thursdays

Thursdays are ballet days, and when my son has his lesson I have a weekly routine myself. After having dopped him off at the ballet studio, I go to the library in the community center next door to return books and borrow new ones. Of course there are no Swedish books available, but they do have a small selection of English kids books so I normally borrow a few English books for my son and me to read together, as well as browse the shelves for Japanese books that I think my son would find interesting. I normally ask him what kind of books he wants me to borrow, and the answer is often space, Star Wars, cars and dinosaurs. The library is quite small but you can order books from any library in Fukuoka which I have done, so we have gone through all the Star Wars children’s books available in our area.

If it is a Fukuoka or a Japan way of doing things I do not know, but to me the way of arranging books in the library is very peculiar. Normally I would look for the surname of the author and there I would find all the books this author has written. But when it comes to children’s books in Fukuoka, you need to look for the title of the book instead. This means that if I want to find two books of the same author, I need to first know the titles of the books and then look at two different shelves if the titles do not start with the same sound. Since I do not know so many titles, I aimlessly browse around searching for a book that I get curious about or think my son would like (if I come across a dinosaur or space book I always borrow it). The staff also displays books that they recommend, so if I do not find any thing else I usually borrow some of them for my son and his mum to read together.

The other Thursday I came across a Swedish book by Elsa Beskow translated to Japanese that I had actually bought when our son was a baby. I got excited and wanted to borrow another book by her if available. Ideally I would have then found other books by Elsa Beskow on the same spot but in order to know if there are other titles I would need to consult the library computer and try to navigate that system. Being short on time, wanting to do grocery shopping as well before picking up my son, I decided to look up her name on the library computer another day and contend myself with the browse-and-borrow-method. But then I met one of the ballet-mums at the library and took the chance to ask her for a few recommendations of books that her daughter likes. She shared my frustration of the way books are displayed, but one author that she recommended seemed to have cracked the system since all the books by her started with the same word so they were all lined up together.

After the library I hurry to the department store next door and the big supermarket on the ground level. Doing grocery shopping while my son has his ballet lesson is a great use of time I think, and by now I have figured out exactly how much groceries I can buy to neatly fit them in my big IKEA grocery shopping bag that is of perfect size for the bicycle basket. Last Thursday I came across a new kind of packaging that actually promoted me to write this post. The conflict in the Middle East, and its effect on the raw oil supply in Japan, has made its way to the shelves in the grocery store. The manufacturer of our favorite cereals and snacks have suddenly removed all color from their packaging. The necessary text and graphics are printed in black on the silver foil packaging. And on the packing they explain (according to Google Translate I should point out):

Petroleum saving packaging. To ensure we can reach as many customers as possible, we are limiting the amount of ink used for printing.

Of course this kind of packaging makes it harder to use visual recognition when shopping – I was in a hurry and ended up buying the salty chips instead of the seaweed ones (as it turned out quite a tasty mistake for our Friday movie time). But I actually like the new design and suggest they keep it like this. For me, no images will mean one more piece of language study to incorporated into daily life which is only a good thing – any and all Japanese study are sourly needed.