Category Archives: Japan

The Long Way Home From Farthest Away

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When I first got to my schools in Niigata the first thing I noticed was that a lot of my Japanese English Teachers (with a couple exceptions) were young. In fact, a good percentage of the staff were young. At the end of the year, I also noticed that a lot of the young staff went away and were replaced with more young staff. (With exceptions.)

This is partly the result of the way a lot of prefectures in Japan treat their teachers. They tend to do military style assignments of three years before moving on. In the case of Niigata, the prefecture tried to send young teachers as far away from home as possible for their first job. Since Nou-Machi was hell and gone from Niigata City, it got a lot of young teachers.

After three years, the teachers moved to a new school a little closer to home for another three year assignment. After that the explanations got confusing and I started to get a headache trying to understand it but the gist was that by their third assignment teachers began to have some choice in where they wanted to go. There is also some politics involved because the school boards also get some say in who they want.

This system had a lot of odd effects. First, it guaranteed that every district, no matter how small and/or undesirable could get teachers. (This would solve a lot of problems for district in Western-Kansas.) On a personal level it also forced the teachers to be less dependent on their families for support which was great for their personal development.

On the other hand, it also meant that Nou-machi was full of new teachers suddenly discovering that a couple weeks of practicum (not a joke) with little time in front of the class didn’t really prepare them for teaching.

The other effect was that, because Nou-machi was rural and out of the way (I could get to Tokyo just as fast as I could get to Niigata City), not a lot of teachers volunteered to work there once they had enough experience to make a choice. The school boards then played some politics and a lot of older teachers ended up having their choice taken away and were sent to Nou. That also had some interesting effects.

When I was working with younger JTE’s I could pretty much raise them up in the way I wanted them to go. They were also really good at speaking English. My last year though, Nou Junior High School was issued two older teachers who very much wanted to be some place else. Because they were older, it was difficult for me to raise them up in the way I wanted them to go and that led to a bit of tension. I, of course, was very flexible and did my best to support them. Well, not really, I didn’t get along with them at all. I don’t remember a single class I taught with them even though I can remember at least one class from every teacher I worked with. I don’t even remember their real names.

The first I remember only as The Airhead. I all fairness, she  was much more concerned about her pregnancy than dealing with a loud foreigner and/or doing much teaching. She did her best to fit in but she was distracted.

The second I remember mainly as the Bitter Bitch. She resented being in Nou-machi and was convinced that everyone and everything in Nou was backwards and illiterate. (Especially the loud foreigner, who I’m pretty sure she remembers as “that self-righteous asshole”.) I would try to show her that the students already knew the alphabet and the days of the week, etc. but she just went ahead and taught as if they didn’t. The tension eventually led to swearing (the f-word was involved at one point) but we learned to get along and just do our own things.

Eventually, I was the one who went away. My successor, who was a heck of lot nicer than I am, said that the Airhead improved a great deal and that he pretty much kept his head down around the Bitter Bitch and they got along to get along.

 

Responsibility the Oldest Boy and Quiet Desperation

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My in-laws and She Who Must Be Obeyed are currently engaging in negotiations that can only happen in families in ways that can only happen in Japan. As Mother of She Who Must Be Obeyed undergoes a second surgery, this one for a hip replacement, it’s clear that someone is going to have to be close by to take care of her and Father of She Who Must Be Obeyed.

They’ve asked my sister in-law to watch over them and, if possible. to move into the house. The problem is that her husband is the oldest in his family and they may someday be expected to move into his family’s house to care for his father or mother. My brother-in-law lives in Yokohama and it would normally be his responsibility to move back but he can’t drive, which makes him less useful if he moves back. That leaves She Who Must Be Obeyed, who is the second oldest child, but she’s also the only one with kids and the only one married to someone with familial responsibilities in another country.

It’s all very complicated and I personally suspect there’s less to worry about than everyone thinks, but how it works out is how it works out.

However, it has reminded me two of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard that didn’t involve death.

When I was in Niigata, after my first year, my Japanese English teachers switched out and I started working with Mr. Oguma. He told me that he originally went to Tokyo and became a punk rock musician (I’ve got his CD somewhere in the Variety Closet. It’s okay.) But when his father died it was his responsibility to come home and take care of the family.

In his case, he may have actually found a calling. Not only did he improve the crappy boys rock band that all junior high’s in Japan have, but he was also one of the few JTEs I worked with who was concerned that everything he put on the board was correct. For all his energy, though, he did seem to be rather sad and on a lot of pills as I think he lost his second love as well. I’ve mentioned before, that he seemed to want to work in crappy schools. Being in a school where he was dealing with pettiness and family conflict was clearly eating away at him.

The other sad story involved Mr. I, one of my JTEs at my other junior high. He was in every stereotypical way imaginable the cliche Japanese English teacher: old, male, always in a suit, bad English, conducted class mostly in Japanese and didn’t seem to care about anything other than the book which made my classes, to him, useless distractions. He was one of the few teachers I ever got angry with in the teachers’ office.

Then, at his retirement party, out of the blue, he came up to me and said with a wistful laugh “I never wanted to be an English teacher.” He explained how after university he’d gone to Tokyo to work in a major company as a “salary man” (office worker). Then, after his father died, he moved back to Niigata to take care of the family and about all that was available was teaching. He then said that he’d told the officials involved in his hiring that he wanted to teach social studies. They told him there were too many social studies teachers and he had to teach English even though he didn’t speak it. He then spent the next 35 years or so doing a job he wasn’t trained for and never wanted to do.

It was one of the few times in my life I was so deeply moved that I was speechless and to this day the story makes me sad. Mr. I and Mr. Oguma are the few true examples of Thoreau’s “lives of quiet desperation” I’ve ever seen.

I don’t know where they are now. I hope they’re doing well.

Slow Rumbling Freakout in Camp Green Hell

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About this time 18 years ago I was invited to join the Grade 3 (9th grade) Camp at Nou Junior High School. Unfortunately, at that time, I had ears but couldn’t ear English spoken in Japanese. I also didn’t know how to ask the right questions.

Because I was still in the honeymoon, Japan is wonderful phase of moving to Japan, I agreed to go to the camp. Thinking back, I’m trying to remember the exact moment when my colleague told me what to bring by telling me it wasn’t necessary. I was told the teachers would be sleeping in cabins but when I asked what I should bring, I was told I didn’t need to bring anything.

Now, I’m not sure if this meant that because we had cabins I wouldn’t need to bring a tent, or she assumed I understood what was meant by “camp” and “cabin” and would know what to bring. I also pointed out I didn’t have a sleeping bag and that didn’t seem to be a problem. Either way, I went minimal–the camera and a book to read being the most important things I was carrying–and was surprised when I arrived at the gathering point and saw students and teachers loading fairly hefty bags and sleeping kits into a truck.

At that point, if I were smart (and if you’ve been reading regularly, well, you know) I would have hurried home–I only lived a few minutes a way–and assembled a blanket roll but, well, you know. Also, with no evidence whatsoever, I convinced myself there’d be futons in the cabins. We took the train two stops and then began hiking. We went through town, crossed an expressway, went through a field and then followed a road into the hills. The hike itself wasn’t that difficult but it was Japan in August and the humidity was two percentage points away from liquid.

The camp itself looked nice but had apparently been located in the most humid place possible. I, of course, had only one shirt, now sweaty, and it didn’t dry completely while we were there. The cabins did exist, but they were empty rooms with no cots or futons and I would be sleeping on the bare floor.

The preliminaries were fun. The students cooked Japanese style curry for us and there was a bingo game–with the only prizes being a completed bingo–around a campfire. Bingo was followed by everyone heading off to their tents or cabins for sleep. At this point, I was still damp from my hike and, because the camp was in spitting distance of the ocean, it was cool enough to make me feel cold. I figured I could fashion a pillow out of a towel and my pack and eventually fall asleep.

However, the last card had yet to be played. One of my cabin mates, who also happened to be a colleague, also happened to be one of the world’s worst snorers. If I’d had a pillow I probably would have smothered him. I would discover after a manly attempt to suffer through it that he could be heard dozens of meters from the cabins. My usual panic “What have I done” freakout started and went down near the showers and restrooms, which had electric lights, and started reading my book to calm myself down.

I was seen by the chaperones, who would report what I’d done to my colleague who would apologize the next morning even though I was more angry at myself than anything else. Eventually I calmed down enough, and got sleepy enough, that I was able to get a couple hours sleep. The next day we went home and I was never invited to another camp.

The funny part is, as I write this and think back over what was said and what wasn’t said prior to the camp, I’m not actually sure I was actually invited to the camp in the first place. I may have misunderstood what was being said invited myself, which is why I didn’t get any information about what to bring to the camp.

 

The Politics of Work Sustaining Energy Shots

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Our oldest and I got back from visiting the in-laws today and spent the day recovering from the trip, the days sitting on the floor, and the time standing around watching our girls play computer games. All this has got me thinking about little vials of energy.

I suspect that part of the reason Japan was, and partly remains, a smoker’s heaven and a coffee drinker’s hell is the abundance of energy drinks (called “nutritional drinks”) available long before the West discovered Red Bull–an import from Thailand. In some ways energy drinks are better than coffee for workers in a hectic environment: There’s no mess; no one has to worry about being the one who empties the pot and has to waste precious time making a new one; there’s no chance of spilling on the way back to the desk; and there’s no chance some moron will slip decaffeinated evil in the mix. Energy drinks can be consumed quickly at the desk or during a smoke break.

My first experience with one of these came my second year in Japan. Mr. Oguma, the former punk-rock musician working as my Japanese English Teacher, either noticing I was tired or tired of me complaining I was tired, gave me a little bottle of energy drink. I don’t remember the name, but I remember it had coffee beans on the label. It had a nice, tart flavor and was gone in a few seconds. I wasn’t that impressed at first. Then my stomach felt warm; then that warmth spread to my entire torso and out into my limbs. Then I had one of those movie moments where I went “I’m not really feeling it” and then it hit and my teeth bared, my fingers made claws and I hissed. I was ready for work.

Almost every pharmaceutical company in Japan makes some form of energy drink and they range in price from a few dollars a bottle to over 20 dollars a bottle. I know one company that, as a right of passage, sends its new employees, regardless of their job, into shopping centers and into the streets to sell cases full of the drinks to passers-by. Because of the pharmaceutical connection, they were only sold in pharmacies. Several years ago, however, for reasons I don’t remember (best guess: money), Japan changed its law to allow energy drinks to be sold in convenience stores.

This created political problems for some of the pharmaceutical companies. One company has a pharmacy chain as one of their major stock holders. The pharmacy chain refuses to allow the drinks to be sold in convenience stores even though sales would probably double. (It would be like trying to buy aspirin if it could only be sold over-the-counter in pharmacies.)

I still generally avoid the energy drinks. The one’s I’ve tried were, with only a couple exceptions, free samples for human testing from clients. I’ve tried Red Bull a few times, but mostly when the Red Bull Mini and the Red Bull Girls are out in front of the station near where I work.

I prefer coffee.

Quarter by Quarter Dollar by Dollar

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Today we did some running with a couple in-laws. In this case “running” typically means going to Aeon shopping center in Joetsu City and window shopping whilst our oldest and youngest play games in an arcade.

Japanese arcades (which they call game centers) are overwhelming experiences of noise and light. When I was a kid the closest we got to this was a proper pinball arcade with lots of bells, clattering, flashing lights and swearing. The later arcades with computer games and skee ball and Pop-a-Shot didn’t have that level of sensory overload. (That didn’t, however, stop me from spending my future a quarter at a time.)

Japanese arcades, though, seem designed to be loud. They all seem to play music and they all have flashing lights. A lot of the games also involve physical exertion: beating on drums, dancing on foot pads, and shooting things that scream. The worst was a horse racing game that required the contestants to ride a plastic horse. this involved holding a ski position and rocking the horse for three or four minutes.

Some of the Japanese games also have the potential to lead to fights.

My favorite was called World Cup 2000 (or something like that) and it was best described as a “versus” game. Imagine two identical games sitting back to back and connected by cables. It was designed, in theory, for friends to play against each other. However, if you’re by yourself, as you’re playing a game, someone on the other side puts 100 yen (about a dollar) into the machine and suddenly, your game is interrupted and you are playing the other person for control of the console.

Whoever wins gets to keep playing–if you win, you go back to your old game–whoever loses has to put more money in and play for control or move to another machine. You may never see the face of the guy who steals your best game (and it’s always your best game ever when someone hijacks it). Or you may go to the other side and strangle a dollar out of him.

Our girls are big fans of a game called Pretty Rhythm and it’s sequel Prism Paradise. They combine fashion and trinkets. Each time they played, the first game gave them a computer readable stone that could be used to change the clothes of the game character. The game was popular enough it spawned an Anime series the girls were also fans of. My oldest is enough of a fan that she follows the voice performers like rock stars. Our house overfloweth with heart-shaped stones about the size of a US quarter. Some of them are rare, some of them are ordinary.

Luckily, the threat of having millions of little plastic hearts dumped on their property by thousands of irate parents encouraged the maker to incorporate a way to use the old “stones” in the new game. The new game issues tickets with removable tabs that can be shared between friends. After designing the outfit, the player than has a series of games involving pushing various buttons in the correct rhythm to make the fashionable characters perform music better. At the end of the game points and results can be stored on cards.

When this game finally fades away, I’m going to have a lot of cards and “stones” to dump in front of the Takara Tomy headquarters.

Repeated Conspicuous Gluttonous Consumption

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Tonight’s post is about food and beer and gluttony. Today my sister-in-law and her husband stopped by for supper and that means this post is being written under two conditions: full and drunk.

One of the impressive things about She Who Must Be Obeyed’s family is how much food they can put away and still remain reasonably thin. Today we had a tray of sushi, a small tray of sashimi, several roll-your-own sushi rolls, and a plate of the Japanese version of cold cuts, which included fried chicken, sausage, three different kinds of shrimp, potatoes and skewered chicken. A few bottles and cans of beer were also involved. Then they brought out dessert.

I first learned about their eating prowess very early on after She Who Must Be Obeyed and I got engaged. As part of the celebration we went to a Korean Barbecue restaurant in Itoigawa—for those who don’t know what this is, it’s a place where they trick you into cooking your own food and then charge you extra. We proceeded to eat and eat and eat. I felt it important that I hold my own in order to preserve US pride and my own omnivorous reputation. I think it’s fair to say we consumed an entire cow and an entire hog each, including large portions of innards, and a handful of vegetables. They kept handing the leftovers to me and I went “Well, you know, I really shouldn’t, but I’m going to” and then ate what I was handed.

After consuming all that dead animal flesh, I’d pretty much reached the limits of my consumption ability. That’s when they said “Do you want rice or noodles?” That’s right, after all that, they intended to top off the evening with carbohydrates. (Please remember, though, that THEY cheated by giving ME all the leftovers.) I chose ishiyaki bibinba (a rice and meat dish cooked in stone bowl) and somehow managed to force it all down.

The part that still amazes me is they always eat like this. Some of my friends got to see them in action at KC Masterpiece during our US wedding. I’ve learned to pace myself better, even when it leads to constant rounds of “Don’t you like it?” “Does it taste bad?” “Do you want something else?”

The fun part is, tomorrow we’ve got fresh sashimi coming in from She Who Must Be Obeyed’s cousin’s fish shop. It means we’re going to do this all over again.

Locked in and Blacked Out Old School Style

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After my batch of JET Programme members arrived in Tokyo, we were subjected to three days of orientation of questionable benefit. Our prefectural orientation involved a handful of people telling us that we’d get more pertinent information at our August training. One of our presenters then explained that the training would take place at something called a Kyoiku center, which is a kind of education hotel, and that there would be a lot of rules. The most important rule was that the there was a 10:30 curfew. In fact, at 10:30 the outside doors were locked.

This prompted one English lass in the front row to go into shock and keep repeating “You’re taking the piss. Right? You’re taking the piss right?” Our presenter assured us no piss of any kind was being taken. Now perhaps because, at the time, I was pushing 30 and had been in Air Force ROTC and the Peace Corps, I wasn’t surprised. A few years in those institutions will prepare you to handle both random rules and random bullshit. And then there was that “It’s part of the job” thing. However, “It’s part of the job” doesn’t go very far with young people yet to actually start their first jobs (in their minds, the orientations were just an extension of university).

We were then sent to our towns and while those of us working directly for the local governments were required to show up to the office and do “work”, those assigned to the prefecture got a month’s holiday. After that month, though, we all arrived at the Kyoiku center, some of us happy to see different faces that all spoke English and some of us wondering why the hell vacations had been interrupted for more classes.

The fun started right away, when we learned a couple more dirty little secrets of the kyoiku center: not only were the doors locked at 10:30 but it was lights out at 11:00 because that’s when power to all the rooms was shut off, which also meant there’d be no air conditioning until morning. Keep in mind, this was Japan in August and it was nasty hot and humid (those are technical terms). Also, any official drinking could only occur in certain common areas during the half-hour between lock in and lights out as we were not allowed in the common areas after lights out.

The kyoiku center did make one concession by opening the baths and showers in the morning to appeal to our bizarre Western idea of not waking up sweaty and going straight to work.

We were allowed to leave the center for the 5 ½ hours between the end of classes and lock in. The complication is we were in a rural area with spotty train availability. In order to get back by 10:30 we had to leave Niigata City around nine. It was amazing to see how much partying a group of Westerners could fit into the 2 ½ hours available to them.

Not much happened the first year, but in the years after that there were incidents involving loud noise and people pulling fire alarms to get the doors open after lock in.

I suspect things would have been different if we’d gone to the center straight from Tokyo. Please keep in mind we were not in the military and this was not a military institution, although it was where local firefighters did their course work. The organizers kept insisting, though, that this kind of thing was important to the Japanese. It was a hell of a test of flexibility, but it all seemed very old school in a well, old kind of way.

 

Profoundly Profound Conclusions Jumped Toward

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One of the common effects of visiting Japan on a visitor to Japan is the formation of a series of falsely profound conclusions that seem rather, well, profound: Kanji is SOOO deep. It’s like pictures. Each picture is made up of smaller pictures. It has meaning beyond its meaning. It’s SOOO much deeper than the Western alphabet. (Well, yeah, that’s kind of true, although writing with pictures is actually pre-alphabet and the easier versions of Japan’s four alphabets are slowly taking over, and, well, WHICH Western alphabet?)

Writer/Activist Arudo Debito describes this as Gush and Mush–Gush is Japan rocks; Mush is Japan sucks–and ascribes it mostly to journalists in town for a few days. In my experience, though, Gush leads to Mush.

Gush: Japan is SOOO modern; it has the fastest broadband internet connections and everything is SOOO modern.
Mush: There’s no free wi-fi except in Starbucks and the parking lot of 7-11? Japan is SOOO backward.

I personally believe this a consequence of commenting on results without understanding the causes. (Japan hasn’t needed free wi-fi because people have been surfing the net on their cellphones for over a decade and are used to the expense. They’ve been doing that because landlines were expensive. Etc.)

I bring this up because this is a common reaction to the design of Japanese houses and the way that design impacts the lifestyle of people living in them.

One of the falsely profound conclustions is that Japanese families are closer because they all sit together in one room. Rather than having central air, Japanese rooms are heated and cooled as necessary. “This is SOOO much more civilized than the west and brings families closer because everyone is gathered together under the kotatsu and can talk and share values. This is SOOO much better than the selfish isolationist Westerners who sit in different rooms surfing the internet. Also, it’s SOOO much more energy efficient to only heat the room you’re in rather than waste energy on the rooms you’re not using. West bad. Japan good. I love Japan!” (Gush.)

There’s a lot to unpack in that, but I’ll start with a general tendency for the Japanese to build crappier houses—partly because of earthquakes and partly because the value of land is the majority of the cost of building a house. This leads to a lack of insulation, especially on older houses, and a lack of central air. The only way to heat and cool a room is to buy a heater and an air conditioner for that room. This means it’s cheaper to heat only one room.

As for the notion it’s more energy efficient, I don’t believe it. The one room may be warm, but at least one wall is uninsulated and is up against an unheated hallway or room. For example, in winter, my in-laws hang out in one room. That room has a flimsy sliding door that bleeds heat and energy into a hallway that’s so cold that going to the restroom just down the hall feels like going to an outhouse (albeit one with a heated toilet seat that washes and dries your backside.) In summer, you can feel the heat and humidity from the hallway bleeding in through the door, requiring the air conditioner to work all the time.

As for Kotatsus, well they are great until one’s nether regions start baking. Also, because the kotatsu is baking already stinky feet, I’ve been told that I’m lucky I have no sense of smell. As one of my friends said to the comment that the kotatsu is great “So is insulation! So is central heating!”

Also, that “heating only one room is SOOO awesome” conclusion changes by the middle of winter as the person is huddled under a kotatsu and wrapped in blankets: “I can’t believe my coffee table is heated but my apartment is not. I hate Japan!” (Mush.)

Also, although everyone’s together in the same, they are watching TV whilst teenagers surf the net on their phones. At times, it’s no closer than being stuck with people on a crowded train.

Small and Painful Mat Furniture

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For those who dismissed my psychic and omen reading ability as mere pessimism: Today we had an hour long blackout because of wind and discovered Mother of She Who Must Be Obeyed needs a second surgery because national health care doctors don’t listen to patients. She’s doing well but her return home will now be delayed, disrupting the lives of quite a few people.

Proof that I’m almost human completed, let’s whine a little.

The only thing I hate about visiting my in-laws is their furniture. It’s designed for small, flexible people with good knees. I am large, not flexible and have bad knees (hence the lack of flexibility).

The living/family/dining room is a tatami mat room just off the kitchen. My in-laws, kids and She Who Must Be Obeyed have little problem sitting seiza or lotus, but for me I have to sit side saddle and support my weight with my arms, or sneak up against the wall or hutch to find back support. My in-laws do provide an arm chair that looks like an office chair that’s been cut off just under the seat. It’s more comfortable than sitting on the mats, but I can only sit with my knees up. It’s a bit like sitting on an easy chair with the foot rest stuck up. It’s fun at first, but it either induces gradual knee pain or recurring nap attacks.

Eating dinner involves me sitting side saddle and trying to sit straight enough to eat without dropping food all over my legs or the floor. The taller table, which reaches to the middle of my calves, allows me to get my knees just under, but the larger table, which is shorter, doesn’t have room for my knees, making eating a meal an experience in contortion and yoga. They have a back room which is more western style, complete with proper sofas.

Your zen koan for today’s meditation: What is an improper sofa?

Once again, however, they are a bit short for prolonged loafing. The main problem is that despite my preferences for being alone, when I’m at the in-laws I do feel compelled to stay with the family and, at minimum, practice Japanese. (My brother-in-law, though, just heads off to an upstairs room and disappears for most of his stays. I’m getting to that stage, albeit slowly.)

Also, if I have any work and/or writing to do, I end up with the laptop on my lap, but at an odd angle (or I have to put my legs at an odd angle.)

By the time I return home from a week at the in-laws, my knees and back are sore even if I’ve been keeping up on my exercises and stretching. (Some other day I’ll write about the weight I put on from the heavy eating and drinking forced upon me.)

I bring all this up because it’s possible Mother of She Who Must Be Obeyed may no longer be able to sit on tatami and this will require a lot of rethinking and redesigning of the house and her habits. I may have a few suggestions for how to change things.

Psychic Omens of the Vacation Apocalypse

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A short one today as I recover from travel and hope I can tether through my phone.

Today the oldest and I traveled to the in-laws house but before we left, I got to show off my psychic powers. Before that, though, I have to talk about the omens.

First Omen: after a hot but relatively dry summer, the day we were scheduled to travel typhoon 11 decided to arrive and dump a bunch of rain on us.

Second Omen: the rain that arrived was in a storm front, depicted in red (bad) and maroon (damned bad) on the weather map, that followed our exact path straight into Niigata.

Third Omen: several bullet train tracks had already been shut down.

Fourth Omen: it was raining hard enough that the drain on our balcony began to back flow in a new way. It didn’t flow onto the balcony, but it was noisy, as if it were mocking our attempts to travel during a typhoon.

Fifth Omen: about an hour before we left, the rain began to stop but it was raining just hard enough that we would need to carry umbrellas. However, as we left our apartment, the rain had become little more than random sprinkles and we didn’t actually need umbrellas. My psychic powers—which some say is simply pessimism—kicked in and I told our oldest to bring her umbrella anyway. I told her that about halfway to the station the rain would fall and fall hard.

Sixth Omen: Sure enough, almost exactly halfway to station we had to rush to get our umbrellas out as the sky opened up in downpour that left me soaked from the middle of my thighs down to my toes. The joke here is that once we were at the station, we’d be indoors or on trains the entire rest of the trip, meaning we no longer needed the umbrellas and they were just dead weight.

After that the trip went pretty well. The only real problems we had were the storm had swung to the Japan Sea and the wind slowed down our express train from Echigo-Yuzawa to Naoetsu. Luckily we were able to catch our local train and are now happily resting at the in-laws.

Seventh Omen: Too happily.