It seems to be here – this year’s rainy season. Looking at the weather app on the phone, all I see is rain and thunder ten days ahead. I am sure it will be some blue sky in between the thunder clouds, but the oppressing humid heat will not go away and time has come to […]
Already a year has past since I in front of an open window enjoyed the rice frogs sining in the rice fields for the first time. And this year I have so come to love these fields – they feel like home. From the window I have been following them going from brown patches of dirt
Having had a few tough weeks with our son graduating from one cold to the next, there has been a lot of unusual lifestyle patterns forming at home. Our son waking up coughing in the middle of the night has been a frequent occurrence; when the coughing has stopped he does not want to go
In Japan, the toilet is often found in a little room where nothing but the actual toilet can be found; I guess the space saving reason explains a big part of why often there is no separate basin to wash hands. The other reason I can think of is to save water – while normally
Today our son has his second birthday. Looking at my son sleeping on a mat in the floor, I find myself thinking about all that has happened this past year when we just had moved to Fukuoka and was celebrating his first birthday. Many many memories show up; sleeping on the floor in the kitchen
Our little family tries to surf in the rough sea of languages every day, the waves sometimes so violent that I fall of the surfing board and wash up on the shore all bruised. Especially so after a morning with my son at the playground. My wife and I speak Japanese and English, I speak
I like the image of eating with your five senses – we try the best we can to make meals for our son that are not only appealing in flavor, but also have an eye-candy property as well as pleasant smell, touch and sound to them. I admit, more often than not, we are not
Tonight my son fell asleep lying on my chest; I cannot imagine anything more beautiful. His whole existence is beautiful – the pure innocence of a child. The trust he puts in us without even thinking about it – I was lying in bed thinking of what I possibly could have done to deserve it, to
When I came to Japan the first few times I knew almost no Japanese and tried to pick up a few words by listening to other people talking. Standing in front of a traffic light I heard children saying 赤 赤 赤 青 (aka aka aka ao) – so I learned that red was aka and
Times are changing; when starting to write this I feel like this will probably be my shortest blog post so far. Why? Because of a recent triple punch on my stamina (catch up on another triple punch story here). It all started when my wife was going to Tokyo and left my son and me
Every now and then my wife goes to Tokyo for work. This time she was away for three days leaving my son and I to handle two nights without her milk. So what to do between morning and nightfall to enjoy the day and also to make us as tired as possible to make the
I have never seen our son as happy as the past week. His cousins and uncle came to visit us and it was like a new bigger world suddenly opened up to our boy. Not being stuck with his dad all day, but instead having two children giving him their complete attention made him grow