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 […]
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
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
The slight shift in in temperature, required to make the air coming in from the sea feel soft instead of chilly, has come. The sun is warming the playgrounds from early morning, and suddenly we start to meet friends that we have not seen since autumn. It is like the children and their parents (for
Coming home from our long morning walk (read here), it was high time to make lunch. Our 20 months old child is now capable of bypassing all child locks in our house; he easily enters the kitchen part of our living room, he easily opens the child locked kitchen drawer, he finds his way to
Once or twice a week, I take our son to different activities in the little town where we live. Tuesdays is the baby-activity in the shopping mall, where my son explores balancing on narrow objects, kicking small balls and picking them up and giving them to the teachers, dancing to music and interacting with other
The last week was special in many ways. The beyond earthly beautiful funeral of my wife’s dad moved me a lot and has left a big impression in me. There was something very honest and beautiful in the way his life was celebrated and the way his afterlife was prepared, and I feel honored to
I never thought my baby would teach me science before learning to even speak; I thought I was the one that will finally make good use of all my science education when my son is growing up and needs a conversation partner when it comes to matters of physics and mathematics. Actually studying together after
Early Sunday morning we gathered with our neighbors on the little road outside. Our house is one of eight sharing a narrow winding road that gets us from the big street to the bottom of the mountain where our group of houses is situated. Every autumn the neighbors gather and clean the road and this
Sometimes our son seems to grow more in one day than in a whole month. My wife and I were talking the other day about when we should stop call him baby; of course he is still our little baby (and I guess he will continue to be as long as we live), but we
One of the things I really love about Japan is the politeness, best illustrated by the custom of bowing. When I am outside playing with our son, and one of our neighbors comes driving home, they always slow down and make a bow in the car. When someone makes an errand to the house, they
With eight teeth in his mouth it had become time for our son’s first visit to the dentist. We had a very good image of our chosen dental clinic – it is a children’s only clinic and we had to wait almost two months for our appointment since it is very popular with so many good