I’ve never seen such cute onigiri. That’s really cool.

Griselda, Arlington,TX

First off, if your name is on something, you’ll perhaps treat it with more respect rather than treating it as a commodity. It encourages kids to take a bit more responsibility (and have a bit more appreciation) for what they have.

Also, with the math set, they’ll do pretend shopping and exchanging such that the pieces will get disbursed throughout the class, and it’s much easier to just return things to their owner than for everyone to count and make sure that they each have 20 green sticks, 20 red sticks, 20 yellow sticks, seven 10-yen coins, three 50-yen coins, two 5-yen coins, etc. etc.

The names have been all written in hiragana (the alphabet that kids learn first) on purpose. Anthony can read/write his name in English and in kanji as well, but the name is mostly for other kids who may not know that 松中 is まつなか. (Along the same lines, I’m sure he can’t read the kanji for anyone else’s name.) So ensuring that the kids can read these names helps foster more self-sufficiency among them as a group.

Some of this is rooted in culture that’s specific to Japan, but it all makes good sense to me even outside of any cultural framework.

And a secondary question. Do you and Fumie speak English when at home or Japanese?

My brother and sister in law in Bellair Texas speak Parisian French
when at home even though my brother was born Canadian and never learned
Quebecois. His wife of 26 years was a translator for the EEC and speaks several
languages, Parisian French, Luxembourgise (sp)?, German, and a number of other languages.

Their daughter speak fluent French, Texan and a number of other languages and is now working and studying in Cambridge MA, in American English.

Am told I have a strange accent when we meet at family holidays.

The lack of strangeness among the strange is… strange . Anthony goes to a Japanese school with Japanese kids, so I want him to feel as “normal” as possible, so we don’t write “Anthony” in his stuff. And when you think about it, the nametags on everything are more for other people’s benefit than for his own… the teacher finds something in the corner of the room wants to know to whom to return it. At home, I purposefully use almost all English with Anthony. Fumie uses both, but tends to use Japanese the most. Fumie and I tend to use mostly English between ourselves (her English is far superior to my Japanese), but we mix both fluidly. —Jeffrey

Are you given a list of things that Anthony needs to bring to school? Did you have to purchase the math set?

Aren’t cray pas smeary and messy?

We were given a list of things to be prepared, among them many items that were specifically specified (such as the math set, so everyone has exactly the same one). We had to buy everything. “Cray-Pas” is a company name, and while I don’t doubt that they make things that are smeary and messy, the two sets of crayons were not. —Jeffrey

Well, it sure does cut down on the conflicts in the classroom about what belongs to who!