Over a year ago, I posted an entry on how to raise a bilingual child, describing the approach that Fumie and I are taking with Anthony.

These days, Anthony is quite fluent in both languages, at least as much as one would expect of a four year old. I make a point to quietly correct his grammar when I hear the same mistake over and over, such as the “I is” that he says a lot these days. I'm careful never to ram it down his throat, and he seems to pick up the changes, eventually, so I think we're on track.

My worry now is about his reading and ability to write. I need to spend much more time reading with him than I currently do, but it's difficult because I didn't read to him enough early on, and now it's not habit. He'd much rather play with his cars than read a book together, so my work is clearly cut out.

Anyway, I write about this because of a comment left today on that old post:

I was writing a reply to Megumi when I realized that posting my reply might help others, and would allow others to chime in with their thoughts as well.

So, based on the little bit that Megumi wrote, along with my own limited experience and a lot of wild assumptions on my part, here's my reply to Megumi:

First, some preface material:

1. Congratulations on the birth of your son. With him comes much love, as I'm sure you know, and much worry. Much more of both will come. It's every parent's job to worry, and if you think you worry now, wait until he starts dating. Try to pay attention to what's important, but at the same time, try not to worry too much.

   By the way, you might find my second ever post, essentials for a first-time parent of interest.

2. Before considering teaching him Japanese, make sure you understand your own level. Japanese is a living language, and has changed since you lived in Japan (as indeed you have changed since you lived in Japan). Your Japanese likely sounds a bit old and strange to those in Japan now.... not that I have the skill to notice, but Japanese certainly would. Plus, having grown up in Germany, your culture is very different from the Japanese, even if your parents kept a “Japanese house.”

   Anyway, I don't say this to make you feel bad, but to encourage you to proactively embrace it and understand it, not to fear it. Your Japanese ability, whether good or bad, merely opens the door for friendship with those that speak only Japanese. In the end, whether you maintain that friendship will have little to do with your language ability, but you can use that ability to your advantage. For example, you can offer English/German lessons in exchange for pointers on how to modernize your Japanese, or in exchange for spending time with your son.

3. Before considering your son's language development, make sure you're on the same page as your husband. A friend of mine and his wife, when they had a baby, really tried to do the best for her.... they potty trained her at 6 months, gave her only food that they prepared from scratch, and raised her speaking English, French, Japanese, and Chinese. And they divorced when she was 5. I see a correlation there — they concentrated so much on her that they neglected each-other, and in doing so they took away the thing that is most important for a child: loving parents. So whatever you choose to do, make sure your priorities are in order, and that you're on the same page as your spouse.

Now, about your son's language development. Since you live in America, he'll certainly learn English natively, even if you both never speak a word of English to him, so don't worry about that.

Don't worry about three languages — kids can handle a lot more than that. One of my high-school teachers grew up in a household where each day of the week was a different language (Monday was French, Tuesday was Russian, etc.). I had him for Spanish. He could converse in 20+ languages, and was studying Chinese when I graduated.

I know of a number of trilingual kids. As one example, a well-adjusted Vietnamese/American couple I know in America send their oldest to a Spanish-language school simply because they want her to have three languages.

Don't worry that your son's time spent with other languages will detract from his Japanese. The main thing for his Japanese is the amount of interaction he has in Japanese. Whether you quit work or not is a larger question than his language ability, but certainly, the more time spent with someone speaking Japanese, the better.

Whichever you choose, make an effort to speak only Japanese to him when you're alone. (If your husband doesn't understand Japanese, you'll probably generally want to stick to English when he's around, because your relationship with your husband is much more important than your son's language abilities.)

Make good use of Japanese-language videos and other materials. Fumie and I are very anti-TV for him (he never watches live TV at home), but I make liberal use of English-language DVDs for him, such as Dora, Caillou, Little Einsteins, etc. It really helps. Get a region-free DVD player, and order videos and things from Japan.

One I can strongly recommend is the Shimajiro “5 year program.” Fumie's folks got this for Anthony as a present, and it's really wonderful. Every month, a packet arrives with age-appropriate activities, and a short (20 minute) video. The lessons learned are all very basic — colors and shapes and animals for younger ages, and older ages learn why you should brush your teeth and how to use the potty. It's very well presented and I highly recommend it.

Once he gets older, the Japanese dubbed versions of animated kids movies can be good. The first movie Anthony ever saw was “Finding Nemo,” and he loved it. It wasn't until he was older that he started to understand that parts were scary, but in any case, it was and is still good for his English.

Another thing to consider once your son gets older are trips that will expose him to Japanese, whether to Japan itself or to your folk's place in Germany. It's not uncommon for a Japanese mom married to an American in America to take the kids to Japan for the whole summer, while the dad stays home, so you might consider that as an option as well.

Do make an effort try to find other Japanese parents that you can spend time with while the kids play together. Many Japanese wives in America — there because their Japanese husband has been assigned there for work, or because they married an American — face a lot of loneliness, so they tend to form “mama groups.” See if you can find one. Places to look for pointers include universities and corporate housing locations. If you're near DC, check in with the Japanese embassy to see if they have any information.

Well, these are just some thought, borne mostly from assumptions that your situation is exactly the same as mine.... only different. I didn't even address German here. If your husband speaks German, you might consider four languages for him (after adding Spanish from the nanny).

A child's ability to absorb multiple languages far exceeds his parent's ability to properly support all those languages, so limiting him to three or four languages is probably a smart idea, not for him, but for your own sanity.

Our 2007 Nengajou

Here's our New Year's card (nengajou — 年賀状 — description) this year (sans contact info).

My friend Shimada-san used my camera to take the picture, but I'd set the fill flash a bit too strong, so there's some feeling to the image that we're standing in front of a backdrop in a studio. However, it's a bridge near our place, as the end of this post from a year ago shows.

Our timing was lucky... within a minute or three after taking this shot, the sun had set enough that it was only on the mountains in the background.

Here's our 2006 Christmas Card version, which we actually mailed on time this year:

I had them both printed at Picturing Online, which is apparently a subsidiary of Konica-Minolta, as they arrived in packages labeled as such. I was scratching my head wondering why Konica-Minolta was sending a package to me until I opened it.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 40mm — ¹/80 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Part of a Nutritious Breakfast, Ryokan Style

As I mentioned in the previous post, we spent two nights at a traditional ryokan. Ryokan prices are generally quoted per person, not per room, because food is such a major part of the stay. In the two dinners and two breakfasts we had there, we feasted like kings.

In the picture below, the lady who ended up serving all our meals is describing something about our first evening's dinner to Fumie, as Anthony dances in his yukata. He was very tired and a bit punchy, but it was his first time to wear a robe or yukata, and he was enjoying it (and was “going commando” and was enjoying that as well).

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 31mm — ¹/60 sec, f/6.3, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — ¹/60 sec, f/6.3, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ready to Eat!

Before eating, we asked the lady to take a picture for us. It was sort of comical to see this middle-aged lady trying to wield my Nikon D200 with its big Nikkor 17-55/2.8 (with hood, which I generally keep on), a large SB800 flash, and a Lumiquest Pocket Bouncer attached. But she got a nice shot.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 26mm — ¹/40 sec, f/3.2, ISO 800 — full exif & map
Spiny Lobsters have Long Spiny Antennae

It was way, way too much food for three, much less the two it was meant for. In the picture above, Anthony is checking out a spiny lobster. I'm not a big seafood fan, so I had never heard of these. In Japanese, it's called ise ebi (伊勢海老), which translates to “Ise shrimp” (where “Ise” is the name of the area we were in). It's one of the local favorites, and you can even see in the pictures at the top of this post that the painting on the back wall is of these critters.

It tasted just like shrimp, and not at all like lobster. It may be, though, that it would have tasted like lobster if it had been cooked; I don't know.

There was seafood galore. On the oval skillet in front of the lobster thing were fried muscle of some sort. Behind it is a bowl filled with ice and topped with sashimi (slices of raw fish). Behind it, slightly to the left (and well out of focus) is a deep-fried whole fish. To the right of the sashimi is a plate with breaded & fried shrimp, veggies, and another type of whole fish.

Other things you can't see in these pictures include slices of exquisitely done roast beef, some raw octopus in a slimy seaweed-ish kind of soup, rice (of course), pickled veggies, cooked clams, a small salad, a pot filled with crab & tofu & veggies, and various other little things I can't remember and wouldn't even know what they were if I could.

We ate until it hurt, yet the leftovers could have fed a small developing nation. In the end, I felt bad at both the waste and my waist.

Breakfast

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 22mm — ¹/25 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — full exif & map
Breakfast for One

Our first breakfast consisted of another whole fish, eggs (in the covered pot at left), raw squid (below the fish), a small salad with ham, a packet of shiso-flavored seaweed, rice and miso soup, pickled vegetables, and a bit of fruit.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 40mm — ¹/125 sec, f/5.6, ISO 800 — full exif & map

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 48mm — ¹/125 sec, f/5.6, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos

Breakfast #2

I thought I took some pictures of our second dinner, but I can't find them

For our second breakfast, they brought extra for Anthony, so we ended up with six whole baked fish, three salads (with ham), poached eggs, rice, soup, pickled-veggies, and just way too much other stuff.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — ¹/60 sec, f/4, ISO 400 — full exif & map

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — ¹/80 sec, f/4.5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos

In front of Anthony in the picture above is a white/blue bowl, a closeup of which follows. They're little tiny fish sprinkled over a bed of grated daikon.

On our way home, we went to the Toba Aquarium. Having had sea creatures for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and now entertainment and learning, it was time to try something else, such as ice cream for lunch.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — ¹/30 sec, f/2.8, ISO 500 — full exif & map

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — ¹/30 sec, f/2.8, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos

We're back from our mini trip to near Ise, in Mie prefecture, about three to four hours away by car. It was a wonderful little trip.

We stayed at a large but traditional ryokan at the water's edge (map). The picture above is Anthony, wearing a yukata, sitting on the tatami floor of our room, looking at a book.

Sometimes I can't get over how cute he is. Hmmm, perhaps I'm biased....

The pure, wide-eyed, innocent joy of an excited child. It's something all children have, and all adults wish they still had.

In the case of this adult, it's also something I wish I could capture.... with my camera. These were the best I could do on Christmas morning...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 20mm — ¹/80 sec, f/4, ISO 800 — full exif

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/90 sec, f/5, ISO 800 — full exif

Sometimes, the excitement is just a little too much for him. Opening one present (a bubble-maker from Grandma and Grandpa, thanks!), he exclaimed “Yeah! This is just what I need!” This alone is funny enough, coming from a four-year-old, but it was soon followed by “What's this?”

I have it on video... I should upload it, but I'm a bit crunched for time. We're heading off for a three-day mini-trip tomorrow, until the 31st.