Ever so often, when I try to convince my son of doing something he does not want to do, like putting the LEGO that is spread out all over the floor, into boxes before going to bed, we end up in a never ending loop of questions and answers. He asks why, I explain, he […]
This has been a year of dinosaurs – it started with the trip home from Sweden together with a big toy dinosaur. After that we have been to the dinosaur museum, we have created a home made dinosaur card game, the birthday wish was for a toy dinosaur, and every night for four months now
Our son has for a long time dreamt of getting a radio-controlled car to play with. After having visited a friend’s place, getting to play with the friend’s RC cars, the longing grew stronger and stronger and so when his mum was going on a longer business trip and asked our son if there was
Although autumn is not here, the first autumn cold seems to be. Just as my wife had to go on a business trip, and I had some photography work to do, my son got a cold and had to stay at home from kindergarten. I did not want him to spend the days just watching
A long holiday is coming to an end. Rainy days, too hot days – summer is interesting in many ways here in Japan (though we are still waiting for this year’s first typhoon) and the time spent indoors has been quite extensive. So to make everyday life feel new we have tried to make something
New week – new museum. This time we went on a road trip to Kitakyushu and the Museum of Natural History. Kitakyushu means northern Kyushu, and is a town situated in the north of our island Kyushu (a very logical name one might think), an hour’s drive away. We have gone to Kitakyushu a few times
Summer holidays are here and so are summer colds. Even before the holidays started my son got a fever and while he has been sick, the two of us have spend our days indoors trying to make the time as interesting as we can. Since it has been 35 degrees outside, a week inside a
It is not an understatement to say that my son is in to bugs. Especially so the pill bug, or ダンゴムシ (dangomushi) as it is called in Japanese. It started a year or so ago when they were searching for insects and bugs at kindergarten. My son came home and talked very vividly about dangomushi
Every year come June me and my son are enjoying the ever changing rice fields. We always stop and have a look when we pass by, commenting on the water level, looking at all the little creatures living in the fields, talking about the rice field frogs that are soon to be born. Remembering my
The weeks leading up to our son’s fifth birthday has been all about dinosaurs and Pokémon. Ever since we went for ice cream at the local shopping mall last summer and my son saw the Pokémon ice cream cakes they had on display, he has been taking about wanting to have a Pokémon birthday cake
Space has been a topic of daily conversation in our family the last few months. We have been talking about the space station, space ships, planets, asteroids and meteoroids, and our latest addition are black holes. Our son has taken a great interest in black holes, and he keeps asking me so many questions that
I was introduced to the abacus as a child. My grandfather was fascinated by the abacus and tried to teach me, giving me a little abacus to play with. Unfortunately, living far away from him, I never got past the basics. My wife was doing soroban, Japanese abacus, in school as a child. She remembers