The present no one else noticed

Not going to do a big re-telling about Christmas this year (although one of my brothers did get a girlfriend and so we shall mock him, har har).

Anyway, just want to talk about something that happened at my mémé pépé's house.

So a bunch of us were sitting around the kitchen table (me, some aunts, uncles, and cousins), and I was sitting there with a book in my hands (as I usually do). The book I had was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet, the new edition with the BBC cover (Christmas present from my brothers). I had it in my hands and it was just sitting there with it and my parrain (godfather) noticed it.

And what happened next was just so awesome I can't even.

He asked me if I'd seen the new series that came out and I said I had, and then he started talking about it with me. We talked about how awesome it was, how we preferred the first and third episodes to the second, how the cliffhanger at the end was frustrating but still awesome because OMG WHAT HAPPENS?!?!?!, and how Series 2 starts January 1st.

It was epic.

Parrain is actually the only person I personally know that's actually seen the series, and who likes it, and who's even talked about it to me (Parrain is one of the few people I know who discusses interests and stuff like that with me out of the blue, needless to say it's not something I'm used to but I love it every time it happens).

It was an almost magical moment (I am so pitiful TT^TT), and it probably only lasted a minute or two. But it was fucking awesome.

Merry Christmas to me.

I had to laugh

"Twilight: a young woman's journey as she chooses between bestiality and necrophilia"
-comment by BrianSierk on an article on some website I'm too lazy to link to.

Random time! :D

I saw this in a comment on an article comparing Bella from Twilight to Katniss from The Hunger Games and just had to post it somewhere. I almost posted it to Facebook, but didn't because it probably wouldn't go over too well.

But, yeah, I just really like this.

Lord of the Flies

The office where I work now is normally full of flies.

Huge, black/blue houseflies that keep bouncing off the window and skylight and make loud buzzing noises. They don't really bother me or my cousin (who I share the office with), as long as they stay on the window and don't dive-bomb my head, I'm fine.

Today, though, there were a lot of flies on the window, like 30 or so. So my cousin asked the janitor if she could spray them with something that would kill them. So the janitor comes back with some Raid and sprays the window.

And don't the flies go fucking nuts?

They started bouncing off the window and flying around the room and buzzing louder than ever. A few of them even started dive-bombing us and our desk. It was crazy.

And they were some fucking loud too, which is never good for my nerves. I was jumpy the whole time, I probably scared my cousin a bit.

The funniest part of the whole thing though, aside from having the floor littered with dead flies (I have no idea why I found that funny), was that when the flies would eventually hit the floor they'd try to get back up but they'd only end up spinning in circles 'cause only one side of their wings would be working. Funniest thing ever.

We got so many flies out of the office.

... of course, they'll probably all be replaced by tomorrow.

Road to Nowhere

I started my new job today at a lobster plant near home.

I have no complaints with the work itself, from what I saw today it's mostly going to be data entry and filing and stuff like that (things I've done before).

If I have one problem with this new job it's this: the building where I work is in the ass-crack of fucking nowhere.

It takes about 40 minutes to get to my work from my house and maybe the last 10 or 15 minutes of that drive is on a shitty paved road and then a shitty gravel road full of potholes. And turns everywhere! (this whole town was built on a fucking turn, I guarantee it... my kingdom for a straight stretch of road)

Driving wasn't too bad today, but when the weather starts to get really shitty, as the weather around here often does in the winter, I'm gonna start having some major problems on my drive (most of which stem from me being neurotic, but that's nothing new).

I cringe when I think about how that road's gonna be when it's covered with ice and/or snow. And I know that the snowplow probably won't be down that way too often since it's basically back roads. The paved road is in bad need of repair, and the gravel road just needs to be paved.

And the potholes, sweet fuck! There's hundreds of them, and there's almost no way to miss most of them because they're all over the road and camouflaged so you don't see them until you're practically driving through them.

My parents better take a good look at our van now, because I don't know what kind of shape it'll be in after I'm finished working for the season.

With the Light Volume 8

With the Light 8

While trying to create a place in society for her autistic son, Hikaru, has been an uphill battle, Sachiko Azuma has long known that perhaps the toughest place to find acceptance for him is within her own family. Despite some progress made, Sachiko’s mother-in-law still treats her grandson as a nuisance and sees him in many ways as inferior to his little sister, Kanon. Now that the Azuma family has moved into Masato’s childhood home, Sachiko must not only adapt to life with her mother-in-law – she must also help Hikaru, whose developmental disabilities make it notoriously difficult for him to accept changes to his routine, like adapting to this new living situation and a new school. As Sachiko tries to balance caring for Kanon and Hikaru in the face of her mother-in-law’s constant disapproval, will the Azuma family emerge from what seems like the darkest of tunnels into the light?

Told in completed chapters as well as unfinished pages that the creator drew while battling a long illness, this final volume of With the Light serves as a legacy to the late Keiko Tobe’s inspiring dedication to bring to light the hardships and joys of raising an autistic child for readers around the world. (from the back of the book)


Here we are, ladies and gentlemen. We’ve made it to the last volume, the final instalment of Hikaru’s story. It’s been a long time since we were first introduced to Hikaru and his family and it’s been a long road to get from there to where they are now. And where are they now? How does Hikaru’s story end?

Well, let’s find out in With the Light’s final volume, Volume 8.

The volume starts off with a normal day at the new Azuma household. It’s still summer vacation so the kids aren’t in school, and Azuma-san is still off on her trip visiting with Okumura-san and Professor Ryoumou. Masato has a cold and plans to sleep it off so Sachiko takes the kids to a nearby park for an outing.

Before she left (during Volume 7) Azuma-san had told Sachiko that she shouldn’t let Hikaru be out in public with Kanon, but she’s not here now so Sachiko decides to take them out behind her back. I’d like to think of this as Sachiko finally starting to grow a back-bone and taking a stand against Azuma-san’s ridiculous ‘rules’ and criticism. Small steps, you know?

Hikaru leaves the house before Sachiko and Kanon so he’s ahead of them for most of the walk. Sachiko makes sure to point out that Hikaru isn’t just running ahead of her, but that he keeps looking behind him to make sure that Sachiko and Kanon are still there, and when he gets to the point where he doesn’t know the rest of the way he waits for Sachiko and Kanon to catch up to him so that they can go the rest of the way together. These are things he wouldn’t (or couldn’t) have done when he was younger, so we’re getting affirmation that Hikaru really has grown over the course of the past seven volumes.

There are quite a few signs that show how much Hikaru has grown up and matured: he’s become very independent and is able to do a lot of things with little to no help, he interacts with more people, he communicates primarily with words, and it’s getting easier for him to adapt and adjust when things change around him. There’s a scene in the park in this volume where he runs into a dog and instead of freezing, like he did in Volume 4, he tried to get away from the dog (and I think he might also have swore, but no one mentioned it so I’m probably wrong).

We cut away from the park to Masato, who has just been awoken from his nap by the phone ringing. The caller is his older sister Fumiko, who really hasn’t been a part of the story since Volume 1. That changes now. Fumiko tells Masato that her and her family are in Japan for a bit and they will be visiting the house soon. This promises to be very interesting because we don’t know what Fumiko’s feelings towards Hikaru will be.

We don’t have too much time to dwell on that because we cut over to Ryoumou-san’s house where Azuma-san is currently vacationing. Azuma-san is surprisingly comfortable around Ryoumou-san, despite the fact that he is autistic (Asperger’s, actually). I wonder why. Is it because he is an adult? Is it because they aren’t related? Or is it because he’s extremely high functioning to the point where he can pass himself off as normal? Either way, she doesn’t seem to have any problems being around, and interacting with, Ryoumou-san.

I’m not quite sure how long she’s been on her vacation, but at this point it seems like Azuma-san’s about to go back home. Before she leaves, though, she has a conversation with Okumura-san about how autistic people can sometimes find one thing they’re really good at and use that to get a job to help support themselves. He mentions something about an autistic artist he knows of and Azuma-san gets really excited about this because she remembers that Hikaru used to draw a lot when he was young.

Uh oh.

Sure enough, as soon as Azuma-san arrives at the house she starts in on Sachiko, telling her that she should sign Hikaru up for art or piano lessons. Uh… she means well. There’s a break from this while Hikaru sets out the placemats for dinner. He’s very excited about being able to finally set out the whole set now that Azuma-san’s back. He pulls her over to the table and sits her down so that he can put down her place mat. Azuma-san looks quite happy about this.

When Masato comes home, Azuma-san starts talking to him and Sachiko about Ryoumou-san and all his achievements. She tells them all about the books he wrote, and then she tells them about his odd quirks and how he has Asperger’s and ADHD. Then she starts talking about putting Hikaru into some kind of lessons and that maybe he can be a famous artist one day. Masato tells her about Hikaru’s history with art, and that they’d love to support any talent he has but he has to get used to his new school and get settled in his new routine first.

It’s good that Azuma-san is taking an interest in Hikaru at all, really. Actually, Azuma-san’s attitude towards Hikaru has changed a little bit. It’s almost like she’s finally come to terms with the fact that Hikaru is never going to be ‘normal’, but she doesn’t really think about it until he does something strange. She’s pretty surprised when she finds out that Hikaru can now water the garden by himself when he wasn’t able to before her vacation; and she seems interested as Sachiko explains how he learned to do it.

There’s one point where Azuma-san and Hikaru are alone in the kitchen when a mosquito flies in. Hikaru sees it and says ‘Bug’ and Azuma-san tells him to go slap it. It doesn’t look like Hikaru understood what she meant because all he does is say the word slap and the mosquito flies off. Azuma-san then demonstrates what a slap is, but Hikaru just repeats himself. Surprisingly (to me, anyway), Azuma-san doesn’t berate him or say or even think anything about it. It just happened and that was that and they moved on to other things. (Later on, though, Hikaru sees another bug and slaps at it like Azuma-san showed him. Bonding!)

Azuma-san still gets on Sachiko’s case a lot. That most likely won’t ever stop (Unless Sachiko just snaps and starts cursing her out, or something like. But that won’t ever happen… no matter how awesome it would be). She’s always criticizing Sachiko about how she cooks, cleans, and raises her kids, especially when it looks like Hikaru’s needs are put before Kanon’s.

There are four ‘completed’ chapters in this volume, and the last completed chapter involves the five members of the Azuma family going on an outing. Back in Volume 1, when Hikaru was about two years old, Sachiko and Masato took him to a temple for some kind of religious ceremony. Hikaru had a very public meltdown during the ceremony because he couldn’t handle all the different noises there (including Buddhist chanting, which he doesn’t like). This same temple is where the Azuma family go to clean the family grave. This visit is completely and totally different from that first visit. Hikaru is older now, and more mature, and Sachiko is considerable less stressed and isolated.

Everything goes pretty well at the grave. Both Hikaru and Kanon help clean the grave and they both pay their respects. There’s only one hiccup when Hikaru wanders off for a bit and goes around to other graves and switches the flowers from one grave to the next. All that is solved almost immediately and the day goes on.

After that, there are two more chapters left in the whole series, and only their storyboards are published because Tobe-sensei didn’t have time to finish them (sad yet?). The storyboards are actually pretty easy to follow, easier than I thought they would be. They’re basically rough layouts of chapters, complete with the original Japanese text in Tobe-sensei’s handwriting and all done in pencil. This format isn’t the ideal one in which I wanted to finish the series in, but it still manages to get its story across and I can’t really complain about them.

The second last chapter (Junior High Episode 29) starts off right in the middle of Fumiko and her family visiting the house. It’s hard to tell, but I’m pretty sure it’s early evening at this point because Masato is sitting at the table drinking with Fumiko’s husband. Fumiko and her daughter Noa, who is the same age as Hikaru, are talking in the room with the shrine when Hikaru opens the door and peeks in. He does this a few more times before telling Fumiko and Noa to leave and sitting down at the shrine for his daily routine of ringing the bell (or whatever he does that makes the dinging sound). Fumiko and Noa watch him for a minute before going to Sachiko for an explanation.

This is where Fumiko and Noa surprised me. For whatever reason, I was expecting Fumiko to be like Azuma-san and start going off on Sachiko; but I forgot that Fumiko has been living in America for the past few years. Autism is viewed very differently in America than it is in Japan, and I think it mostly has to do with the different cultures. Fumiko has no problem with Hikaru’s behaviours, and is completely non-judgemental of Sachiko (total opposite of Azuma-san).

There follows a conversation about autism in Japan and in America. Sachiko is pretty surprised to find out how different (better) things are in America for people with disabilities. Fumiko is also pretty surprised about the difference, especially when they get on the topic of teachers and schools.

Fumiko and her family stay the night at the house and return to America shortly after. Everyone goes to the airport with them to see them off and Sachiko muses about how she’d like to take Hikaru and Kanon to America some day.

The rest of the chapter is dedicated to wrapping up Eri’s storyline. We see Eri working at some kind of maid café (Okumura-san and Professor Ryoumou appear for a brief, funny cameo). She seems happy and well, and we’re led to believe that things are going pretty well for her… until we cut to a shot of Shouhei standing outside the café looking quite pissed off.

He waits for Eri to finish her shift and as soon as she’s outside he starts arguing with her. He then hits her and kidnaps her, eventually tying her up in his apartment. From what little we know of Shouhei, this behaviour is pretty out of character for him. If the series didn’t have to end so quickly it’s possible that this behaviour could’ve been built up to, but that’s not what’s happened here and this sudden violence on Shouhei’s part has come completely out of nowhere. So, Eri’s tied up in Shouhei’s apartment, and it’s Tsuchiya-sensei and Gori-sensei to the rescue. This story ultimately ends on a happy note and it looks like Eri’s in a good place now.

Junior High 30 is the last chapter in the whole series (SAD!), and its job is to wrap up everyone else’s storylines. I think it does a good job. The main part of this chapter takes place during a karaoke gathering with the usual group of old friends. The conversation among the mothers tells us all we need to know about what’s going on with Hikaru’s friends. Oota and Kanata don’t end up together, but they’ll probably still remain good friends. Also, Kanata is in a band that I’m pretty sure was named after Hikaru. Gozaru-kun was being bullied in school until Nobuaki and another boy put a stop to it. Moe wasn’t at the gathering because she was on a date.

There were unfortunately no updates on Oki-kun, Aoki-sensei and Wakabayashi-sensei, Hiroaki, and Miyu, but I’m sure they’re all doing fine.

Finally, we have Hikaru and his family. Where does Tobe-sensei leave them? She’s convinced me that they’ll be perfectly fine. Sachiko and Masato help start a parent support group near their home. Kanon is making new friends from school and the neighbourhood. Hikaru is steadily moving forward at his own pace. Soon he will be in high school and, although we won’t see it, he’ll do just fine.


That is the end of Tobe-sensei’s amazing series, With the Light: Raising an autistic child. It’s shown us 15 years in the lives of one amazing family as they live through the ups and downs of raising a child with autism. Tobe-sensei made it possible for others to see what it may be like to live with autism, and hopefully she was able to teach people and start to improve the way other people view those with special needs.

I’d like to thank Tobe-sensei for bringing us such a wonderful series.

…

The book’s not over yet, folks. After With the Light’s conclusion, there are two oneshots written by Tobe-sensei before With the Light was serialized. They can’t be too much older because the art isn’t too much different from early WTL. Both oneshots have kind of the same feel as WTL, they are both feel good stories with casts of caring characters and strong messages.

The first oneshot, Thank You, Sensei!, is about a substitute teacher who isn’t permitted by the board to stay with her class after her contract runs out and the original teacher doesn’t return to work. She forms a close bond with two of her students who have lost faith in the adults around them.

The second oneshot is called Spring Sunshine and features one of the cutest little boys I’ve ever seen in manga. More manga should feature children with missing front teeth! Anyway, Fujita is a crotchety old man who hates everyone and Suguru is the friendly young boy who befriends him. This story is so sweet and adorable and manages to be both sad and uplifting at the same time.

And that is all, folks.

With the Light Volume 7

With the Light 7

For most parents, their child’s teenage years are just as bad, if not worse, than the terrible twos. But for Sachiko and Masato Azuma, the situation is further complicated by their son Hikaru’s autism. As puberty strikes, Hikaru’s growing sexual awareness creates uncomfortable and embarrassing situations, and begins to affect his little sister, Kanon. The already-taxed Sachiko has to find ways to alleviate the problem, while being mindful of the affects her approach may have on her children and on the people around them. But when Masato must again relocate for work, the pressure further falls on Sachiko as the decision is made to move in with her mother-in-law, who has always been less-than-accommodating to Hikaru’s needs. With new challenges arising daily – Hikaru tackling adolescence through the lens of autism, Kanon struggling with peer pressure, Masato throwing himself into the new job – will Sachiko, the Azuma family’s rock, succumb to the cracks that have begun to form in her generally cheerful outlook on life?(from the back of the book)



Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Today we’re going to talk about puberty. Well, Sachiko is going to talk about it, anyway; but only for a little bit.

You’d think that they’d spend more time on Hikaru’s puberty since it takes up about half of the summary. Unless by ‘puberty’ they mean the fact that Hikaru is starting to become a bit rebellious and independent. They mentioned ‘sexual awareness’ so I don’t think that’s the case.

It’s hard to believe, but Hikaru’s already 14 years old. The little baby we met in Volume 1 is now a teenager, for better or for worse. The way the series lets us know that Hikaru has reached puberty is to let us know that he has started to touch himself. It embarrasses Kanon for all of a few pages because he does it (over his clothes) while she and her friend are in the room. This problem is immediately solved by Sachiko telling Hikaru that he can touch himself as long as he does it in his room. So he does, and then it never comes up again.

Aside from that, there is another sign that Hikaru is now a teenager: rebellion. An example of this is him refusing to properly ask for a reward sticker after completing his chores (saying ‘here’ instead of ‘sticker please’). Another thing he did was that he wouldn’t let Sachiko sit next to him on the bus to school. There’s a panel on one page with Hikaru sitting on the bus and Sachiko standing a few of seats away because Hikaru didn’t want her to sit near him. I must’ve giggled for five straight minutes when I saw that. He’s wanted to ride the bus on his own for a while now; this is as close as he’s going to get to that goal at the moment.

Another thing he’s started to do is take more notice of what the people around him are doing. There are two main instances of that in this volume. One is at school where he was pestering a boy about washing his hands after using the bathroom (he ended up getting in a fight), and the other one is at the supermarket where he confronted one of Kanon’s friends and a complete stranger about robbing from the store because they were carrying things in their arms (to Hikaru, shopping means putting things in a basket otherwise you’re taking without paying). Both of those things are things he was taught as a child and they are rules he has followed all of his life (wash hands after using the bathroom and use a basket at the store before paying). He hasn’t tried to get other people to follow these rules, or any other, before now.

It’s good that he’s started to interact more with the people around him, but he still has a lot to learn.

There’s also a Kanon centric arc in this volume involving bullying. Now, Hikaru and Kanon are seven years apart in age and have never attended the same school at the same time; so Kanon being bullied because of Hikaru has never really been a major concern (it has been a concern, just not a major one). I don’t think Kanon’s classmates have ever really seen Hikaru, or if they have it’s only in passing, so they either don’t know him or aren’t aware of his odd behaviours. This was bound to change since Sachiko and Masato aren’t trying to keep Hikaru’s autism hidden.

This first comes up one day when Kanon and Hikaru go to the park. Hikaru gets out of the car first and takes off running with Kanon close behind. Hikaru is excited so he’s being very animated and making a lot of noise, shouting ‘water wheel Archimedes’ over and over. The two run past three of Kanon’s classmates, who are in the park on their way to some kind of English prep school class, or something. Anyway, Hikaru and Kanon run by them to the water wheel and the three classmates remark about how Hikaru is weird. Kanon calmly tells him that her brother is not weird, he’s just happy at the moment. She says this very matter-of-factly because, to her, Hikaru’s behaviour isn’t weird at all, it’s actually fairly normal for him. The classmates call Hikaru weird a few more times and then Sachiko shows up and the three children run off.

Now, I wouldn’t call this bullying just because of this one incident. Kanon and her classmates are only six or seven years old. To a child that young, I imagine that seeing someone twice their age acting like a young child is pretty strange, especially if it’s a stranger. Hikaru does have pretty weird behaviours, but they’re not weird for him. Kanon doesn’t see his behaviours as weird because she’s used to it (although I imagine that if she’d seen someone else doing those same behaviours she’d probably think it was strange, she probably wouldn’t really say anything about it though).

What I’m saying is that these kids have every right to think that Hikaru is strange, because they’re not used to him. What they don’t have the right to do is bully Kanon because of it. I really don’t understand the logic of bullying Kanon because of her brother. I can only assume it’s because Hikaru’s not around for them to make fun of behind his back, which is what they’re doing to Kanon.

One of the girls from the park has a birthday party and invites every girl in the class except for Kanon. The boy from the park and one of his friends see Hikaru and Kanon at the supermarket with their mother and they see Hikaru telling people (one of Kanon’s friends and a complete stranger) that ‘taking without paying makes you a robber’ like I mentioned above and they start laughing about it to themselves. I’d like to take a moment to mention the friend that Kanon runs into at the supermarket, Kuroiwa-kun. He’s the first one that Hikaru confronts about being a ‘robber’. At first he’s confused and surprised about it, but then Sachiko and Kanon explain and he doesn’t give it a second thought even though he’s never met Hikaru before now.

There’s probably more going on off-panel, but that’s really all we see happening. Point is, people are making fun of Kanon and her brother and Kanon is very bothered by it all. Then one day, I think it’s the day after the supermarket incident, Kanon and a friend of hers are on their way to school when they run into the boys from the supermarket. One of the boys starts in right away, making fun of the incident in the supermarket and calling Hikaru stupid and retarded, among other things. He won’t stop, even with Kanon’s older friend yelling at him, and that’s when Kanon’s finally decided that she’s had enough.

She rushes the boy, Iida-kun, and knocks them to the ground. They get into a fight which is only stopped by Kuroiwa-kun getting a teacher. I am very proud of Kanon for this. Getting into fights is not something that should be encouraged, but Kanon is defending herself and her brother in the only way that she knows how. So I say good on her.

They both end up in the nurse’s office where Iida-kun gets a talking-to and we get a very moving scene where Kanon breaks down and starts yelling at Iida for calling her brother stupid. Hikaru is her big brother and to her he’s the best big brother in the world and she loves him very much. Kanon looks up to Hikaru and she doesn’t understand why others would make fun of him. She calls him ‘stupid’ all the time, but it’s one thing for her (his sister) to call him stupid when she’s angry with him and knows that he’s really not stupid, and it’s quite another thing for someone else to call him stupid and really mean it.

That’s pretty much the end of the bullying arc. There might’ve been more things that happened, or would’ve happened, but there’s no time for that because the Azumas are moving!

Masato’s been transferred (again) and his new office is in Kanagawa, which is fairly far away from their current home. Masato decides that, instead of buying a new house somewhere closer to his work, it would be cheaper to move back to his childhood home… with his mother.

So that’s what takes up the second half of this volume: moving the whole family to Azuma-san’s house, getting settled in, and working on finding Hikaru a new school. They all decide to move in over summer break to give the kids a chance to adjust before school starts, and they’ll need that time to adjust because I’m sure living with Azuma-san will not be easy. In fact, Sachiko thinks of it as living with Gunji-sensei (although, personally I prefer Gunji-sensei).

It really sucks that Hikaru and Kanon have to move away from the only home they’ve ever known. As they’re leaving, Sachiko thinks about all that they’re leaving behind. Places like the clinic where Hikaru was first diagnosed, the streets they all walked down together and where tantrums sometimes took place, Shichigatsu Cho Elementary, the water wheel at the park, and Sunshine House. Sachiko thanks the town and they all head off on their latest adventure.

Hikaru and Kanon adjust to life in Azuma-san’s house fairly quickly. Hikaru’s sleeping schedule is greatly disrupted, but other than that there really aren’t any major problems for him. In fact, the ones that seem to have the most trouble adjusting to this new arrangement are Sachiko and Azuma-san. Azuma-san has to get used to having her house full of people again, including living with someone who has a disability, which is a completely new experience for her. Sachiko’s problems mostly stem from having to deal with Azuma-san’s attitude about Hikaru. Azuma-san does not make things easy for Sachiko. She is constantly looking down on her, or complaining about something. She’s basically being the stereotypical mean mother-in-law here.

There’s only really one major setback that happens in this volume. Sachiko has to leave the kids in the care of Azuma-san for about an hour or so while she runs some errands. It’s a stormy day complete with thunder, lightning, and flickering lights. Stressful things keep happening for Hikaru and he is completely on edge when Azuma-san grabs his arm from behind. Up comes the other arm and it catches Azuma-san right in the face. Luckily, Kanon is there to help calm Hikaru down, but it still really spooked Azuma-san.

That event is, I think, the main factor that makes Azuma-san really want to take a small vacation. She packs her bags and heads off to somewhere a good distance away with her old ballroom dancing partner, Okumura-san. They are both staying with Okumura-san’s friend Professor Ryoumou. Ryoumou-san is quite odd: he wears sunglasses indoors, very blunt, scatterbrained, and accident prone, but he’s also very smart. Azuma-san doesn’t really know what to think of him, and then she doesn’t know what to think about anything when Okumura-san tells her that Ryoumou is autistic.

That’s what all went on with the Azuma family. There was a continuation on Eri’s storyline from last volume. Eri, who is the same age as Hikaru (14), is now dating 20-year-old Shouhei (unfortunately, I’ve seen worse in other manga so I’m just gonna let this one go), whom she met near the end of Volume 6. In this volume, Eri is going through a pregnancy scare. Luckily, she runs into Tsuchiya-sensei, the nurse from her elementary school. Tsuchiya-sensei is actually no longer employed as a nurse and is now married to Gori-sensei and pregnant with him. Tsuchiya-sensei becomes a source of support for Eri in this volume, and it is implied that she will continue to be in future. It’s a good thing too because Eri definitely needs some sort of competent role model in her life, since her parents aren’t exactly doing a very good job.

So that’s Volume 7. For the few months when I thought it was the last volume I didn’t think it ended the series in a good enough place, although I still loved this volume. Thankfully, there is one more volume that will hopefully provide a hopeful conclusion to Hikaru’s story.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

I am afraid of almost everything, but not all the time... and I've been like this for years.

I have no idea what it is, but sometimes I'll just be hanging around and then I'll read or see something scary (usually on the Internet or something I'm reading/watching) and then I'll suddenly be overcome by an intense fear... or paranoia.

Just happened a few minutes ago.

I was alone in the house all day with no problems, wandering around all over the place including the basement. And then I read a story on the Internet about the Black-Eyed Children and suddenly I'm afraid to move away from the couch. I'm afraid to even look around the corner in case I see something there (not even the Black-Eyed Children I was reading about, could be anything).

This happens every time. It even happens out of the blue. I'll be watching like... a sitcom on TV or something and I'll just see something completely innocent and then be terrified of it. Then I'll start turning on all the lights and purposely making noise just to hear it.

My house, which was a completely safe and comforting place for me a few minutes before, becomes a terrifying setting where I expect to see strange things and danger pop out of nowhere.

And having an overactive imagination certainly doesn't help matters.

Even noticing that the teddy bear sitting on my shelf looks like it's looking at me in the mirror fills me with fear!

Goddammit!

With the Light Volume 6

With the Light 6

For Sachiko and Masato, it seems like only yesterday that their children, Hikaru and Kanon, were little. But these days, Kanon is about to start elementary school, while Hikaru is getting out into society and going to junior high by bus. However, in the outside world, some of Hikaru’s insistences that were acceptable when he was younger are not so anymore. When one such habit creates chaos during the morning commute, Sachiko has to find a way to clear up a serious misunderstanding with Hikaru’s fellow commuters and take steps to curb any behaviour that might stand in the way of Hikaru living in the world as a “cheerful, working adult.” Furthermore, dealing with the negative perceptions that others – including her mother-in-law – have about Hikaru begins to take its toll on Sachiko, especially with Masato occupied at work. Will the stress of facing new challenges presented by Hikaru’s autism drive a rift between the two? (from the back of the book)


[SPOILERS AHEAD]

Hikaru in a junior high uniform everyone! He’s gotten quite big over the course of 6 volumes; he’s already 12 years old.

This volume doesn’t really bring up Hikaru’s schooling. He’s in the hands of competent staff now and he’s progressing fairly steadily, so there really are no problems there. It’s the same pattern from earlier volumes, not much is shown if everything’s going well. It’s sad that he can’t be with his childhood friends, who attend Shichigatsu Junior High, but they do get together every now and then (karaoke fun, yo).

Strangely enough, this volume seems to put a lot of focus on health problems. This wouldn’t be a problem except that when the characters talk about it they all sound like doctors. Seriously, Sachiko’s mother gets heart surgery and suddenly everyone is an expert on clogged arteries.

So, Sachiko’s mother gets heart surgery. This new development doesn’t come completely out of nowhere (very unlike Aoki-sensei and Wakabayashi-sensei’s romance) because it’s been mentioned a few times before in earlier volumes that Sachiko’s mother has weak veins, or something. Because of her mother’s health problems Sachiko has to go be with her in the hospital and help her father out at home. Can I just mention the fact that Sachiko’s father is practically incapable of running a house? I mean, he can’t even hang up clothes to dry. I know that his wife’s the one who took care of the house, but didn’t he help or learn anything at all? Didn’t he ever live on his own? Is this normal?

Anyway, Sachiko has a lot on her plate these days. She has to take care of Hikaru and Kanon, be a housewife, work, help her parents, and volunteer at Sunshine House. She’s running around a lot, probably trying to do too much at once, and is tired and stressed out. Then she thinks that Masato is cheating on her.

Yeah, this comes completely out of nowhere. The only thing that would ever even suggest this is a remark Sachiko’s mother makes one day when Sachiko visits the hospital without make-up on. We all know that Masato isn’t the cheating kind, and Sachiko says as much, but he does pick the wrong time to start giving advice to a young female co-worker. Funny thing about all this is that it was a big enough event to get mentioned in the book’s summary, but nothing really came from it. Sure Sachiko was slowly heading towards a melt-down and Masato was helping out a co-worker for quite a bit, but I can’t believe that all that was building up to a small fight that only lasts for a few pages half-way through the book, and then never comes up again past Masato receiving a New Years postcard from the co-worker (like, the next day).

… glad we had this unnecessary drama.

There are a lot of things that happen in this volume that happen in the other volumes: little glimpses of life in the Azuma home, some small scenes from school, Hikaru doing this and that, the usual. Hikaru goes to karaoke with some friends over winter break, and while that happens there’s a cute story where Oota visits Tanaka in the hospital (appendicitis). Also, Kanon graduates from daycare and starts first grade at Shichigatsu Cho Elementary.

One thing that’s fairly new in his volume is that we see a lot of Azuma-san (Masato’s mother). There are a lot of Kanon-centered things going on (daycare graduation, starting elementary school, some kind of festival) so it probably isn’t so surprising that she’s showing up a lot.

I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I really don’t like Azuma-san. It’s bad enough that she’s a snob that puts image above everything else (people like that are a pet peeve of mine), but she does it at the expense of Sachiko and Hikaru. She does love Hikaru, I’m sure of it, but I’m also sure that she’s ashamed of him. She doesn’t say it outright but it’s pretty obvious by the way she acts, especially in public. I won’t go into much detail, but I’m pretty sure she’s of the opinion that Sachiko should keep Hikaru away from the general public. She was really starting to come around a bit when Hikaru was younger, but she changed her tune when Kanon was born. It’s almost like she was ‘settling’ for having Hikaru because she had no other options (since her other granddaughter, Noa, lives far away), but then Kanon was born and all her attention was focused on her. Now that Kanon’s getting older and is able to do more things, we’ll probably be seeing a lot more of Azuma-san next volume.

Another new things in this volume are the two small scenes that happen from Hikaru’s point of view. One is when he’s cleaning during New Years, and the other time happens while being babysat by Masato’s mother (which actually went pretty well despite, well, Masato’s mother). The one at Masato’s mother’s house is pretty funny and I often refer to it as ‘The Marvellous Misadventures of Hikaru Azuma’ (the face he made after drinking a special soup he thought was barley tea was just hilarious).

These scenes are interesting because they are the only times I can remember seeing Hikaru with his own thought bubbles. Hikaru can communicate verbally so he has plenty of speech bubbles, but it’s not until we suddenly see thought bubbles that we realize that we know very little of what exactly goes on inside Hikaru’s head. From what little we see, Hikaru’s thoughts seem pretty simple: mostly one or two words long, sometimes longer if it’s something he memorized. Also, the panels depicting what (I’m assuming) he’s looking at are fairly simple, showing only specific things (wipes, a garbage bag, pudding cups, whatever he’s focused on at the time).

I really wish there were more of these scenes throughout the series, I would’ve loved to see things through Hikaru’s eyes.

Well, that’s Volume 6. Hikaru’s getting older now and, because of that, his autism and any problems it may cause are starting to get easier to deal with. Hikaru is learning more about the world around him and it’s easier for him to communicate with people now. The series would get boring and repetitive if all it showed was Hikaru going through life doing the same things over and over without any obstacles, so that’s probably why we’re given stories that focus primarily on other characters.

Something I’d like to mention that isn’t exclusive to Volume 6: I love the relationship between Hikaru and Kanon. It’s probably more noticeable now that they’re older, but I’ve always thought that Hikaru and Kanon’s relationship was completely normal. You can really tell that they’re brother and sister. It’s obvious that they love each other but they also fight a lot, as siblings often do, further proof that Tobe-sensei can write realistic children.

Hikaru is autistic and Kanon is neurotypical, there are so many ways in which this relationship could go wrong because of bad writing. Luckily, Tobe-sensei made both children normal. Hikaru is autistic, but he isn’t a savant and he doesn’t have any crazy special skills that leave people in awe of him. Kanon is a very normal little girl and is neither saint-like nor ‘wise beyond her years’. Because of this, they’re interactions with each other are believable and fun to read.

Hikaru knows that he is the big brother and he does have a special relationship with his sister (I think she’s the only one who can argue with him and deliver blows to his ego). On her part, Kanon is seven years younger than Hikaru and living with him is all she knows. I’m pretty sure that Hikaru is the only autistic person Kanon knows, but she doesn’t find him at all strange or weird (even though the things he does are sometimes unusual). To her, he just is, but that’s not to say that he doesn’t annoy Kanon at times and when he does she lets him know. That’s what I think Tobe-sensei did really well: she wrote Kanon as a very realistic character.

Kanon is only a little girl; she’s six years old in this volume. She understands that Hikaru sometimes needs leniency on certain things and that there are some things that he may not understand, but she also doesn’t let him get away with everything. They’ve been fighting and arguing on a fairly regular basis since Kanon was born. They get in each other’s business and they annoy each other, and that’s what makes it so great. A real child isn’t going to let another child get away with bothering them, even if the other child has disabilities, and the same goes for Kanon.

When they get along it’s sweet and funny to see, but sometimes they get on each other’s nerves (which can also be pretty amusing, come to think of it). Luckily there isn’t too much of one or the other. That’s all I have to say on that subject unless something comes up in the next volume.

Well that's... dumb

Okay, so, the sale of walkers is banned in Canada. So are the walkers themselves, I suppose. (And by 'walkers' I'm talking about baby walkers here.) Walkers can't be sold in stores and it's even illegal to sell them at yard sales and all that.

Baby walkers are banned in Canada, and have been since April 2004... and I can't really see a good reason for it.

I've seen reasons for it online: babies in walkers have a higher risk of injury (pulling things over on themselves, reaching more dangerous objects that would normally be out of their reach, falling down stairs, etc), and babies in walkers learn to walk later than babies who don't use walkers.

... eh?

Now, I didn't research any of this, this is just stuff I came across on the Internet and thought was quite stupid. I haven't actually seen a baby walker in years, so I don't know if their design has changed at all from what I've seen growing up, but I've seen old pictures of babies in walkers and I never had any problems with them.

I had a walker when I was a baby, so did my brothers and so did some of my cousins. I have never once heard any stories about either me, my brothers, or my cousins having any of the problems mentioned above because of our use of walkers.

(Pictured: Baby!Me in a walker. Not Pictured: Danger or Injury)

The walkers that my brothers and I had as babies were basically the equivalent of a parent holding us by the arms to let us pretend to walk, except that there were wheels instead of parents and we were being supported by the lower body instead of the arms. We moved the walkers with our feet, so it was kind of like walking without actually walking.

There was never a higher risk of injury us because of the walkers, and here's why: our parents didn't stop supervising us just because we were in walkers. My parents didn't just put me in the walker and wander off somewhere where I wasn't in their line of vision (that's what the playpen was used for). I was supervised when I was in the walker the same way I was supervised when I was actually able to walk around for real when I got older. Actually, there was probably more danger for me without the walker than there was with one.

(... yeah I was weird)

When I was a baby I lived in a trailer that pretty much posed no danger to me walker or no walker (except for the furnace right there in the kitchen but I never had any run-ins with it... because my parents aren't brain-dead). My brothers, on the other hand, were born while we were all living with my grandmother. My grandmother's house was pretty much one story except for the small flight of stairs in the kitchen, a flight of stairs which was easily accessible to everyone there and was located right next to an even longer flight of stairs (that only one brother ever fell down and that was when he was much older) that goes into the basement.

Not once did me or my brothers, walker or no walker, ever fall down either of those flights of stairs. My brothers are twins and the two of them each had a walker, so that's two babies in two walkers wandering around and not once did they ever hurt themselves while using them. It's my belief that babies who get hurt while in the walkers don't get hurt because they're in walkers, but because their parents don't pay attention.

My brothers never once fell down my grandmothers stairs in those walkers because they never got a chance to. My parents, grandmother and any other adult present made sure that my brothers didn't go near the stairs. And even if they did somehow get to the stairs there was a gate there to prevent them from falling down.

So it's my opinion that the walkers themselves don't cause injuries to children, inattentive and unprepared parents do. Just like you wouldn't leave a toddler walking around unsupervised, you wouldn't leave a baby in a walker unsupervised.

(2 babies, 2 walkers, 0 problems)

So that's it for the first problem. Now onto the second one: delayed walking.

I have no idea if that's true or not. I don't really see how walkers could cause that unless the baby is in the walker all the time with no floor time or anything (but again, that's the fault of the parent and not the walker itself).

All I can say to that is that my brothers and I all had walkers. I started walking when I was 10 months old, and both of my brothers were walking by their first birthday.

Sunny Days... at 2am

I had to babysit from around 10:30 at nigth 'til almost 3:00 in the morning last night... this morning... whatever.

The kids I was babysitting (two cousins and some other girl) were all pretty young so the only television in the room was turned to Treehouse TV the whole time.

I could almost feel my braincells dying... I'm really starting to hate children's programming. I hate modern children's programming anyway, I've seen some of the shows that were on when I was growing up and most of them are still pretty decent. (And will someone please call CPS for Max and Ruby please? Where the fuck are their parents at anyway?!)

I know that I've long outgrown the age range for these programs, but I think they're just really bad, so it can't just be that.

Sesame Street was on at 2:00am (why?? they have an awesome show like that in their line-up and they only put it on at two in the morning?! I had to sit through some awful programs and then finally there's Sesame Street and it's on at two in the morning! I am pissed.) and it was fucking awesome. I laughed like a fucking maniac almost the whole time, it was hilarious. Major nostalgia moment, and it was a new episode too so it wasn't like I only liked it because I remembered seeing it when I was young.

Why can't more children's shows be like that? And why are most kids' shows done up in 3D CGI whatever? Did small children suddenly lose the ability to see in 2D? It seems like everything I see aimed at kids is 3D CGI these days. And shows that were originally in 2D (Mickey Mouse, Franklin, Winnie-the-Pooh, etc) are now CGI... and sucky (well, okay, Franklin isn't that bad now, it's pretty much the same as when I was growing up... but Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse makes me want to hurt things).

But seriously, we need more Sesame Street. They should run different episodes five times a day with reruns from the 70s, 80s, and 90s mixed in with the new episodes.

With the Light Volume 5

With the Light 5

Another school year might be over for Hikaru Azuma, but his mom has no time to rest. With both a new teacher and new classmates of different ages and varying disabilities ahead in fifth grade, Sachiko starts preparing for the difficulties that come with sudden changes to her autistic son’s routine. Despite her best efforts, Sachiko meets with significant opposition from the new teacher, and the Azumas have to cope with Hikaru acting out as a result of the stressful changes at school. Moreover, when the time comes for the family to decide on Hikaru’s junior high, the local education administrators seem to think that a school for the disabled is the best fit for Hikaru, partly because of his recent behaviour. But Sachiko, who has done her research, knows this isn’t the case. Will she and Masato be able to convince the authorities and specialists that they know what is best for their son? (from the back of the book)


We all say goodbye to Gunji-sensei in the beginning of the volume. It’s been a bumpy ride with her as the Special Education teacher, but she does redeem herself in the end. I’m almost sad to see her go, mostly because I know that what’s coming next isn’t good.

After that it’s spring break, where Masato stars in a silly commercial promoting the mushrooms made by his company. It’s the only time Azuma-san shows up in this volume. Some her friends are visiting her when they see the commercial and she’s very embarrassed about it when they recognize it as Masato. Then she calls Masato up to yell at him. Azuma-san is very obsessed with outward appearances.

When spring break is over it’s time for Hikaru to start the sixth grade (OHMIGOD it’s his last year of elementary school guys! Let loose the excitement!). Hikaru, Miyu, and their mothers go to the school a few days early to meet the new Special Education teacher. They arrive and meet the vice-principal in the Special Ed classroom. I don’t know how long that particular vice-principal has been working at the school, but we see him a lot in this volume where he never really saw him at all before.

We are then introduced to the new young, male Special Ed teacher. His name is Akamatsu-sensei and he is hands-down the worst teacher Hikaru and Miyu have ever had. It’s not apparent right away how horrible Akamatsu-sensei is; actually, he seems like a great guy at first. He’s fairly young, maybe around Aoki-sensei or Nishiwaki-sensei’s age, and he seems to know a great deal about autism without Sachiko having to explain it to him.

Honestly it looks like Hikaru’s last year in elementary school (sixth grade already!!) is going to be a pretty positive one, probably up to Aoki-sensei standards… and then Honda-san notices a few things that no one else, possibly including the readers, picked up on. For one thing, she notices that Akamatsu-sensei doesn’t bend down to the children’s level when he speaks to them; he also seems to use big words just to show that he can use them. There are also signs that he doesn’t clearly understand Hikaru and Miyu’s autism, he starts comparing them to Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, for one thing, and he seems a bit disappointed when he’s told that they don’t have any super special talents.

There’s no time to dwell on this, though, because classes start a few days later. It’s April 6th and the first day of sixth grade for Hikaru. There will be two other students in Special Ed this year. They are both younger than Hikaru and transfers from mainstream classrooms. Before I get to them, I’d first like to mention that Akamatsu-sensei starts having a hard time from the beginning. He barely has all four children in the class alone with him for five minutes before he starts yelling.

I don’t think that Akamatsu-sensei is a bad teacher (even though I don’t like the man), but he has no business being in the Special Ed classroom. He’s a smart man and I have no doubt that he understands autism or any other disability he’s read about, but he doesn’t understand the children and he can’t handle them. It’s one thing to know that children in his class do certain things, but it’s another thing altogether to know how to handle these behaviours.

Akamatsu-sensei does a terrible job in teaching the Special Ed classroom because he expects all the children to learn the same way that the mainstream students do. What he fails to realize is that these four students are in the Special Education class because they don’t learn like the mainstream children do and need extra help. He also expects them all to work at the same level, which would be stupid even if they weren’t in Special Ed because all four students are in different grade levels anyway.

There’s something going on where the kids’ parents come in to view the class (like an open house or something) and Akamatsu-sensei is reading the children a story. He reads the story straight from a book without any visual aids or gestures or anything. There are three autistic children in the room and neither of them is paying attention because they’re unable to follow along. The only one who was listening was the dyslexic and Akamatsu-sensei gets mad at him for incorrectly writing something on the board. Then he tells the students to make a morning glory out of paper and gets mad when one of the new children doesn’t realize that he has to make a pretend morning glory (as opposed to making a real morning glory out of paper).

I could go on and on about how Akamatsu-sensei fails at his job, but I won’t because I don’t want this to go on and on. Just let me say that compared to him, Gunji-sensei is on the same level as Aoki-sensei. Yeah, think about that. Even Gunji-sensei was able to work with the children. Akamatsu-sensei was never able to get any real work done; he didn’t even take all the kids outside, not even to the gardens! He didn’t listen to what the parents had to say, even ignoring documentation from doctors (along with Principal Kouda, big surprise there). The Special Ed class was always in chaos when he taught and the year ended with virtually no learning taking place.

On to the new students! Iguchi Ryota is a fourth grader and was transferred to Special Ed from the mainstream class. He is very active and has problems with staying on task, paying attention, and personal space. He doesn’t have a diagnosis in this volume, but Shibusawa-san (from Sunshine House) believes that he might have ADHD and high functioning autism (possibly Asperger’s). Akamatsu-sensei yells at him a lot because Ryota is always knocking things over and forgetting things.

Kanemoto Tsubasa is the other new student and he was transferred out of the third grade mainstream class. He’s a calm, shy boy who doesn’t really cause any trouble for Akamatsu-sensei and can often be seen helping to look after Miyu. He has trouble reading and writing, but is completely normal otherwise. Like Ryota, Tsubasa doesn’t have a diagnosis when he enters Special Ed, but his mother does take him to a doctor on Shibusawa-san’s advice. Tsubasa is eventually diagnosed with dyslexia, but Akamatsu-sensei doesn’t believe Tsubasa’s mother when she tells him.

This volume isn’t all about how Hikaru’s last year of elementary school (!!) is probably just as stressful as his first; there are other things that happen outside of school. Like Hikaru being bullied. Yup, it’s finally happened. Hikaru is on his way home from school one day when he starts getting harassed by two junior high school boys. I just hated reading that part, the two boys are pulling on Hikaru’s GPS and nametag and trying to get money from him and Hikaru has no idea what’s going on. Luckily, Ishida-kun happens to walk by and sees what’s going on and gets the boys to stop. Unfortunately, Ishida-kun’s not enough to get the boys to stop completely. Sachiko goes with Ishida-kun’s mother to the school to get the teachers involved but no one will help. It’s pretty terrible that no one can control two 14-year-olds.

The events in the second half of the volume jump around a bit. It’s time to choose Hikaru’s junior high school and Sachiko and Masato have to practically fight the system to get permission to enrol Hikaru in the junior high they want him to go to. Hikaru also goes on a trip with some classmates but it didn’t go anywhere near as well as his first trip in Volume 3 (mostly because Akamatsu-sensei doesn’t know what he’s doing). There’s also some karaoke thrown in. And then Hikaru graduates elementary school.

It was wonderful to see Hikaru graduate. Compared to the entrance ceremony six years earlier it’s proof that Hikaru has grown so much since then. The book didn’t spend too much time on it because, well, nothing really happened. Hikaru graduated and then he went home. But Hikaru wasn’t the only one who graduated, all of his friends graduated too. So not only did Hikaru graduate elementary school, but he graduated with all of his friends. I so smiled big the whole way through that segment.

Hikaru’s time in this volume is pretty much over at this point, just a few other scenes of him (he’s learning to ride a public bus now). He also said a final goodbye to his yellow hat and backpack, so his elementary school days are officially over, this is important because his yellow hat has turned into something like a ritual to get him to school (since he was only supposed to wear it during first grade but ended up wearing it all six years).

The last big story in this volume is about Katakura Eri, a girl who went to school with Hikaru and who comes from an abusive household. She hasn’t really been featured in the series much until now and I don’t really know why she gets her own story in this volume, but whatever. I suppose it is interesting to see what she’s up to now since her family were kind of main characters in the first volume and we haven’t really seen them since.

With the Light Volume 4

With the Light 4

When staffing changes at Masato’s company get him transferred to a dead-end job in the middle of nowhere, more suffering seems imminent for the Azuma family. However, Masato approaches the situation with aplomb and comes up with new ways to pave the way for Hikaru and those like him to become “cheerful working adults”… with surprising results. Hikaru himself seems to be getting closer, bit by bit, to achieving this goal as the Azumas decide to foster their son’s independence in a variety of ways, including getting to and from school on his own. But when Hikaru encounters an old acquaintance on the way home and leads Sachiko to a horrific discovery, will the Azumas be able to return a favour and help out a friend in need? (from back of book)


Okay, this time the summary on the back of the book is pretty accurate. Sachiko does make a horrific discovery, but more on that later.

This volume doesn’t really feature Hikaru directly much at all. He only really shows up a few times just to let the readers know that he has an amazing memory (think Reid from Criminal Minds), that he’s advancing in his development (he walks to and from school on his own and spends a lot of time in the mainstream class now), and that he’s a total sweetheart (he is a very good big brother to Kanon).

This volume starts off with Masato going to work. He was demoted at the end of the last volume and it hasn’t really started affecting the story until now. First of all, there will apparently be a decrease in Masato’s salary, but money has never really been mentioned except in passing or as a reason as to why certain things can’t be bought, or whatever. The really big change in all of this is that Masato has basically been shipped off to a warehouse in the middle of nowhere (since some of the higher ups in the company are trying to get him to quit because they have no real grounds to fire him).

Working at the warehouse/office looks just miserable. Masato is confined to a small room with only a table and a window. There is no air conditioner to help with the sweltering summer heat and all the other workers either ignore him or aren’t allowed to talk to him. He isn’t given anything to do and the only thing he really has to work on is his laptop brought from home.

The upside to all this is that he has a lot of time to himself… and he’s certainly up to something.

We don’t find out until later what’s going on with him, but at the end of the first chapter Masato says that he’s finished working on something and it all seems pretty important. He keeps going to his new office every day, much to the annoyance of the two higher ups there who are just waiting for him to quit, until he gets a call from his old work partner Tanigawa saying that big changes are going on at their old workplace.

Masato takes advantage of this new opportunity and manages to get himself back into his old company in a good position. His first order of business is to take the warehouse he had been demoted to and turn it into a place that would hire people with disabilities as workers. This volume talks a lot about disabilities in the workplace as Masato and his new employees learn about how to smoothly run a company and turn a profit while working with people with disabilities.

This part of the volume is awesome because I don’t think a lot of people (me included) really think about people with disabilities having jobs. Then Masato and co. take a fieldtrip to a company that has been employing disabled people for over ten years. We’re shown how a company like this might be run, and what kind of adjustments would have to be made for everything to work effectively.

This is a pretty big deal for Masato. Not only is he about to start managing a company where he expects a grand majority of the workers to have some sort of disabilities, but this is kind of a glimpse into Hikaru’s possible future. Hikaru won’t be in school forever, so companies like this are very important if he is to become a cheerful working adult when he grows up.

After the workplace arc is over, it’s time for Hikaru’s AAPEP evaluation. The AAPEP is to evaluate his functional skills to see what he can already do and what he still has to work on. There are forms for Hikaru’s parents and Gunji-sensei to fill out concerning Hikaru’s skills and when and where he uses them.

Hikaru goes to Sunshine House to be evaluated by a psychologist named Soejima. Soejima-sensei has Hikaru do a number of different tasks: sorting things, playing basketball, asking for food, following orders, working through distractions, and other things. He does pretty well (there’s no tantrums or crying) and the results allow Hikaru’s parents and teachers to create a personal curriculum for Hikaru.

It’s getting close to Christmas in the second half of the volume. School is going well; Kanata seems to be under a massive workload, and Hikaru still wanders as he walks home from school on his own. There most likely won’t be a repeat of Hikaru’s Adventure (from Volume 2) since most of the neighbourhood kind of watches out for Hikaru… that and he has a GPS tracker on him.

It’s on a detour while walking home when Hikaru is found by Oki-kun. The two meet while Hikaru is looking at an outdoor Christmas tree (he still loves shiny things) and then they are found by Sachiko. Oki tries to run away when Sachiko shows up and he almost gets hit by a car. When Sachiko checks him over to make sure that he hasn’t gotten hurt, she discovers bruises all over Oki’s torso. She invites Oki to come back home with them and then takes him to the doctor, where they find out that he has a fractured rib.

No one’s really seen Oki since Volume 2 and this is the first time he’s shown up since he left. He looks like he’s doing better than before: he’s put on some weight and he’s dressed appropriately for the weather. It would seem that all is going well for him, until Oki goes back to where he now lives and we see that not everything is as it seems.

Masato goes to visit Oki and discovers that the school where he lives is terrible. It doesn’t specify how many children are actually there (I think there’s only four or five that are shown, but there are more), but there’s a poor teacher-to-child ratio. The principal is totally clueless as to what’s going on, one of the teachers believes strongly in corporal punishment (with a baseball bat), another seems to be there just for show, and the only sympathetic one we see seems to be in way over her head.

Luckily, it’s Masato to the rescue and CPS, or whatever the Japanese equivalent of that is, is called in to help. Oki-kun’s arc wraps up on a positive note. This arc moves away from the subject of autism to shed some light on child abuse and abuse happening in institutions. There’s even a brief scene where Sachiko talks to Masato about her almost abusing Hikaru when he was younger and how lucky she felt that she found support and was able to change her ways.

The last major thing that happens this volume is that Kanata moves away. Even since Volume 1, I never thought of him as a major character since he doesn’t really show up much. However, he seemed to start appearing more often as Hikaru started to spend more time in the mainstream class. Until this volume I didn’t realize how close Hikaru and Kanata were, but the reality is that they are childhood friends (like Hikaru and Nobuaki, or Hikaru and Moe). It was really sad to see Kanata leave, and Hikaru took it pretty hard, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him.

Although this volume didn’t feature too much of Hikaru, it did bring to light pertinent issues related to Hikaru, such as work after leaving school and abuse.

At the end of every volume so far there’s been a text preview for the next volume. This volume is different because it also includes some actual pages from the next volume. I think this works better to make you really want to read the next volume because the preview mentions graduating.

…

Hikaru’s almost finished elementary school!!!

It’s his last year! Are you excited? I’m excited!

With the Light 3

With the Light 3

A little effort goes a long way – that’s what Sachiko Azuma, her fellow parents, and the teachers learn as they struggle to work together to make life a little easier for the children in the Special Education class. With the help of innovative gadgets and the support of more people than meet the eye, Hikaru and Miyu become better able to communicate with the world around them. but when a teen idol classmate sends some mothers into a flashbulb frenzy that causes Hikaru to panic, other parents begin to question his presence alongside “normal” students in the classroom. And when Hikaru’s first school trip also leads to chaos, Sachiko begins to worry that Hikaru may be losing his hard-fought place in society. Will bad news from her husband Masato’s workplace shatter the delicate harmony the Azumas have worked so hard to achieve? (from the back of the book)


I’m starting to think the summaries on the books are trying too hard to create reader intrigue. A school trip that leads to chaos? Bad news shattering the delicate harmony? Flashbulb frenzy? I hate to disappoint people, but all of that are kind of exaggerations. Sometimes bad things happen to Hikaru and his family, but nothing so bad that I would call it ‘chaos’ or ‘harmony shattering’.

Hikaru is in the fifth grade now. He definitely come pretty far since the first volume. He can use helping technology to communicate, he reads kanji now, he’s interacting more with the people around him, and he’s becoming more and more independent.

Even though Aoki-sensei is no longer there, Hikaru’s time at school is still full of wonderful experiences because he’s there with his friends and other teachers who support him, including Gunji-sensei, who is really starting to come around although she still has a long way to go (at least she’s listening to the parents’ requests now… most of the time).

Technology is briefly touched on in this volume. Hikaru can use a VOCA, a machine that speaks pre-recorded messages when buttons are pressed, now and he uses it a few times here. The quarter hour watch, a timer, from the first volume was mentioned, and almost every adult character has a cell phone that sends pictures and text messages as well as calls.

Also in this volume: The Crayfish Experiment. That’s something that’s apparently been happening since Hikaru’s first year of school, but is probably only being mentioned now because Gunji-sensei refuses to do it when Hikaru first brings it up. Time to overcome obstacles! Gunji-sensei is grossed out by crayfish, so she doesn’t want to do it. That’s when some of Hikaru’s classmates and other teachers step up. Nishiwaki-sensei, Hikaru’s mainstream class teacher; Gori-sensei, who doesn’t seem to have his own class but is always there, and Wakabayashi-sensei work together with Gunji-sensei to make the experiment possible.

The experiment is also where the ‘flashbulb frenzy’ from the book’s summary comes in. Hikaru’s friend Kanata, his example for the Mouse March, is an idol now (he’s a singer or an actor, or something) and he’s pretty famous. When Hikaru goes to his mainstream class to join in on the presentation on the crayfish experiment there are parents there who are loud and wanting to take pictures of Kanata. All the noise they make bothers Hikaru and then about two or three camera flashes go off and Hikaru has to leave the room. Later on Sachiko overhears some parents saying mean remarks about Hikaru being included in the mainstream class.

After that scene Nishiwaki-sensei starts calling Aoki-sensei for advice about Hikaru. He learns some things that eventually help Hikaru to be able to stay in the mainstream classroom for longer periods of time without panicking or covering his ears.

Masato’s mother also shows up in this volume, and this is really the first time that we see her starting to favour Kanon over Hikaru. She visits Sachiko at home and talks to her about Kanon’s schooling. She basically says that Sachiko and Masato should enrol Kanon into a private school near her house and that she could take Kanon in and raise her. She insinuates that Sachiko cares more for Hikaru than she does for Kanon because of all the trouble Sachiko went through to find a good school for Hikaru. Masato soon puts a stop to that kind of talk, but I doubt we’ve seen the last of this attitude from Azuma-san (his mother).

Not much else out of the ordinary happens in the first half of the volume other than Hikaru and Kanon both get the chicken pox at two different times. Both instances present different problems. When Kanon is sick Sachiko has to stay home with her, so she can’t take Hikaru to and from school. From this she learns to rely more on outside support for help with Hikaru by getting involved with the Sunshine House. Not much is shown about Hikaru dealing with his chicken pox other than Hikaru not being happy about being sick. Dealing with the itchiness and not being able to leave the house was probably especially hard for him.

The second half of the volume was all about Hikaru’s school camping trip, which is my favourite part of Volume 3. This is a totally new experience for Hikaru because he’ll be gone for four days and three nights without his parents.

This is a big step for Hikaru. He’ll be going to a lot of new and different places in the space of only a few days with only his best friends and teachers to help him (he also gets his own personal support teacher). Hikaru has a great time on his trip, and it was a great opportunity for his teachers and support staff to learn new things about how to make life a little easier for him. Principal Kouda, however, learns nothing.

Aoki-sensei is also on this trip since his elementary school is also a part of the trip. He’s there with his new student, Tomoya-kun. He and Hikaru don’t really interact, but Hikaru does remember him.

Now for the ‘chaos’. On the first night at the hotel/resort thing everyone is staying at, Hikaru gets lost.

Well, he doesn’t really get lost; he just disappears for a bit. On a hiking trip earlier that day, everyone passed through a tunnel, which Hikaru enjoyed but had to leave before he was ready to. He wanted to go to the tunnel that night but couldn’t express it to anyone and ended up going to look for it himself. He wasn’t missing for very long and was found right next to the building. After that Nishiwaki-sensei and the support teacher sat down to try to figure out what happened (while Principal Kouda just yelled at them). That’s really all that happened surrounding the ‘chaos’.

Like I said, the second half of the volume was all about Hikaru’s trip, except for one little part where Masato got arrested.

Yeah. That was the ‘shattering harmony’ part. I’d hate to disappoint everyone, but Masato was only in police custody for a few hours late one night because he got drunk and got into a fight with another man. The reason for all of this was that Masato got a transfer because the higher ups at his workplace are trying to get him to quit without outright firing him. I think that only starts to really impact the story in the next volume.

So that’s Volume 3. Things happened, obstacles were overcome, and most of the characters grew as a result.

I don’t think I ever talked about the art in this series, so I’m gonna do that right now: the art in this series is pretty simple. The character designs are all quite cute, and Tobe-sensei did a good job in giving each character a different design. The characters all look different, even the background characters sometimes, and it’s easy to tell one from the other. There’s not much going on for backgrounds most of the time, but when they’re there they’re done well. There are also some patterns, mostly on the clothes, that are often reused.

Another thing is that Hikaru and his friends are babies at the start of this series and they age as the story goes on. This is done very well. The children all look their ages (the adults never really seem to age, but that’s not important). I point this out because a lot of the other manga I’ve read have some odd designs for children, usually making them tiny and chubby. That’s cute, but not very realistic. With the Light has some very realistic children (that goes for how they behave as well).

Next is Volume 4, where we’ll probably learn more about how Masato’s transfer affects the family.

DoraaAAAHH! (also, relatives)

So I was babysitting my baby cousin and we were watching Dora the Explorer.

I'm really starting to greatly dislike Dora (and most of the other kids shows... and people say anime is weird). I know I'm not the target audience for Dora, but that show just annoys the hell out of me.

I suppose that it's an interesting concept: to watch a show that looks like a computer game being played. Of course, actually playing the game would be a lot more fun. But I watch my cousin watch it and she seems to be learning something from it, she sometimes answers Dora's questions so I guess that's worth something.

But that show just grates on my nerves.

And now for the obligatory arsehole complaint: the language.

Now, I have no problem with teaching children second languages (I am bilingual, myself, and have been since I was a baby, speaking two languages is awesome). Nope, my problem here is that the second language in question is Spanish.

There's nothing wrong with the Spanish language. In fact, I actually tried to learn it when I was younger (I've since switched to Japanese). But there really isn't any need to know Spanish in the area where I live. As far as I know, no one around here really speaks it (unless there are some people that do and I just don't know, totally possible). My family is French, Acadian to be more specific. So that means that my cousin is Acadian, so if she should learn any language other than English, it should be French.

Problem is that I don't think there are any shows that teach French, just Spanish Anyone is free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I've never seen any shows teaching French. The closest I can think of is Madeline, but from what little I can remember, that show just had French words spoken here and there, no French was directly being taught like in Dora.

I'm done now.

...

And now for relatives.

The older I get, the more I seem to really dislike most of the people on my mother's side of the family. My mom has three brothers, and they all have families and I have no complaints with them. They're awesome, nothing wrong there (except maybe with the middle's brother's family and how I can't really connect with them, but that's probably due to the fact that I don't really know them all that well, so, moving on). And I love my Nanny (Mom's mother) and my cousins from America, fucking awesome the whole lot of them. And I love my dad's side of the family (those that I've actually met anyway, love 'em all).

But a lot of my mother's cousins are assholes, or I just don't like them for whatever reason.

We just had some of her cousins stay with us for a week or so, her cousin and his two kids. Her cousin is an arsehole. Every time we were together in the same room he kept teasing me about my smiling problem (also known as The Smile That Keeps Happening at Innapropriate Times) that I can't control. It annoyed the fuck out of me, and even when I tell my mom about it, she just laughs it off and tells me that I'm overreacting.

They left on Friday, and now we have other cousins staying with us. A husband and wife pair I've known since I was very young. The husband is constantly teasing me, or just annoying me. Sometimes he's funny, most of the time he isn't. And the wife is just... odd. About a half-hour or so ago, she came in to see what I was doing on my laptop (I was downloading something), and then she just sat next to me on the couch and stared at my computer screen saying nothing for about two full minutes. It was awkward to say the least, and weird. And my mom knows that I'm annoyed and made uncomfortable by this, but, again, she just laughs and says that I'm overreacting. And she once told me that when I'm irritable about the husband and don't laugh, or whatever, at his jokes that I'm hurting his feelings.

*headdesk*

Y'know what actually, my mother's an asshole.

... and now I'm pissed. Especially because I'm being kicked out of my room because Mom's cousins sleep in it. I sleep in my brothers' room.

My brothers, by the way, have been sleeping in the living room for the past week or so until Friday (because of the other cousin and his kids). And yes, we have a pull-out couch bed thing. But this happens every single fucking time.

GIVE THOSE TWO THE FUCKING PULL-OUT BED, YOU FUCKWIT!!!

... okay... now I'm really pissed...

With the Light Volume 2

With the Light 2

Sachiko and Masato Azuma have overcome numerous obstacles in dealing with their firstborn son Hikaru’s autism. Having saved their marriage from ending in ruins, the young couple has welcomed a healthy baby girl, Kanon, into their tight-knit family. But with the obvious differences between Hikaru’s and Kanon’s developmental abilities, it becomes apparent that social prejudices against Hikaru’s disability are never far away. As Hikaru moves into the fourth grade, Sachiko encounters a new student, Miyu, whose mother has completely given up on her daughter’s life and her own. With the help of Hikaru’s beloved teacher, Aoki-sensei, Sachiko aims to bring hope back to Miyu’s family. But when Aoki-sensei transfers to a different school and Hikaru’s special education class is thrown into upheaval by yet another tragedy, can Sachiko continue to hold on to her own hope for her son’s future? (from the back of the book)


A lot of things happened in this volume, and this volume only spans maybe less than two years of Hikaru’s life.

At the beginning of the volume, Hikaru is almost in the fourth grade and his little sister Kanon is two years old and in daycare, which is pretty much where we left off in Volume 1.

Hikaru is the same as ever. He’s about nine years old now and is pretty set in his every day routines and still continues to make strides in his development. Kanon is just adorable and is probably as spontaneous as her brother is not. She’s also pretty easy to deal with, as Sachiko points out at one point.

This series doesn’t really have much of a plot, it’s just a slice-of-life series about Hikaru’s life so there’s no long story per volume, just a lot of short arcs. There are two at the very beginning, and one is where the ‘Hikaru Newsletter’ is introduced. The Hikaru Newsletter is something that Sachiko does up on the computer to hand out at Hikaru’s school to help people better figure him out. This particular newsletter focuses on the fact that Hikaru is able to put together a puzzle flipped over (because he was looking at the shape of the pieces and not the picture) and challenging the readers to try to do the same.

The second arc includes Kanon and some Hina dolls (some kind of Japanese doll set). Some of the mothers of Kanon’s daycare buddies are invited to a Hina doll party and Sachiko is invited and has to take Hikaru along with her. Hikaru is pretty well-behaved for the most part; while he occasionally gets into things Sachiko is able to divert his attention with no problems. Everything is proceeding smoothly until Hikaru wets his pants because he wasn’t able to make it to the bathroom in time. This shocks the other mothers there and they make some pretty mean remarks. One of them even insinuates that the reason Kanon was born was so that she could take care of Hikaru when Sachiko and Masato eventually die.

And that was chapter one.

Chapter two starts with Hikaru entering the fourth grade and some clunky foreshadowing about not wanting Aoki-sensei to transfer schools.

There’s a new student in the Special Education class this year: Miyu Honda, who is in first grade and is has autism. Like Hikaru, Miyu has low functioning autism. But unlike Hikaru, Miyu’s never received any kind of therapy, so her development is way behind (she isn’t even potty trained). Miyu’s mother, Honda-san, is young and headstrong and has never had any good experiences with schools, so she’s practically given up on Miyu’s education at this point. We don’t actually see too much of Miyu and Honda-san unless Sachiko and/or Hikaru are around at the same time. Miyu is probably what Hikaru would’ve been if Sachiko had never been to the welfare facility. Under Aoki-sensei’s guidance, Miyu flourishes, but all that mostly happens in the background of Hikaru’s story arcs.

Speaking of Hikaru, he’s become quite the gardener. It wasn’t mentioned in the first volume, but Aoki-sensei has been taking the Special Ed students out to work in the school garden every spring and fall. Hikaru has been working in the garden for almost four years now and he’s learned to pull weeds, water plants, and harvest them. He can even tell which vegetables are which just by looking at the leaves. All of this gives Aoki-sensei an idea that opens up to another story arc.

Wakabayashi-sensei is teaching the Buddy System class this year. The Buddy System is when another student (usually from a specific class) volunteers to hang out with the Special Ed students. Daisuke Ishida becomes Hikaru’s buddy for The Tomato Project. His job to go out to the garden every day at recess with Hikaru so Hikaru can water the tomato plants and take a picture of them. This is to teach him the passage of time.

The Tomato Projects gets off to a rough start but everyone eventually gets themselves sorted out and Hikaru makes a new friend in Ishida. There’s also another breakthrough in Hikaru’s development: he calls Ishida, someone he’s only known a few months, by name. (Wakabayashi-sensei is so jealous, haha.)

After The Tomato Project is over, there’s some kind of school recital where the Special Ed class, along with Ishida, makes a presentation about it. This is when Ishida’s character gets some development. Before he met Hikaru, Ishida was a soft-spoken boy who got teased a lot but, for whatever reason, couldn’t do anything about it. During the recital, someone makes fun of Hikaru and Ishida gets angry and calls the kid out.

Speaking of the kid making fun of Hikaru, his name is Oki-kun, and he’s in Moe’s class. He’s also a brat. He’s been abandoned by his mother and neglected by his father. But he turns out to have a kind heart, which he proves in a part of the volume I like to call ‘Hikaru’s Adventure’.

Hikaru’s always had a tendency to wander off. He walks home from school on his own now, so it was probably only a matter of time before he managed to get himself lost. Apparently, he’s been going to Oki-kun’s home recently, and this is where his adventure begins. He and Oki-kun are chased out of the house and, one bus ride and one train ride later; end up in Hachioji (which is about two hours away from home). This is all very emotional because when the readers aren’t with Hikaru and Oki-kun, we’re with Sachiko, who is beside herself with worry and fear. She blames herself for Hikaru getting lost because she allowed him to walk around on his own. It Keiko Tobe is good at anything, it’s portraying emotion. I was scared for Hikaru while reading this, and I knew that he was fine the whole time.

The second half of the volume is when a lot of changes happen.

Everything begins when Aoki-sensei and Wakabayashi-sensei get married, which comes straight out of nowhere. Dead serious, not even a hint of romance between those two until now. As nice as all that was and as much as I liked it, I think that the only reason it came up was because there needed to be a reason for Aoki-sensei to be transferred out. Which is the next major thing that happens.

Sachiko and Honda-san find the transfer hard to accept. Sachiko knows that Aoki-sensei is the main reason why Hikaru has been able to come as far as he has, and to Honda-san Aoki-sensei is the first person other than her to see Miyu as an actual human being with potential and feelings. They try to fight the transfer, but they can’t really change anything and Aoki-sensei moves on to another school.

It really isn’t the end of the world just because Aoki-sensei is gone. Principal Yoshizawa had everything sorted out so that Shichigatsu Elementary (Hikaru’s school) would continue to be a safe and welcome learning environment for all its students, including those with special needs. Then a tragedy happens and all that planning goes down the tubes.

Now the school goes through some major changes. First there’s a new principal, Principal Kouda, a man who cares more about image than about creating a loving environment for all of his students. Second there’s a new Special Ed teacher, Gunji-sensei, who is looking for a free ride for her last year before retirement and has no patience for Hikaru and Miyu and their needs. Gunji-sensei is also the teacher who accidentally locked Hikaru into a storage shed in his first year, so Sachiko is pretty worried about this.

This brings up a totally new set of problems that Hikaru and Miyu have a hard time overcoming. Right off the bat, Hikaru has the first big tantrum he’s had since he started school, and Miyu starts wetting her pants again. Both children are practically regressing while under Gunji-sensei’s care, and neither she nor Principal Kouda will do anything about it.

Not without a fight at least.

Hikaru is still continuing to grow and develop in this volume, and he’s making great strides into expanding his world even more. He’s meeting new people and learning more about the world he lives in and how to navigate it.

Like the first volume, Volume 2 doesn’t hold back with the emotional punches. Every up and down in the Azuma family’s journey is felt by the readers as well as the characters because of the way it’s done up in the manga. It also helps that the characters are easy to get attached to, especially the children because we get to see them as they’re growing up, so we genuinely care for them.