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
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,