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
It was supposed to be a beautiful weekend, warm but not hot, clear skies and the air full of spring. Our son had got a pamphlet from his kindergarten about an event in a little seaside village where children’s activities as well as a chance to go for a ride on a boat were on
A little boy can find playtime everywhere, any time. Empty toilet paper rolls become bowling pins in the hallway. The slices of bread takes the shapes of boats, fishes, rockets and moons all while being eaten. The soap and schampoo bottles in the shower are being used as materials to make a sculpture on top
When I moved to Japan I got convinced that moving to another country will, like nothing else, make you see things you have never seen, think about things you have never thought about, experience things you would never dream of experiencing. And I was stuck in that belief until I became a dad. Since then,
March is the end of the school year in Japan, and before next year starts in the beginning of April, the children have a few weeks of holiday. Our son had found a pamphlet at kindergarten regarding events for kids where Tomica toy cars and other types of vehicles were the center of attention, and
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
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