The Long Goodbye

Onechan turned three and a half just a little while ago and she's celebrating by showing a heck of a lot more self-awareness about our impending return to the States than she did a year ago when we were preparing to leave for Japan. She's writing long letters to her yochien friends (a system of her own invention, of course--it reads like Japanese and sometimes even looks like it, even though she writes it from the bottom of the page up), lobbying them during yochien to visit their homes after (and even getting some invites, which throws off imoto's napping schedule but keeps the girls busy while I'm holed up in my office trying to come up with something interesting for my 4-talks-in-3-weeks mini-marathon), and asking the tsuma all sorts of questions about what life will be like after we leave Fukuoka ("Is there Toys'R'Us in America?" "Can I eat dango in Dunkirk?" "Do they have ice cream?"). Probably imoto is the only one who's going to find this move and adjustment close to easy.