2016 update

It's been about 4 years since I tried to post last. How is everyone? We are still surviving our Hamamatsu Life, the kids are getting big, and I have been busy with work!

Ken has been playing soccer with a local team since the last year of Kindergarten. He joined the team Formiga which is based in the next town to us. His kindergarten was a bit far from home, so it was a good way to stay in contact with his old friends from kindy and have fun. He is fast and has a hard shot, but is still learning some of the fundamentals of the game.

Mona is in the first grade of elementary school from this year. She is still making her new friends and we are interested in finding piano lessons for her but the tough point is when can we take her? Soccer takes up most of our weekends and I work in the evening and Ritsy gets home at different times each day. We need to find a solution soon.

That's all for now. I will try to post more again if I can!

New Years 2008

This picture just worked better in Black/White

One of the big traditions in Japan at New Years time is the trip to the temple to pray for good luck in the coming year. While Ritsy and I are not really religious people, we do believe that it doesn't hurt to just not tempt fate, be respectful to life, nature and to ask for safe passage. I do think it didn't work out too well for me last year, with the numerous trips to Temples in Nara- and my leg still got fractured so close to my baby's birth...
But we decided to lug little Ken out to Gansuiji temple on the 2nd. As I believe I mentioned, the temple is very popular for praying for babies, so it was a good fit. The other key point being that Gansuiji is so close to our home. Ken looked quite amused up to this point.
It was a pretty nasty cold day though, so we had to hurry along to do our business. At the front gate, they had their traditional New Years decorations out.
We went to the main shrine and said our Pleases and Thank yous. The shrine was decorated by a number of very colorful flags (not sure what the relevance is) and a thousand paper cranes as shown in the next picture.
Finally we had to hurry back to the car as Ken was not too happy about the cold weather, and I can't say that I blame him. It was pretty nasty.

Mobiles, thank yous and a vid

What?

Just a quiet day today. We went by Entetsu department store, we had received a few gift certificates to use there- we were able to find a cute mobile for hanging on his crib or maybe bouncer. Did I mention how incredibly generous have been since Ken's arrival?

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for coming to my blog in 2007! I really wanted to use this as a way to extend a branch of communication to my family and friends back home, but it has grown into something more with many students and just coincidental visitors (like Marc who happened across my blog topic about his buddy Warwick) and it has been greatly successful. I am a little disappointed that my writing dropped off in the last quarter of the year- but in the end I have about 131 posts so I don't think I did too bad. Well, thanks so much for reading- I hope to keep it interesting for 2008!

Here is a little video of Santa lying like the fool he is and Ken swinging his head around a bit.

cell phone pics

The focus around the household has definitely shifted to Ken. Through the first 2 weeks at home, I was still working a fair bit, so I would just have little snatches of time to spend with him- but now that my holidays kind of started on Saturday- and started full tilt on Thursday- I have had a great chance to just hang out with him.
He does spend a lot of time sleeping. And crying. And eating. And dirtying his diapers. But there are some times when he is just lying there and looking around. I read that this is the time to interact with him- and I think he is starting to love the interactions. By listening to him while he tries to practice his sounds, it helps him to get some much needed practice- after all, the poor bugger has two whole languages to learn.
I really have made an effort not to turn my blog into a "hey look at all the cute pictures of my cat" blog- because I realize that isn't an interesting read. I hope the new baby-centered focus you will see is not a bad turn. I will try to keep some other topics coming. This really is a great venue to document those changes that come along that, at the time, are somewhat minor, but you pause to reflect on later in life.
So far- he has already started lifting his neck- especially when we burp him. He is great for swinging his neck around and headbutting us right in the mouth. Cute but dangerous. Also he has started to make tears, though his cries are mostly dry, and he has also starting focusing more and he watches us as we walk around the house. Oh ya, also a couple of real smiles and a little bit of agoo's and lela's. Pretty fun stuff.

An Aside
Both pictures didn't turn out very well but, I still thought this was amusing.
A lot of places around here have the classic- squat and use toilets here, like this...
Well one place that I was working at had handy instructions posted for a foreigner on how to use these porcelain beauties. Unfortunately I had to be discreet as someone else was in the washroom, so the pictures came out blurry. He must have thought that I was taking some perverse pictures with the door closed, oh well - I wasn't....

Things settling....?!?!?!?

Yes, time is starting to move on and my schedule is lightening up and things seem to be starting to fall into place. Ritsy and Ken had spent the first few days at home in the living room where Santa was always trying to get in on the warm action. No problem as long as he doesn't try to lie down on Ken.
Ritsy was starting to feel better, and was moved into the baby's room by Monday. But going back a couple of days- Peter and Chris managed to convince me to come out to Hamamatsu city to celebrate the beginning of fatherhood. While I am weary of overdoing it , it had been a pretty stressful 2 weeks for me and it was really nice they wanted me to come out, so I headed into town for a couple of hours to a place called Liquid Kitchen- run by a guy we knew, Marty.
Even our other friend Peter came out and we saw one of Chris' students- in this picture is her friend. If I didn't know better I would say these two look like a nice couple...
We were good though and got home at a decent hour on the train.(hmm that poster looks oddly placed in the background)
This week was pretty busy too, but definitely starting to lighten up. I am also starting to understand why my students keep telling me to take lots of pictures. He has already changed in looks a lot in just 3 weeks. I actually see a little bit of me in this little face now! His hair is brown, though much darker than mine- but his eyes are dark-- well that light-coloured gene is a recessive one isn't it...?
He is a hungry bugger and seems to get really fussy at night- but we are learning and starting to minimize the fuss a little better little by little. Poor Ritsy was getting pretty tired though- yesterday I caught her having a nap with the little guy when I came home from work.
I know time is moving fast- I can't believe the little guy is already 3 weeks old! There will be lots of great times- but I am so interested to watch as he develops mentally and physically, I can't get enough- I am starting to get oya baka (Baby crazy)-- this is going to be a very interesting journey!

A positive turn

I just survived a crazy busy couple of weeks! I guess my week isn't really over, but I know my schedule lightens up a bit from this point, so I'll enjoy it.
I continued with a tough week of commuting to my classes, the hospital and the Midwife clinic and last week reached an end with me having to travel out to Shizuoka city early in the morning last Sunday to take my Japanese proficiency test (level 3). With the hectic pace of the previous week and the buildup in the week before that, my studying dropped off pretty steeply. I am not confident that I did well in the test, but I guess I earned valuable experience for when I have to retake the test next year! On the bright side, the color of the leaves on the ginkgo trees were quite beautiful in their autumnal richness!
Of course, following the the test I was able to make it back to town in time to visit both Ritsy and Ken.
Ritsy was feeling much better as she had opted for a transfusion the day before. I understand her original skepticism to do so with the controversy about people contracting Hepatitis C recently, but the doctor assured her the risk is small, and in the end it was definitely just what she needed. On Monday she was able to leave the hospital and join him at the midwife clinic for a couple of days. She was pretty happy!
Finally last night the family was united at home. Though Ritsy slept downstairs with Ken, and I upstairs with the cats, it sure feels nice to all be back together again!

The three corners

Even though the family has expanded over the last few days, it doesn't really feel that way right now. The three of us right now are in three separate corners of town- each of us going through our own issues.

For Ken the ordeal is pretty straightforward. He has spent 9 months in a nice, warm, safe womb and now he has been dumped out into this bright, cold and mind bogglingly complex world. He can barely see and doesn't even know why he feels compelled to suck down as much milk as his little stomach can handle. Even just burping looks like a lot of work- he's got a lot to learn.

I am most concerned about Ritsy. I mentioned that she had to go to the hospital after the birthing and was pumped full of fluids at the hospital. When I visited her yesterday, she seemed healthy and I thought that for sure she would be released from the hospital and be able to return to the Midwife clinic to reunite with Ken. Last night though she had a fever and today, her blood tests showed her to be quite anemic, she is really low on iron. When I saw her she was again looking healthy and had no fever, just frustrated that she can't see her son.

Luckily the doctor offered a great suggestion- Myself, her sister and the woman from the clinic went to the hospital carting along little Ken to finally see his mom. Unfortunately Ritsy once again had a fever and only could hang with him for a few minutes. I feel real bad for Ritsuko- she just wants to connect with the little guy- and feed him her milk and be happy. But she is stuck recovering and now I worry that because he is getting used to the bottle, it'll be tough for him to switch to breast milk later. Well, I'll try not to get wound up in a little knot over something I can't fix.
As for me, my ordeal is about my leg. I had my cast taken off on Monday but I am meant to only walk with about 30% weight bearing pressure. God, I'm a horrible judge of how much weight that means, especially if you consider you can potentially take thousands of step in a day. It's much easier just to think that I should try to walk 'lightly' and I think I will be okay. I'm actually back to using my crutches more than I did in the last 3 weeks before it came off. I am confident that my leg will improve a lot and quickly, I just need to keep patient with it.

Separate the 3 of us will have to fight our battles and get to the next level- I really look forward to when we can all sit down together quietly (well as quietly as it gets with a baby) and enjoy the true feeling that we are a big family.

Here is a little video of the guy doing nothing, but as a parent, I feel it is cute anyway. Please pardon me for using the I'm talking to a baby voice- I am trying to avoid doing that too much...

Another video- an evening resting the foot, cats and pregnant Ritsy

Just a little clip from last weekend, sitting on the couch. It's starting to get colder here so the cats are starting to be more 'social' to share warmth with us. It's going to be tough on them when the baby arrives- they won't be sleeping in the same room as the baby, though I may crash in the separate bed sometimes when I need my sleep- so maybe they can crash with me there. Also you will catch a glimpse of how pregnant Ritsy is now. I heard that the baby is up to about 3200 grams now, should be a little big bugger...

Oh ya- Chris has been updating his blog daily lately with some funny cartoons- including this comical one of me during Halowe'en week- based on true events, though I never think like that, honestly! LINK

The House (some old videos)

I thought I would post a couple of videos about my home's building process- the first one I made to put up in Facebook- but I don't think too many people found it, so I thought I might slap it up here, just a bunch of pictures I took showing the progress of the home as it was built ...

The next video I found sitting forgotten on my poor forgotten video camera. Now that the baby is close to arriving- I took out the camera, blew out the dust and found this old nugget. In Japan, more so in the more rural areas now I would guess, people have an interesting tradition when building a new house called tatemae. On the day that the roof gets erected, the owner first has the pleasure of treating the workers to a nice box lunch and dinner (which wasn't cheap- but if we don't do it, maybe they forget a nail or two...). Later in the day when the work finishes, we go into the house and pray for good luck at the home then pelt rice cakes at our future neighbours. It's quite funny, the older people when driving by on the day recognize the roof will finish and make plans to return at 4 o'clock. They turn up en masse and scrape and claw to get all the cakes. Indeed I saw a couple of cute old ladies grabbing rice cakes from children's grasps! It was pretty fun and interesting to see what it looked like from the other angle...

A funny thing happened the other day...

Wow, fall is here. The trees around the area are starting to sprout Mikans (also known as Mandarine oranges) and Persimmons and the weather is actually bearable now. Yep life couldn't get any better.

Except for the October curse.

Those who know me- know the story of when I was young (maybe 6 years old) on Halloween I ran into the side of a car and broke my leg. The part that still always cracks Ritsy up is that I was too scared to use crutches for whatever reason, so I walked around in the beginning with an old person's walker. Near the end though, I was on crutches. {Mother- if you read this can you scan the old picture of me with Santa clause in my cast?}

Some 29 years later, the October curse strikes again. I will have to document somewhere to beware in October of my 64rd year...

Sunday started harmlessly enough. I taught in the morning. I was quite proud of the handout I made for my Sunday class- studying haiku. I thought it would be easy for them get since it was a Japanese style of poem, and a great way to study counting syllables. Well it turned out to be tough for them to get, but sometimes we have to push the students, right? I digress....

After teaching, Chris called me up for a spot of basketball, which is quite a common activity for us on Sundays. So I met up with Pete and Chris and we saw that the usual crowd wasn't there, and we ended up playing a few games with a big crowd of guys from the Phillipines, nice guys and they played hard. Early in the third game, I was starting the playing and found that my check was easily fooled if I would stand with my back to him, protecting the ball and spin backwards into the lane to the hoop. While I was spinning though, my foot caught in an awkward position (maybe something related to the piece of my shoe that fell off earlier in the day) and instead of stopping I kept trying to twist my foot and I was met with an odd popping sound. Yep, that pop was the fracturing of my fibula. How lame to break your own leg without any contact or anything.
I planned on going back to work right away, but I realized that with a 4 week healing time, and my baby due in about 4 weeks, it's better to cut my financial losses a bit and try to get a head start recovering, so I asked for a couple of days off. Time/Life went ahead and got me the whole week off from the company classes, which will really help, once I start taking the trains to work it's going to be tough! Well, I saved the pictures for the end of the post to preserve the integrity of the story...

This is my leg, try not to look at the toes too closely...

And here is me resting on the couch, trying to heal quickly....

Mac and Me

Last week, Mak made the trek out with his new girlfriend, Shizuka to Hamamatsu. He actually had planned on coming around the last week of August, but we kept bumping the date as we couldn't co-ordinate our schedules. As they were coming to Hamamatsu for the first time, we thought it might be a good idea to partake in Unajuu. Unajuu is a lot like Unagi donburi (broiled eel rice bowl) but instead of being served in a bowl, it comes in a square box (called ojuu). Ritsy did a little research and found Fujita - a nice little restaurant in Hamamatsu located oddly enough next to a hotel called Canada Hotel. It didn't really look Canadian to me....
I was surprised to hear that Mak had a lady in his life as when I saw him back in April he was a single man. Apparently he and Shizuka had gone to the same Junior High School but didn't really know each other back then. He was surprised to see that he was invited to his Junior high school reunion as he attended for a short time before moving to Canada and the U.S. Well he met Shizuka at the reunion and the impression was that they seem to hit it off pretty well. They have many things in common, they like sleeping in, they both aren't working anymore and... well they live in Tokyo...?

Who the heck is this attractive couple?

It seemed that time burned up and next thing I knew we were parting ways. They wanted to retire in a romantic setting near Hamanako ( I guess) so didn't take us up on our offer to stay over. It was a great night and very delicious dinner- I hope they come out again soon!

Shinpara Matsuri

As Matsuri season winds on in the immediate area, Shinpara, the community I live in held their wildly popular matsuri last night and tonight. Here you can see all 10 people from the community came out, so it was a great success!
No actually, Shinpara is a pretty far spread out community that is split into smaller areas, each of which has their own Yattai- or Japanese style parade float. Here you can see 4 of them, though sadly none of my yattai pictures came out very well.
You can also see the local shrine (dark, but it's in the background here), where Ritsy had to dig into her wallet so that we can offer some money in order to pray. Don't worry! It's not that much, I think 5 yen is an optimal offering, though we could only find a pair of 10 yen pieces.
Though her family don't live there now- she grew up with her friend Manami (you may recall they visited us, and we visited them previously) in the area. So we ran into her and Shogo and Eiho, their dad was drinking with Manami's parents, so we didn't see him. They were all happy to see me of course, and the two boys challenged me to a race. It's tough to teach kids such valuable lessons, but naturally I had to beat them! Sadly today my legs were soar from all the running...

You can see how big Ritsy's stomach is getting now- junior - or kicky-kins as I have started calling it, is definitely almost ready to come out!

On a sad note, we were given notice of a wake and a funeral in our neighborhood today. The man, aged 37, leaves behind a wife and young child. He was an avid motorcyclist and had gone for a trip up to nearby Toyohashi and lost control of his bike and was hit by a truck. Very sad. I had met him not too long ago too. He was at the Dainenbutsu practice I had gone to see- I remembered him as being quite nice. I guess the thing that struck me the most about it is his young age (just 2 years older than Ritsy and I), seems that side of life has decided to start taunting us now...

The state of the union

This sunset looked better live, but still kind of neat looking clouds.

Wow time is moving fast! It has been such an incredibly busy time the last 4 weeks, that I barely had time to be social or get enough 'me' time. But I am not complaining- all the extra work was exactly what I needed! Thanks a lot to Time Life, they really came through with a lot of work, and because of that I feel a little more comfortable heading into the next year!

And what a next year it will be- we're looking at (hopefully) less than 2 months away from the little one arriving! Ritsy will finish work at the end of this month and go on maternity leave. We finally found out about Sankyu (Maternity Pay). It looks like for the first 3 months, we won't see a dime of the mat pay, but after the initial 90 day period from when the baby arrives she will get a pretty good cheque. But after that her monthly pay will be pretty minimal- just enough so that she can still help me with the mortgage and she can make the payments on her car. Taking on the monthly bills will be tight for me, but I can breathe a little safer with some money in the bank (thanks to all the extra work recently!),especially during the leaner months. We also will get back about 350,000 yen for having the baby, but that will also take 3 months to come. I think we are ready for it, and if we survive with most of our savings in tact, we can still take our planned trip to Canada next year in April.

What else is happening? We had the Sports Day events last weekend for ESL College and it was pretty successful. I fed off the kids a little too much though and worked up quite a sweat! It was a long exhausting day, but I didn't care I had a good time!

This week has actually been quite restful for me. Thanks to one of my students calling in sick a couple of times over the last week, I have been able to enjoy a surprise day off and get a lot of rest today (even update my blog...). This month most of my regular class' contracts come to an end so I have to endure the usual anxiety of hoping that they all renew. Usually it all works out, but there are no certainties in life!

We might get a visit from Makoto next week- I hope he comes out, that could be fun!

Time for me to head off to work now! Here is another picture from last week of Ritsy and the 2 cats sleeping, those crazy sleepy kids.

Koshinji

Going back to early August, I had made a couple of attempts to hop on my bike and take some pictures of some local points of interest. One of the days was a write-off, as it involved walking through overgrown forest paths that I was not comfortable traveling through wearing shorts, I will return to those locations one day though....

I did have one successful trip however. On the drive up one of the main roads leading up to my home (Route 152), I had noticed a street sign pointing towards Koshinji temple- actually only about 4- 5 kms from my home. My thinking is that if the place has a sign it must be a point of interest to some people, so I decided to check it out.
The temple is located next to a local sake brewery called Hananomai, you can see their storefront in the forefront of this picture. In the back is the torii leading into the temple.
The temple grounds are actually pretty small, and though not special the area is charming in it's quiet atmosphere and neatly kept area. Directly to the left on entering stands the above statue in the pond.
Throughout the area was a number of old carved stones. Really makes me wish I could read what they said.
Upon leaving I found this interesting small, quaint, old-fashioned looking store front.

It was a nice and peaceful adventure and I was happy to find the payoff on this little exploratory trip.

{Blogger has added functionality to upload videos directly to the site, so I am trying a little experiment here. This is more pictures and video that I took from my camera!}

Still catching up- End of August party

At the end of August with the pretext of my birthday (about 3 weeks late though)we had over Ritsy's old friends to our house- Manami, Tet-chan, Eiho and Shogo for the first time ever. As they have hosted us a number of times, we were more than happy to have them over and cook for them for a change.
The true challenge was to find things to entertain the little ones, as adults are easily entertained with conversation. We thought the Wii would satisfy them, but the batteries on both remotes were zapped, and we didn't have enough batteries to get them back up and running. Eventually we managed to find movies were a good solution, they both enjoyed Star Wars episode 3 while we were able to relax and chat.
Don't be fooled by this picture they had a great time...
Another popular draw for the children and the adults alike was the cats (Tet-chan had never touched a cat before, he liked them). Even though Eiho was having an allergic reaction, he enjoyed chasing Lanny and Santa around. Lanma was scared to death and hid and meowed at the kids all night. Santa, as usual, was oblivious to it all...
Much fun was had and everyone earned themselves a good nap! (okay this picture is from 2 weeks later, but I wanted to tie it into the blog somehow- Ritsy and Lanma napping together)