I have become quite fascinated by Japanese surnames, and it is a pleasure to just walk around and looking at the nameplates outside houses, trying to read the kanji and get their meaning. Seeing a Japanese name often brings out a very vivid picture in me as there is a lot of nature and culture […]
An integral part life in Japan is obento, Japanese lunch boxes (or just bento with the o being there only for politeness). Bento is simply put a proper meal with rice or noodles and fish or meat and vegetables and other Japanese foody necessities, all packaged in a box. Bento lunch boxes are for many
A short little post to celebrate a short little line of poetry found everywhere in Japan. 写真はイメージです。You can find “写真はイメージです。” written on a package of yoghurt, on menus at restaurants, in magazines and on advertisement boards just to name a small selection of places where you can enjoy the simple but beautiful sentence stating something
How our son has grown during our time in Sweden, and not just in size – I think we all felt it, his parents as well as his grandparents. He has become even more independent and also fully embraced a life where the spoken language is Swedish. Thinking about the years my son and I
I give my wife plenty of opportunities to laugh at my Japanese skills (or I should say lack thereof). I can reasonably well talk about the weather with our neighbors, speak about every day matters with my wife, sufficiently communicate with school teachers, other parents and children’s health professionals. I have also come up with
About once a month, there is an open day at the kindergarten aimed at children who are not yet in daycare. The kindergarten bus, the one and only Thomas the Tank Engine school bus, picks up toddlers and parents at the nearby shopping center and takes them up the mountainside to the kindergarten for an
The start of Kindergarten life is a big event for a little toddler, I believe. Suddenly no more lazy days with dad at home, no more play days at the community center, no more weekday mornings in the park, but instead lots of new friends to play with every day and a new structure to
In Japan so called 100 yen shops are very popular. They are stores that sell almost anything you need for your home and most items cost 100 yen. I guess they are the dollar stores of Japan. You can by paper, pens, cleaning and washing supplies, storage solutions and hobby materials. They have office supplies
I am already behind my son in language skills. Almost every week he uses some Japanese word I do not know and I am sure he sooner rather than later will start to read faster than me too. In one area we are on the same level though, and that is when it comes to
That children are innately creative I know, but I still almost every day marvel at our son’s way of creating and explaining the world around him, particularly so when it comes to languages. The other day our son woke up from his midday nap and started to speak English, talking about a white house and
In Japan, Swedish dental care is famous. Almost anyone in the dental profession I have met, hearing that I am from Sweden, comments on the good dental health in Sweden and the excellence of Swedish dental health care. Swedish dental products are on display in the super market. Looking at the image of Sweden that
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