A week or two ago, my wife and I sat at the dining table talking when we suddenly heard a bang from the window. We went over, expecting to see a bird lying on the ground outside, but the veranda was empty and when I went outside I could not find any trace of a […]
A short anecdote from our little family. One busy morning this week as we were getting dressed preparing to go and wait for the kindergarten bus, my son took an interest in the top of my head. I was bending down, arranging his socks, when he suddenly said pappa, du har en ladugårdsplan på huvudet.
My son and I have been playing with letters for more than a year now and he has gotten quite good at recognizing and pronouncing them. He has come to the point where he is enjoying trying to read shorter words and while in Sweden I bought a couple of learn-to-read-books that we have started
Every night after dinner in Sweden we played some board games. It was my son who started this “tradition” and he invited me and his grandparents to many different games that he found among the toys my parents has saved from when my siblings and I were young. Labyrinth became a favorite, so much so
My son farmor, grandmother, worked many many years as a Swedish language teacher for children with Swedish as a second language. What better way for a little Japanese speaking child to improve his Swedish than playing and reading and going shopping and cooking with my mom! During our time in Sweden, my son has been
I have come to love living in Japan. I have come to love the Japanese cuisine, the Japanese culture and traditions, the Japanese nature, the Japanese people. But even so, there are aspects of Sweden that I miss so every time we come to visit my parents in Sweden, I take the chance to enjoy
Coming back to Sweden, it always takes time to get used to be in what used to me my home country. After a week or two I feel quite at home but when arriving I always feel a bit like a tourist coming to visit another country. The people look different, the customs are different,
Recently we came across the first snow of the year, and I am happy to say that I was as excited as my son. As he learned one year ago when we visited Sweden for Christmas, playing in snow is a world of it’s own. There is something magical about being in a white landscape,
A day not long ago I got quite nostalgic. It was the first time I have experienced nostalgia just by riding on a highway, but there I was, sitting next to my son in the back seat, looking out of the window at the mountains flying by, and nostalgia hit me. It was not seeing
Making gingerbread cookies is a Swedish Christmas tradition that our son has grown very fond of. This year he started out by using the shapes and making hearts and stars and Santas, but also he took some creative liberties and created a host of figures and animals from his own imagination. Thus we ended up
Ever since he was one, our son has been happily greeting people we are meeting in passing. When he sees a neighbor walking by he opens the window and says good morning or hello, when we are out walking he always says hello to the people we meet, and the other day his aptitude for
Every autumn our son’s kindergarten organizes an art exhibition with objects and pictures that the children have created since summer. Our son has been very secretive about what they are doing. The last few weeks, when coming home he did not want to share much of his day in anticipation of having his parents come