silly things.

And compared to my wife’s health and the birth of my son, none of it seems that important really

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